Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Good morning. My name's Michael fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the village church. Before we get into the message, I am so excited to remind you that next weekend is our 50th anniversary. I do. I gotta tell you I prayed this, but I think to myself, every single time, a church makes it another year. The fact that with all of us sinners in a church, that we can still be United in Christ and worship together. I mean, it's, it's a borderline miracle and God has been really, really gracious, um, to this church for 50 years. So we are so excited. Next weekend is going to be a busy wake weekend. I wanna tell you a little bit, what's happening Friday night. We are having our vision dinner at Mao's and it is free. If you are 18 years old or older, you are welcome to come.
Speaker 1 00:00:53 This is not a fundraiser. We're not gonna be putting out a financial number and asking you to meet that, but we are gonna be looking to the past, to the present, and then we're gonna be setting some vision and direction for things that we see coming in the future. Honestly, I am so excited to share with you some of the stuff that we've been praying about and working on, and then, uh, talking about it together, uh, as a church. So, um, you need to sign up for this. Registration's gonna close tomorrow night after AANA, there are a few spots left. And so if you go to VCO b.org/fifty, I believe, right? Yes. Um, or you can just go to the hub either way, but you can, um, sign up and register there. We would just love to have you join us. Um, on Sunday morning, I am not gonna be repeating much of what we talked about, um, on Friday night.
Speaker 1 00:01:42 So if you really wanna hear what's going on on Friday night is gonna be the place to be. Then Saturday, we have our church picnic. We have multiple throughout the summer, but, um, this is gonna be on a Saturday instead of a Sunday. It's gonna start around noon as opposed to our normal picnics, which are in the afternoon later. And it's gonna be a Dave and Julie who's home. We have had church picnics at their home for decades and decades. And so, um, we are gonna celebrate together. There are I think eight, nine or 10 people being baptized right around noon. So if you come a little bit early, we get to celebrate what God's been doing at a whole bunch of people's, um, lives. And then we are going to eat and celebrate and have a great time. And so, um, by the way, if you've ever been, parking's gonna be a little bit different.
Speaker 1 00:02:24 So just pay attention to signage because we're gonna have a whole lot more people than, than normal. Uh, if you go to the hub or to vcb.org/fifty, to tell you everything, to bring it's potluck, you're gonna wanna bring some chairs. And, uh, it's gonna be a great opportunity. People are coming from really from years and years and years ago, attending village church. Um, many of them are gonna be actually at this event. And so we're excited to, to be together with them. And then Sunday morning we have three services, 8 30, 9, 45 and 1115. We have village kids for all three services. And so we are so excited to come together and celebrate God's faithfulness and village church. So, um, we want to request, would you register that would be actually really helpful for us so we can kinda get our head around it. If you are a leader at village church in any way, we have a simple request of you on Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 00:03:17 Um, would you go to the early service or the later service so that we can make space for more people at the 9 45? If you have to go to the 9 45, that's awesome. But if at all possible earlier or later, that would be amazing. So everything there, vcb.org/fifty sound good. Woo. There's a lot going on. I was like, how do I get three big announcements, but there's one registration. So go, go check all that out. All right. So as elders, we have the joyful responsibility from God to oversee village church and essential to healthy God glorifying oversight of any local church. You need healthy communication. So in that spirit, what I wanna do is I wanna kind of set up the direction of our message and the text we're gonna be in. And I wanna share with you, uh, three leadership communication values, number one, truthful, not spin.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 Do you ever sit and listen to somebody front? And you're like, just tell me the truth. Stop spinning this. Try, stop trying to make it better than it is. Just tell me the truth. I hate spin. Number two, transparent, not secretive. There, there are always going to be secrets leaders. Can't tell for example, we know a lot of things about you right now, going out in your life. Do you want us to get up and declare those in front of the entire church? The answer of course is no, not at all, but one of the desires is to be able to talk about most anything happening in the life, in the trajectory of the church about whether it's leadership or money or staffing or ministries, and to be able to have that kind of freedom to speak to you. It is a wonderful, wonderful gift from God transparent, not secretive.
Speaker 1 00:04:58 Number three, trusting and not manipulative. Um, our job as spiritual leaders of just one of Jesus's local churches in the world is to trust his holy spirit that is in you. So we have the holy spirit. You have the holy spirit. And one of the, one of the realities I think of, of healthier spiritual leadership is they have high confidence that their body has the ability to pray and to discern the holy spirit as well. And so these three things come together truthful, transparent, and trusting. Um, sometimes some leaders use manipulation tactics because they don't trust the move of the holy spirit in their people's lives. So they will use guilt or shame or manipulation or coercion to kinda get the body to move in a certain direction. And can we all just agree? That is not what we want for our church family. So these values, they are not admirable.
Speaker 1 00:06:06 They are expected. This is not a high bar. It's just the bar. Amen. And if you or leadership, we don't meet the standards. We, you own it. We own it. We apologize. And then we move forward together in a spirit of unity. That is what family does. Why do I say all this? So this is my 13th year as the lead pastor of village church. If you're counting interim it's 15, but 13 were officially, that's been my, my job title 2022 is the first year since I have been to Lee pastor at village church, that we've experienced a very specific and unexpected trend. And we all need to talk about this trend. Now, before I tell you what the trend is, because I love suspense. I need to share with you a few other trends first that actually put it in its context. So what I wanna do is I wanna share with you a, a, a handful of trends that have been happening at village church since COVID began ready since COVID began, we have seen more people trust in Christ than ever before something amen.
Speaker 1 00:07:28 This entire cultural climate has produced a sensitivity in people to the gospel and spiritual growth, like never before of often wondered God, why would you even allow us to go through this season? And as I watch people return or seek after the Lord, I I'm starting to see the Lord is always up to something bigger and better. And it's not just at village church. As I talk to my buddies across the country, there is a renewed spiritual interest, like never before. So at village church, we have, since COVID began baptized more people than ever before, we have had more digital visitors than ever before. And if you don't know this, people rarely walk through your actual front door until they walk through your digital front door. We have had more in-person first and second time visitors than ever before. We've had more people attending village church than ever before.
Speaker 1 00:08:19 Although the vast majority of people attend less frequently than ever before. That's another casualty of the post COVID era. We have more people in groups than ever before. The amount of people who call village home and are connecting and growing significantly increased during COVID. We have more regular givers than ever before. We have lost very few people to COVID dis disagreements. There have been a few families who disagreed on mask issues. We support them. We are in good SP with them and encourage them to move on. And that has been expected, but it has been very few people, uh, many have moved out of the state. And the vast majority of you are jealous <laugh>, but significantly more. I mean, I keyword words significantly more of joined village church than have left village church. If you've been around for like, we'll say maybe more than a year or two, you have noticed there has been a massive shift, even on a Sunday morning who, who is around you.
Speaker 1 00:09:24 We've had no big controversial leadership decisions that have created conflict. I'm thankful for that, but that has not been a part of what we've experienced. If there's something I don't know about, I invite you, please come talk to me. We've had no internal leadership conflict that I am aware of either. Now all of that is necessary for you to understand the unexpected trend. So let's create a baseline here. I wanna take a snapshot of our past Q3 giving average per week. Now, if you dunno what Q3 is, there's 12 months in a year, you break it up into quarter. So you have Q1 2, 3, 4, right now we're in Q3 of 2022, which is July, August, September. Did I get that right? July, August, September, yes. There we go. So I wanna go back in time. And so Q3 of 2019, we received on average $19,180 per week village church's generosity has been astounding.
Speaker 1 00:10:24 And, and that was what it took to kind of make the ministry happen on the ground. But also one of the things to know is that, um, we had far more needs than we had staff and ability to actually meet them. And so we went into COVID, the whole world kind of blew up around us and everybody got frugal, right? Village church got frugal. We, we stopped all spending and we just wanted to wait and be patient and see what's gonna happen in this season. And so our average giving in Q3 of 2020 was $19,580 per week. Now I want you to watch what happens in Q3 of 2021. It jumped to $28,076 per week. This was a significant reflection of a couple factors. Uh, number one was just the natural growth that was happening at village church. As you came, you begun, began to see the needs and you realize it costs a lot of money to make a church function well so that you get what you need so that you can do the ministry that God has called two to be a spiritual family.
Speaker 1 00:11:34 What we did is we got into 2021. And what we typically do when we budget is we budget the following year based on Q3, maybe a little bit of October, the giving averages we see there. So typically what we want to do is we're going to keep our next year's budget pretty close or in line with what we think is gonna happen in Q3 of the year before this allows us so that if we continue to grow, we have a little bit more margin. We could save some money. We try to be really intentional as we plan for the future so that we don't budget more than what we see the trends are providing. Amen, Kirk for Hassel. Amen. He's one of our elders and is, uh, been astoundingly helpful in budgeting. So I want you to watch now what happened in 2022 in Q1, we went down to $25,503 per week.
Speaker 1 00:12:27 We saw that and we thought, well, let's just wait and see, what's gonna happen. Q2, we averaged $23,342 per week. Q3. It went down even more to $21,710 per week. The total drop from Q3 2021 to Q3 2022 was $6,366 per week. A 22% decrease in giving for the last 13 years. Our giving is basically kind of gone like this. So when we budgeted for 2022, we had no historical basis for seeing any of these trends happen. So, uh, we began thinking, researching data mining, trying to figure out what is happening. And here are some of the plausibility that we explored to see what was going on. Was there theft quickly? We realized, no, there's not because it would require at least two or more people conspiring over a long period of time and then evading the watching eye of our elders and multiple other people who hide the finances closely.
Speaker 1 00:13:37 We are confident that did not happen. Was there an accounting error? We did change our, um, our, our financial software. Um, some of our giving programs, was there an issue there we've not, not been able to find any, anything there was there conflict in the church, no disagreement over major decisions, no significant job loss in our community. In fact, what we found is that more people are working than ever before and making more money than ever before a village church, where there lots of people leaving, no major givers leaving, no. Some are giving slump, no software glitch for online givers, maybe a possibility. There were some issues where people's giving was being declined. And so we get notice of that. And then we call you and say, Hey, FYI, this was declined. We keep a pretty candid, honest relationship open, um, with anybody who gives regularly, if you gave and it declined, we feel obligated to tell you there's a handful of that.
Speaker 1 00:14:29 We dealt with them. There's a possibility that, um, some of you, if you set up online giving and you don't look at it, uh, there is a possibility that we've seen that it might have actually stopped your online giving, not told you. And that might have been happening now for a few months or more so as an immediate takeaway, one of the things you can do is go to church center or your bank, or however you give, give autopay and make sure that those are working rightly because, um, that is a possibility. But, uh, we don't sense that that actually is the major reason either. That's just a, Hey FYI, go check it out. Um, thank you for doing that. We think there's a bigger reason why this is happening and the more we listen, the more confident we get in this reason, economic uncertainty, inflation has taken a major toll on families.
Speaker 1 00:15:19 If I were to have all of you, raise your hand and say, how many of you have been massively inconvenience by your, by inflation? The vast majority of you would raise your hand gas and energy prices have hit everybody very hard. How many of you love the price of the gas tank? That's awesome or not. Uh, the decline in both the stock market and crypto have actually really, really affected a lot of people in our community. Especially as people are getting closer to retirement, that's hitting them a lot harder. We've noticed, um, that people are paying off over the last year long term debts that have been hovering over their head. As there is uncertainty all around us, trying to make sure we don't go into whatever 2023 house for us. Culturally, people are beginning to pay off debt. Typically, as people pay off debt, they usually don't stop vacationing.
Speaker 1 00:16:08 They stop tithing to pay off the debt. That's a weird thing that I don't totally understand, but that's, that is a reality that we see happens. We're watching people address a debt aggressively right now in light of future, uncertainty, people are saving as much money as humanly possible, by the way, if the future is uncertain, should we all save? The answer is yes, absolutely. I think there's another thing here, which is psychologically. Uh, it is, it is not common probably for most of you in one season or another of your life, to be able to say, I, I need to slow down giving because I've got some things I have to take care of. Maybe something happened, there's an emergency. And in our brain, we think this village has always been fine. They have always been good. Pastor. Michael has never once in all the years that he's ever stood before us and told us that giving has done anything, but go in this direction.
Speaker 1 00:17:00 Now that is unsustainable. You all see that nothing can do that forever. So it's natural that people would say, I need, I need to like pull back. I need to get some things straight here. And that is normal expected except when 25% of the church all does it at the same time. And so I think that is probably what we're experiencing. Nothing, malicious, nothing terrible, no big argument. I think that's just a really, really hard season for the vast majority of people. And so, um, this trend actually wonderfully sets the stage for our preaching text this morning, uh, in our preaching calendar, September the 11th was designated to talk about giving and generosity. And so here's what I want to do with you. I wanna invite you. Would you open up your Bibles to the book of Exodus? We're gonna be in chapter 25. We teach on money and giving regularly.
Speaker 1 00:17:50 Jesus talked about it. We talk about everything as a family. Um, I know for some people they're like, why would you, how would you tell visitors who are watching online or visiting your church about a financial struggle that you guys are watching or a negative trend? Listen, we have nothing to hide. This is what it is. We love you. We are a family. We're gonna talk about these kind of things. And we're gonna open up God's word either way, whether we are experiencing much prosperity or we are experiencing, um, a, a tightness or a lessening of giving. We're gonna always talk about God's word because we wanna make sure on every subject we give God glory and we submit our minds and our hearts and our lives underneath its authority. All right? So this, this giving message is gonna go on a little bit different direction than, than normal, but I think that'll be good in ex exhibit's 25.
Speaker 1 00:18:33 There's a problem. There's a vision. And there's a need. Here's the problem. Israel didn't know how or where to worship Yahweh. They have been slaves in Egypt for centuries and their spiritual heritage. So much of it has been lost the rhythms that they had before being enslaved. And so now here they are, they're running for their lives. They're in the middle of the wilderness and they don't know how or where to worship Yahweh. The there's a vision. And I think the vision is really strange, but the more I think about it, it becomes a genius kind of vision. That kinda like the way that only God would do. Here's the vision, a portable tent, <laugh> called a tabernacle where God would dwell with his people, no matter where they went, every other God was housed in a big, beautiful grandiose temple, but the one true God of the universe, he decides he's gonna take up residents in a tent with a wandering nomadic group of people who are running for their lives.
Speaker 1 00:19:40 From the Egyptians. A God's glory was represented by his house. And somehow yawe is unlike any other God in the world. Not that they're real, but any other notion of God, he is so much more compelling and beautiful and humble and glorious. And this tent, it would become the most important place on the globe. It would become this one singular place in the entire world where you could go to be in the presence of the one only and true God and Israel was tasked with this incredible responsibility to build this tent. Now here's the need, very simple three things, money, labor, and resources, and God intended to build his house, not by himself, but with his people. So as you're pastor in representing our elders, we love the way Moses went about raising funds for this project, particularly because you're gonna see this in Exodus 25, Moses was truthful.
Speaker 1 00:20:47 He was transparent and he was trusting. You're not gonna see an ounce of manipulation in Moses. You're gonna see no coercion. In fact, you're gonna get, I think a picture of what a really beautiful standard is for the way spiritual leaders should communicate about problems, needs vision, money, resources, et cetera. Now this might be your last Sunday at village church. You might come and be like, I'm never walking through those doors again, but maybe, maybe in this message, we can maybe set the bar for how leadership should speak to their people about problems, money, vision, and the future and resources. So what I wanna do is in Exodus 25 on pull out two, just principles about how you should expect leaders would talk to you about money and needs in the family of God. Principle. Number one, Moses trusted the people to pray and respond.
Speaker 1 00:21:35 Look at verse one. The Lord said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel that they may take for me, a contribution and, and right off the bat. I love that. God says, listen, tell everybody about it. You get in front of them, you open your mouth and you let them know there's a problem. There's a vision. And here's the need. Here's the strategy. How we're gonna go about accomplishing this vision. First one continues. The con the contribution would not be taken by force or by tax, but from every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me, every man whose heart moves him. So this vocabulary is very important. In fact, I've taught on this before, but I wanna give you a refresher on this. This is what the old Testament calls a free will offering and a free will offering.
Speaker 1 00:22:35 Very simply. It's a voluntary religious offering. And it's made in addition to what is required by vow, tithe or pledge. So under old covenant law, they did have to give a certain amount, a tithe, the 10th, etcetera. They would also make, uh, pledges and vows and certain things. The FreeWheel offering was separate from all of this. The FreeWheel offering was something that you did above and beyond whatever your other obligations were, meaning it was given freely. It was given without coercion. And so people would actually give different kinds of things in a FreeWheel offering. Typically the kinds of things that you would give corresponded to the job. You had nine to five, Monday through Saturday, they would be, if you were a farmer, you would give, uh, food, or you would give an animal. If you were a craftsman, you would give the materials, or maybe even your service.
Speaker 1 00:23:24 If you were wealthy, you would give money and precious metal and precious jewels and FreeWheel offerings were really, really valuable and important to God. I'm gonna give you two reasons why, uh, number one, the FreeWheel offerings allowed yawe to do something that is really important to him in every single person he has ever been in relationship with all throughout human history. It has allowed God to partner with his people. God has an incredibly high value of not doing everything on his own by himself. Can we agree that the Lord does not need your ministry, your money, your effort. He could accomplish everything he wants without any of us or our resources. Amen. But he, he is so funny. He's like, Nope, I'm not gonna do it. Unless you participate with me, you go all the way back to the garden of Eden. And they were given this awesome commission to rule, ands, do over all of creation.
Speaker 1 00:24:22 Could God not have done that himself? And yet he's like, no, we're gonna do this together. I am gonna be with you. I'm gonna walk with you. And you are gonna go lead and rule and sub do over creation. You're gonna name it. You're gonna bring the glory of God into this world. You're gonna do that. And I'm gonna do it with you. Uh, I'll give you another example of this. Uh, if, if you have heard about Muslims from the middle east or Africa coming to Christ, you've probably heard this before that almost always, if a Muslim is going to come to faith in Jesus, they're going to come to faith because they had a dream and Jesus showed up in the dream. Now here's what you may not know. Almost every one of them will tell you the same story. Jesus did not preach the gospel to them, but Jesus told them where to go to find a Christian who would preach the gospel to them, how inefficient
Speaker 1 00:25:27 Jesus' value is. Not that he just does it all by himself, but that the people, his people, his family does it with him. This has been his Mo from creation. And it will be to the end of infinity, which never happens. God is passionate about being with us. And so whenever, whenever there is a job to do, he's always like, here's the job. Here's the vision. Here's where we're going. We gotta get together. And we have to do this free will offerings allowed God the, uh, privilege to partner with his children here. Here's the second reason I think God really love free will offerings. They revealed to him the true state of the heart of his people. Let let's just take, let's take Israel for a moment. There was a free will offering before Exodus 25. And it was a free will offering that. Aaron invited the people to contribute, to, to build a vial and disgusting golden what, right?
Speaker 1 00:26:29 They were not compelled. They were not manipulated. They desired to give their funds to this thing. So when God comes to Moses and says, take a contribution and I want it to be a free will offering. He is actually testing the heart of Israel. Have they repented from their free will offering to demonic idols and have they realigned their heart to yawe. That's what he is watching. Now. I wanna be really, really clear. So there's no nothing like red between the lines here. Last time I checked, I don't sense by the way that you guys have built a golden calf and worshiped an idle and done crazy things like that. I don't have a sense that for village church, the Lord is plausibly, even withholding funds for a season to, because maybe for some reason, you've been giving your funds to demonic, dark things. That's, that's not the implication, but that's for Israel.
Speaker 1 00:27:26 That's why this FreeWheel offering happened in this time and this place he's testing them. And then whatever happens. It's showing you the alignment of the people of God to worship of Yahweh. Now in the book of Exodus, the, the building of the tabernacle and the funding of it, it happens, um, really throughout a significant portion of the book. So another section of this is in Exodus 35. If you give your Bibles open, turn to Exodus, chapter 35, I'll have it on the screen for you as well. We'll be in verse 20. And I want you to watch how the free will offering worked, says this. Then all the congregation of the people of Israel departed from the presence of Moses. And they came, they returned everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose spirit moved him. And they brought the Lord's contribution to be used for the tent of meeting and for all of its service.
Speaker 1 00:28:19 And for the holy garments, listen to hovers 22 says this. So they came both men and women, all who were of a willing heart, no manipulation, no coercion, no law, no tax, no Fiat go pray. What does the Lord want for you in chapter 35, verse four, it says this Moses said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, this is the thing the Lord has commanded take from among you. The contribution, a contribution to the Lord, whoever is of a generous heart. Let him bring the Lord's contribution. Uh, I want you to watch as this is applied to the new Testament, second Corinthians chapter nine, second Corinthians chapter nine and eight, by the way, lots in, in there on giving. Here's what it says. And I want you to listen, listen to the spirit of what Paul's saying. He says each one must give, as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, no coercion, no manipulation, no shame, no guilt, none of these worldly, demonic tools, God, we don't use those tools in the kingdom.
Speaker 1 00:29:39 Those are dark tools. We use light tools for God loves a cheerful giver. So I told you a need, right? And if you're not stirred, that's fine. Um, if you're not, don't do anything about it. Actually like our expectation is that we are honest, we're transparent, we're truthful and we're trusting. And then you have to figure out if your heart is stirred, what the Lord wants, et cetera. And that's good. This is, this is right now. Where does Paul get this language from? The free will offering. This might blow your mind. But the, the whole framework of new Testament giving is not percentage based. It's actually rooted in something deeper. It's rooted in your passion, your generosity, your heart, your desires, what you want to do. Let's look at the second principle for leaders. And I think this is good for you to have clear expectations.
Speaker 1 00:30:32 Um, wherever the Lord might take you in a local church, Moses was crystal clear and he was crystal clear on two things. Number one, he was crystal clear regarding the specific needs and he did not hesitate to talk about it. Don't you just love when people tell you what they need rather than making you have to guess. Amen. Look at chapter 25, go back 10 chapters, verse three. This is the contribution that you should receive from them. Gold, silver, and bronze. It always starts with money, right? We need money. Okay. And I love the specificity blue and purple and Scarlet yarns and fine twined linen. Oh, by the way, don't forget. Goats, hair really important. Tanned Ram skins, goat, skins, Acacia wood. And if you don't know what Acacia wood is, it's absolutely beautiful. It's not even super expensive. If you go into my house ever, our whole first floor is a case of wood.
Speaker 1 00:31:26 It's all different colors, variated. Absolutely a beautiful wood oil for the lamps spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant. I sensens on it. Stones and stones were setting the E FOD and for the breast plate, I love the clarity, but Moses was also crystal clear on the why and the vision. And in chapter 25, verse eight, here's what he says. Let them make me a sanctuary. Why God? What is the point that I may dwell in their midst? What does God want more than your treasures? More than your skills, more than your awesome, good looks more than your full head of hair. Haha <laugh> he wants you. He wants to be reconciled to you. He wants to build his kingdom with you through you doesn't quite capture it. He wants to arm an arm side by side, work with every one of us in this room to build his kingdom on earth.
Speaker 1 00:32:30 That's what he wants. All of that begins. When you trust in Jesus Christ, the money, the building lights, all of of it. They're a means to a bigger end. He wants to be worshiped by you in your presence. He wants to build the kingdom with you. Like all, everything we do, God willing is about building people who are gonna be worshiping and following Jesus Christ. And so that's what God wants for you. And I love from the very beginning. Again, you go back to the garden, where did God want to be with Adam and Eve? And when, since separated them, what does God want to do? He wants to bring the two back together. He wants to dwell in the midst of his people. God loves places and spaces and experiences that measurably help people connect with them and grow spiritually. And when we think about how we spend money, we wanna fund these kinds of things.
Speaker 1 00:33:25 Uh, one of the great blessings of COVID is that we went back through every single part of our church from top to Bo bottom, we turned over everything and we asked the following question is this thing is this ministry, is this fund, is it measurably making disciples? And if it's not, how do we shift it or stop it so that we can accomplish in everything. We do the mission that God has given us as a church. It was one of the greatest blessings that we have had during COVID. And we wanna make sure we are funding the kinds of things that help people know love and follow Jesus to be with him and to partner with him and building the kingdom of God on earth. I I've talked about money a lot in the pulpit. Um, probably because it's just all over the Bible. So when we teach the Bible, we talk about money and I have so appreciated the spirit of village church to date I have yet to have, well, actually somebody joked with me in the service and they did say this, but to date in a non joking way, I have not had somebody say to me, you need to talk about money less.
Speaker 1 00:34:22 So one guy came up to me and he goes, you need to talk about money less after the first service. And I said, I said, you're joking. Right? And he goes, absolutely keep talking about money. And I was like, thank you. We will never like the, the absolute kindness in the desire that everyone has just understood. We have to deal with every part of our life. We have to talk about it biblically, openly and freely without coercion and manipulation and submit every part of our life under the authority of God's word. This past week, we sent out an email that our benevolent fun had run empty. And we said, Hey, it's empty. You know, could you give, um, to replenish this and already you've begun to do that. And how cool is it that we have a fund that exists just to serve our community and those in need in our church family, we can come alongside of them and they have, uh, help.
Speaker 1 00:35:12 And, uh, you guys are beginning to respond to that. And so this is just kind of just our Mo and there's a need we come before you. And we say, here, here's what it is. And, and I, I gotta tell you, I have zero, zero hesitation looking at you and saying, here's the, here's the problem? Here's the vision, go home and pray about it. Cuz the Lord has been unbelievably faithful to this church for 50 years before that there are hundreds of thousands of local churches all throughout the world in history that God has been unbelievably good and kind and faithful to. There are churches all over Bartlet. And beyond that, I just love getting to watch what God is doing in that local church here. This is the church that we're commissioned to steward in this place and this time. And, and I just gotta tell you, I have never been personally more excited and more grateful for how I'm watching God move. And let me, let me just, let me just illustrate this simply for you.
Speaker 1 00:36:11 My wife came to church here when she was nine years old and I don't know any, any little girl or mom or dad they're over there. Who'd wanna leave San Diego, California for Carol stream, Illinois. Um, but I live every day with the fruit of village church because I married a woman who grew up in this place. My wife's love for the word of God was birthed here. My wife's love for missions and global outreach. It was birth here. My wife's love for people, for children and for students. It was birthed here in December of 2002. I proposed to my wife and right after I proposed, we went to Mike and Robin Cameron's home because they were hosting the progressive dinner and they were, I'm guessing a hundred people in that house and the way they loved and celebrated with my wife, it was clear.
Speaker 1 00:37:23 I was marrying an entire church family and she, she had mothers in the faith and fathers in the faith who loved her dearly, who had watched her and grown her spiritually. And I got to be on the receiving end of this, her and I had zero expectation that I would become the youth pastor. And then later the senior pastor of village church, zero expectation of that. When we got married, I'm raising three children and this is the only church they have ever known. And I cannot tell you how excited I am that you and you know exactly who you are. You hang out with my kids, you pick them up, you take them out. You're their youth leaders. You are their kids leaders. They're Oana leaders. You serve with them. You speak truth to them. You correct them. You call out what God has put into them.
Speaker 1 00:38:11 I, I, I am telling you, raising my kids is a family affair with all of you and you have been so incredible. My kids love this place. They love Jesus. I had the opportunity over the last year to baptize all three of them with my wife and what a joy to be able to watch spiritual fruit grow in my children. I I'm telling you forget about all that out there. I'm just looking at my own personal life. And I have seen the way village church has profoundly absolutely changed my family's life. I was 21 years old when I walked through the doors of this church. And when I unexpectedly became the youth pastor of village church, everything that I know about leadership teaching the Bible preaching has all happened here. You had to put up with a lot. I speak four times slower. Now up front than I did. When I started, I gave some of the most abysmal sermons on the planet right here, worst at a big white belt for years. And you all put up with it is remember that some of you do when I was 29 years old, you guys made, I thought it was a ridiculous decision at the time, but a primarily baby boomer church voted to have a 29 year old become their senior pastor. That's weird by the way, because at the time boomers hated millennials. Remember that? I think we're over it, right?
Speaker 3 00:39:36 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:39:39 And that's just my story. My best friends are here. Our elders have been so incredibly good and kind as brothers in Christ. I just love the deacons we able to serve with. I mean, I cannot tell you the impact personally, of this place on my life. And it's been really hard at times. The worst moments of my life have happened here. And the best moments of my life have happened here. That's family, isn't it?
Speaker 3 00:40:05 Hmm.
Speaker 1 00:40:07 I applaud with you.
Speaker 1 00:40:12 So I look at you and I have zero, actually. It's funny because when I looked at the numbers, I was like, I have zero frustration with our church. I have zero desire to manipulate you truly. I don't wanna guilt you or shame you. I look at Moses and I'm like, I wanna have that kind of confidence. Here's here's rat. Here's where we're going. Here's what we need. Let's talk about it, go pray. Let's figure this out. And I have no, no hesitation of wondering how any funds are gonna be used, cuz I get to watch it on the ground and experience personally the benefit of it. And I think so do you in your own way, and I've learned a bigger principle here that has been really just good for my soul and it's this God funds his vision for the church. Trust me, I have a million ideas and about one or two of them a year from God, right?
Speaker 1 00:40:59 You guys know what I'm saying? And we have to follow the limitations that the Lord puts on us because his will is found in the limits. He gives us. And I have learned to love every limitation that God gives us because it's another way that he is focusing and showing us his will. And so as we look at this next season, I'm like, God, I'm, I'm just excited to talk to our church. I'm excited to see how they respond and then we're gonna get even more clarity as what your will is in this next season, based on how you fund your vision. Now, as we, as we get ready to close, I probably should just end the sermon there, but I did a lot more prep. So I wanna share with you. Uh, usually we do is so what's like propositions or statements. Um, our three or so whats are gonna be questions.
Speaker 1 00:41:40 So here's the first question. Why would God allow our funds to decrease while the needs are increasing drastically? And when I mean, the needs are increasing drastically, the needs are increasing drastically. So I've been self reflecting a little bit. And so some of our leaders and, and here's, here's a couple reasons. Number one, to test our leaders. I, I have found that God tests, spiritual leaders in two big circumstances, here's the first circumstance where God tests, spiritual leaders. He tests them after they have failed. Uh, God is looking for repentance and humility. He reserves we'll say resources to see how they're gonna respond, to see if they lean in, in prayer. And in transparency and honesty, I don't have a sense that there's been some big leadership failure at village church. I feel like we've been trying to be as prayerful and frugal and intentional as possible, but that is one of the reasons why sometimes God does withhold, but there is a second reason that I think is really valuable.
Speaker 1 00:42:46 I find that God withholds and he tests leaders before he's going to give them greater responsibility. And what we're watching right now is the responsibility to steward every soul that attends village church. It is a great honor and it's a great privilege. And if I were God, I would test me way harder than he is. If I were God. And I wanted to like allow you the privilege to steward and shepherd any of my children, I would want to know that when push comes to shove, will you do the hard things? So are we really committed to God's glory in the mission? I probably would allow a whole bunch of distractions to come our way to see if we bite. Will we really live within our means? Will we communicate truthfully transparently? And trustingly with you? Will we cut 22% of our cost by the new year?
Speaker 1 00:43:39 If trends don't change, God does an O village church, a dime. We owe him everything and it's our joy to flex and respond with whatever vision he has. And we can get clarity through that in terms practically in how some of that's funded, why would God allow our funds to decrease while the needs are increasing drastically? Here's the second reason to force innovation. Have you ever noticed that when you have plenty, you are a little less thoughtful about how you spend village. Church has never been flushed with cash in 50 years, we are the grittiest crappiest group of people I have ever met in my life. This whole building was built by the men and women of our church. These bricks were laid by us. Every part of this building gets built by the people. It's the way we've always done things. And the Lord has always just given us enough to move in the direction of his will and then withheld a lot of it so that we do this together.
Speaker 1 00:44:29 How easy it for is it for us to just hire everything out, but we go is a better way to do this. In fact, I think we can grow closer as a family. If we just do this together and we can save hundreds of thousands of dollars village church has been a gritty scrappy group of people. And I think the Lord has honestly formed so much of who we are by never giving us a ton of money or more than we could handle. It's been actually really good sometimes God withholds so that people step up so that people come together so that he can just partner with us. All right. So what, number two, it's one of the most frequent questions I get asked, how much money should I give to my local church? We can't talk about tithing actually without actually going after this.
Speaker 1 00:45:06 So here's the principle that I wanna show it to you. And the new Testament, the Bible's focus is on a person's desire and prosperity, not percentages. I just, my mind blown again, right? The Bible's focus is on a person's desire and prosperity, not percentages. Let's look at desire, Exodus chapter 35, verse 29, all the men and women, the people of Israel whose heart moved them to bring anything for the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done, brought it as a free will offering. Look at prosperity in, in, in, in chapter 35, verse 24, everyone who could make a contribution of silver bronze brought it as the Lord's contribution. Do you know what that means? Not everyone could. And are they sinning because they can't no way let's watch this in the new Testament. Second Corinthians eight, 12, Paul confines, his desire and prosperity says first, if the readiness is there, meaning if your heart is ready, like this is what you want.
Speaker 1 00:46:07 It is acceptable. According to what a person has, not according to what he doesn't have. When people tell you to give more than you have, it's kind of inconsistent with some of the biblical principles or here's the Jerusalem offering from acts 1129. The disciples determined every one of them, according to his ability to send relief to the brothers, living in Judea and the new Testament, the Bible's focus is on a person's desire and their prosperity, not their percentage. For some people you give 10% and you are way undercutting it for some people, you do not need to give 10% cuz you don't have 10% to give. And this is where it is far better for the people of God to think about giving like this. I need to go pray. I need to get aligned with my family and I need to make sure that my heart is willing.
Speaker 1 00:46:54 My heart is generous that I want to do this. And the freedom in Christ forgiving is amazing. Tithing is not law. It was law in the old Testament. It is now a free will offering. All right. Let's let's introspect before we close, which is Israelite. Am I most like right now? And, and I think it's really healthy for us to put vocabulary to what's happening in our heart. So number one, I'm willing, but I'm unable. Life happened. Debt happened, tragedy happened. Circumstances happened, you lost your job. Something I want to, I just literally can't maybe you want to, but you have a spouse who's not willing. And that in and of itself is a whole dialogue that you guys are trying to work through. Here's category number two, I'm unwilling and unable. Like even if I could, I wouldn't maybe by the way, your reasons are good.
Speaker 1 00:47:54 There are some organizations I'm unwilling to give to, even if I could, and maybe you have questions that need to be answered and you need to kind of vet those out and go deeper there. But some of you might be in a position where you are unable and you're unwilling here. Here's the third category. Maybe you're able, but you are unwilling. You're like, I've got, I've got the money. I'm gonna give it somewhere. I'm gonna be generous. Um, but I'm really not willing to do this right now. Maybe it's your past hurt. Maybe there's confusion. Maybe there's gossip. You hurt. I don't know. It could be a million different things. That's a category. Maybe you're just stingy. That could be it too. <affirmative> are you able and willing? You're like, yeah, I can. And I actually really want to, this is good. And, and what I find is that most Christians are in this place.
Speaker 1 00:48:39 You're able to do something and you are willing there, there is another category of people that have a unique gift of generosity. It's a spiritual gift and they are able, and they're generous. Like they're always constantly looking for some need to meet. The Lord has blessed them more than they have ever needed or imagined. And so their eyes are wide open and they're like, I could meet that need. I could meet that need. I could meet that need. And you're already, you're thinking about like, Hmm, I know exactly how we could go about resolving this issue. Oh, I have a great idea. You love fundraisers because you're like, I, I just want to, I wanna be generous to building the kingdom and you're trying to find the most strategic places to build the kingdom with the excess resources that God has given you, praise God.
Speaker 1 00:49:17 But I think putting vocabulary to all of that. And so when you go home and you pray and you're like, all right, Lord, um, the pastor brought to us a pretty concerning trend happening. That's impacting everything on the ground. I need to go pray about this and God right now I'm I am able and I am unwilling. Would you help me work in my heart? What's what's going on there. Or, or maybe it's like, God, I am unable. And I want to, would you show me another way that I can make a difference? And I can help reduce costs in different ways so that we can continue to bring the gospel to people in our church and our community. Again, I give this to you. And I say, I think God's word is so helpful. And I, I hope that you experience nothing but truthfulness, transparency and trusting from our leadership to you.
Speaker 1 00:50:00 And I also hope that you see that we are just inspired by the way, Moses does this. And I wanna show you how this ends. And I think it's really beautiful as I read this. I need you to know I have no script for how you will respond at all. All I know is over the next month or two is we watch the response from village church that will be really helpful for our leadership to figure out what is the will of God in this next season, but let's watch how this ends. And I think it's sort of hilarious. Exodus chapter 36, verse two, Moses called Bezo and a holy AB and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come do the work. And they received from Moses, all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary.
Speaker 1 00:50:42 They still kept bringing him free will offerings every morning. So that all the craftsmen who are doing every sort of task on the sanctuary, they came each from the task that he was doing said to Moses, the people bring, this is I think hilarious much more than enough for doing the work the Lord has commanded us to do. I think it's a good sign. There may be onto something here, like they're doing the will of the Lord. So Moses gave command and word was proclaimed throughout the camp. Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary. Not hilarious. So the people, this is a great word. The people were restrained from bringing more for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work and more what a great reminder for every one of us, every leader, every staff member, every volunteer, every person who attends church, God always funds his vision through his people.
Speaker 1 00:51:45 And as he provides, we get to see the will of God more clearly. So village, it's a joy pleasure to open, open God's word with you. Talk about all of this and the many more fun subjects coming up over the next year as the whole world goes crazy. And we get to be grounded in Jesus and the word let's pray together. Father love you so much and thankful for, uh, this church family thankful for many, many years ago, that you brought marks here. And I got to, um, marry a woman raised in this church. Thank you for the joy to raise my kids here. Thank you for this. Church's um, kindness to me putting up with me as I particularly grew up as a leader, but I Lord I know that's just my story. And every one of us have reasons to give glory to you, thankfulness for how you've used this community.
Speaker 1 00:52:28 And our best moments are worst moments, formation of our hearts. God, it has been so abundantly clear that your presence has been in this place and you are bearing spiritual fruit. And what I love is that it's not just here. It's a lions Bible church, it's pop Creek. It's all just crazy. How many amazing things that you are doing through local churches? It's blown away. You love your local church. You are with your local church. You love when we love it. And so God, um, thank you for that privilege. Most, most of all, I am thankful for Jesus Lord. He is the image of the greatest, most generous gift ever. God, the father you've given us, your son, Jesus, you have given us your body and we get salvation. We get forgiveness. We have freedom from hell and freedom from all sin and the absolute, confident, hope of eternal life. All because of you. So as we celebrate communion, would you just well up in our hearts, gratitude, love for you because of who you are, your faithfulness and what you have done in our lives. We love you. We pray all of this in Jesus name. Menville church. Amen. Amen.
