That’s it. Cue

and beat. Welcome everyone. How are you guys doing today? My name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If you’re visiting, we’re so glad that you joined us today in the midst of a series, which is around community, but he’s really sitting there in lieu of a vision series of who we might be as a community, what it might be mean to be a part of South fellowship.

But for those of you that haven’t been tracking the last couple of weeks, I want to catch you up on a couple of things, a couple of premises that we started from here. As I get everything ready that isn’t ready. There is no life without community. Is the premise that we started with. You and I are made for relationship.

It’s what drives almost everything that we do. If you can remember back maybe to the 20’s and the 30’s Those perhaps for you party years, perhaps for me party years. What’s it driven by? It’s driven by longing to meet someone, to have a family to settle down with, to be able to one day be able to sit in and order pizza and watch a movie together.

All things flow in those directions, surprisingly. Community is what drives us. We are made for that kind of thing. But! Community by itself needs some important elements to it. Community is driven by this idea of unity. Without unity, it’s just uniformity. If the only people you are in relationship with are the people exactly like you a couple of things are going to happen.

Eventually, you’re going to discover that the people around you aren’t as like you as you thought that they were. The moment there’s a fracture, you’re going to be left with this question. Is that it? Are we done? Or does something remain beyond that disagreement? That’s why Paul, the apostle, writing about 50 A.

D., can say this. So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God. through faith. For all of you were baptized into Christ, who were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ.

That is what unity is, it be. It pulls people together. And then there’s this other movement that is just as essential, one that I tried to sketch out for you last week, but here’s a confession. Last week I fell in love with getting through the text and maybe didn’t clarify as much as I’d hoped what the point is.

That happens to preachers a lot, just so you know. We love the text, and we can sometimes miss what the thrust is. The thrust is this, that we are actually supposed to be people that are centered in unity. Yes, around what? Around the worship of the God of the universe. This is just something that A.

W. Tozer just says, beautiful, in a quote I read to you last week. Has it ever occurred to you that 100 pianos, all tuned to the same fork, are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord binding to, not to each other, but to another standard, to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers met together, there’s more than a hundred of us, but it’s fine.

Each one looking away to Christ are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. When we worship, when we come centered on the God of the universe, we are brought together in unity. But, there’s another movement that is equally as important.

Something that drives the church being something more than just for itself. Something that allows it to live into this ideal here, that the church is the only organization. In the world that exists for its non members. For people who are not here yet, who are not part of it, that lives and breathes for those people.

Right after Jesus death and resurrection and then his ascension, there’s this moment where his first followers do what? They go out and watch him ascend and there’s this magical moment where he disappears off into the clouds. And they, for the next few minutes, Just stand there staring up like a group of guys trying to keep a balloon in the air that kind of posture just like just lost and Then an angel comes along and says this to them They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky, this same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven?

Welcome back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. They got lost in this moment of staring upwards, and for just a moment in time they forgot that Jesus had given them work to do, a mission to be involved in.

For just this moment at least there is a tension between the worship of God and the mission of God. both of which we are called to. Now, I would say this is a, in reality, this is a false tension. They both intermingle with each other, but if you lose one, you’ve lost something that the church is supposed to be.

And so for this week, I’d love us to focus on that element. What it is to be a community that this city and world would miss. If it were gone. So if you have a text in front of you, if you have a phone that you like to read the Bible on, I’m going to invite you to turn to Ezekiel 47. You don’t get to say that very often.

Ezekiel 47, if you need to find it, open it somewhere in the middle. You’ll probably land on Psalms. You’re going to scoot a little bit to the right. There is, though, this brilliant thing in the front called an index, which tells you where all the books are. And it is no sin to look at an index. You’re fine.

I’m going to give you a moment to get there. And as we have the last couple of weeks before we process this text together, I’m going to invite you to contemplate this prayer. O Lord Jesus Christ, who art as a shadow of a great rock in a weary land, who beholds thy weak creatures, weary of labor, weary of pleasure, weary of hope deferred, weary of self, in thine abundant compassion and fellow feeling with us and unutterable tenderness, bring us, we pray thee, into thy rest.

But I’d love to couple it with this second reading today from St. Teresa of Avila. Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things are passing away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices. God, as we begin to enter into this text, we came in with all sorts of things going on.

Perhaps one of those words connected with us. Perhaps we come weary of work toil weary of pleasure Weary of hope that we had for what the future might look like Weary of self this thing that surrounds everything that we do Maybe we come in fearful of how we might be sustained. Is there enough other resources there?

Who will care for us? And in this moment we sit And we wait for you Amen Ezekiel 47 verse 1 the man led me back to the entrance of the temple and There I saw coming from under the threshold water The water was coming from the south side of the temple up from south of the altar The man led me around, out of the north entrance, around the outside of the temple, back to the outer gate which faced east, and there water was trickling from the south side.

As the man walked east, he carried a measuring rod in his hand. He measured off a thousand cubits, and there he led me through water that was ankle deep. He measured off another thousand cubits, and there he led me through water that was knee deep. Another thousand cubits, and there he led me through water that was up to my waist.

Another thousand cubits, but now the stream was a torrent, a river which no man could cross, deep enough to swim in. He said, son of man, do you see these things? He led me back to the banks of the river. And there I saw on both sides of the river trees that were flourishing, that were alive. He said, son of man, this water pours from the temple down into the eastern region where it empties into the Dead Sea.

The end. Where the water flows into the Dead Sea, it brings healing to the waters. All manner of creatures will live on the banks of this river. All manner of fish will swim in its waters. Because where the water hits the sea, the salty water becomes fresh. And wherever the river flows, it brings healing.

It brings life. Wherever the river flows, it brings life. Ezekiel paints for us this evocative picture of what it is to see a river in full flow. He describes this beautiful landscape that is transformed with all manners of fish. I don’t know about you, but rivers, for whatever reason, capture my attention.

I think I fell in love with them early, just because of a wonderful little childhood moment, where I was paddling with my younger brother, I was a couple of years older, and I decided to remove my pants to paddle as is okay when you’re five, and not when you’re twenty five. It’s a weird thing, like you just gotta feel that out.

There’s a time, who knows when it changes. And I watched as my younger brother just got fully into this stream and then finally removed those soaking wet pants and the underpants underneath them. And I remember watching as they drifted off downstream. I thought, rivers, they really do some wonderful things.

I was less fond of them when my parents took my dry pants and gave them to him so he could get back to the car and left me wandering back, a good half a mile in just my underwear. It left me some childhood trauma, but I recovered and captured again this love of rivers that for whatever reason I spend time around and they bring me life.

This is a picture of the Great Ouse River in Cambridgeshire, a river that I remember walking along at around 20. years old and just experience this experiencing this moment of spiritual refreshing, somewhat like this story. God’s presence with me brought new life to me. I love this reflection by Kenneth Graham in his beautiful book, The Wind in the Willows.

If you have not read this to your kids, you are missing out. Grandkids too. By the side of the river. He trotted as one trots when very small, but by the side of a man who holds one spell bound by exciting stories and when tired. At last, he sat on the bank while the river still chatted onto him a babbling procession of the best stories in the world sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last, to be to the insatiable sea.

Rivers capture our attention, yes, but I would suggest, perhaps, for their ability to cast our minds off into the future. They have this ever flowing ness that sends our minds swirling to all sorts of different places. Heraclitus once said, No one ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.

For whatever reason, human beings have just, they’ve gravitated towards rivers. The 35 biggest cities in the world are all centered around rivers. They’re part of our lives. And this image, if you’re like me, just jumps off the page and grabs my heart with its hopefulness, its picture of what might be.

Ezekiel writes this passage somewhere around 580 BC. A couple of big events have happened in the life of the nation of Israel. The nation of Babylon has come in and swept Israel away. They’ve destroyed most of the city in 597 BC. They’ve come back about 10 years later to finish the job. At that point the temple is destroyed and now Ezekiel gives us a vision of a temple renewed.

A temple that has never been built yet, and I would suggest might be about something more than just a bricks and mortar thing. In verse 1 he says, The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple towards the east. The original temple did not face east, but here it does.

In verse 2 we read further, the water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. Here the temple is a place, not just of worship, but a place of refreshing for the landscape around it. He led me around through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east.

The water was trickling from the south side. We get this sense of movement that is going to be exacerbated over the next few verses. As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and led me through water that was ankle deep. He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee deep.

Can you feel that sense of the river growing that he wants to capture us? He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was now up to the waist. He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in. A river that no one could cross.

Just for a moment, reflect on that image that he asks us to reflect on. Some years ago I was rafting out in the desert. Tennessee. We came down a river, the Pigeon River that just is shallow to start with. And if you fall off of the raft, you get cut up by all sorts of rocks that are just below the surface.

You’re desperately holding on, hoping to survive. And then we came to this moment where the river got gradually deeper and deeper until it became this deep and wide flow. And our guide said to us in that moment, What I want you to do here is not hold on tightly, not panic. I want you to just jump in to the river.

Just jump in, feel how cool and refreshing it is, how clean it is, and just hold on to the raft. And we’re just gonna float. I remember that feeling like it was yesterday, just the freedom and the life of the river surrounded by these beautiful trees. When Ezekiel and the man, who’s a kind of mysterious figure who guides him throughout a lot of his book, return to the side of the bank, he says he now sees a great number of trees on each side of the river.

In the time that it has taken them to walk. 4, 000 cubits, which is somewhere around two miles, and then back again about another two miles. The landscape has changed dramatically. As you walk away from where the temple was in Jerusalem down to the east side, you see something very different than you would see if you walked in any other direction.

Jerusalem is actually a fairly fertile, lush area. There’s lots of places that are green in the right season. But the east side, never. The east side is dry and rocky, and as you move east, it drops away hundreds of meters as it comes down about 30 miles later to the Dead Sea that Ezekiel is going to describe for us.

Now, it is a lifeless place where nothing grows. He said to me, this water flows towards the eastern region, so picture that 30 mile distance and goes down into the Arabah where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. In Hebrew, it doesn’t say salty and fresh.

It actually just uses the word raffa, which means healed. There is life restored to this water. that is dead. This is the journey from Jerusalem down towards the Dead Sea. This is the place in Gedi, which he describes later. So he pictures this water pouring down that entire dry side of the country. This is maybe a picture of what the climate looks like, these trees that are half alive if they are kept watered sufficiently, and this is the Dead Sea.

Geographically, the one place where nothing lives in this world. You’ve never seen a documentary of the Dead Sea because there’s nothing to talk about. David Attenborough has not been to this place. Because what would he do? There’s nothing there. It’s a lifeless place. No fish, no plant life, barely any minerals of any kind, except on the banks where they’ve washed up.

This is a place that is lifeless, where nobody can live. And yet, Ezekiel pictures a river coming from the temple that affects every little bit of this area, from En Gedi to the northern tip where the Jordan flows in. In verse 9 he says this. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows.

There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh. So where the river flows, everything will live. Where the river flows, everything will live. It’s hard for us today, in the 21st century, to capture that level of transformation. When we drive through places that have no water now, we see water brought in, we see the landscape change, we see crops grow where they would not usually grow.

But just for a minute, imagine that wasn’t true. Imagine you jumped on a plane at Denver Airport, and you’ve gone off to, this is your fantasy, you can go anywhere you want to go, just go off on a little trip somewhere, and then you come back. And that landscape in the north east of Denver that’s dry and barren, that place I first experienced when I landed here for the first time that made me say, I don’t want to live here.

This place looks awful. Imagine suddenly you land and now instead of brown and flat, there’s life emerging out of every single part of it. And now imagine you rely on that kind of life to give you sustenance, that you can’t ship crops in from all sorts of places, you can’t grow them out of season. You rely on this world to provide you what you need.

Imagine in that moment life emerging where there was no life. This is what Ezekiel’s first listeners capture, this sense of new life emerging out of nowhere. In verse 10, we read a further expansion of this vision. Fishermen will stand along the shore. From Engedi to Engelium, there will be places for spreading nets.

The fish will be of many kinds, like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh. They will be left for salt. We do not have time for this. This is a mysterious little verse. We have a podcast on Thursdays. Aaron and I, we’re gonna push that to there because there’s something there.

But I can’t say what it is yet, because I don’t know yet. Verse 12. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both sides of the bank. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.

I love to garden. And as a gardener, I did something that was barely tolerable to me to try and demonstrate this to you. Had these two plants. This one is alive. It’s what the plants of Ezekiel’s vision might look like, these plants that have emerged out of nowhere. And these are plants that might have at some point grown around the Dead Sea.

This one I’ve watered with salt water for the last few days. And if you can see it from where you are. It’s on the verge of death. If it keeps going like this, it will not last much longer. At some point, that was the journey for the Dead Sea, this slow dissipation of anything that had lived before. And now, in Ezekiel’s vision, new life is emerging from it.

I am convinced, convicted even, that Ezekiel sees before its time the church of Jesus and its transforming ability in this world around us. In Jesus new economy we are the temple. There is no physical temple. We, when we gather, represent the people of God gathered together. He is present in our midst.

We are that river, and you and I play individual important parts in that. Three times in the Gospel of John, Jesus reflects back on this very chapter. The one I’d like us to look at briefly, he refers to in John chapter 738. He says these beautiful words, let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as scriptures have said, rivers, streams in some version of living water will flow from within them. That picture of a river that Ezekiel had thousands of years ago. is us today living in this world as a community of Jesus, designed to bring refreshing, designed to bring life. And where this river flows, according to Ezekiel, everything will live.

Jesus goes on, or John unpacks what Jesus said with these words, By this he meant the spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up until that time the spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not been glorified. The thing that Ezekiel describes is distinctly a spirit thing, just as the church is a spirit thing.

The church is a river that is made up of streams. This is a picture of the Missouri River. These are the tributaries that stretch all across the country, all the way up from Canada, all the way across to Colorado, all the way across to the southwest corner of New York. These streams pour into this river that becomes emerging mass.

When I first moved here, I said to someone, why are the streams, why are the rivers so shallow here? And he said, because they all begin here, they’re all going somewhere. If the church is a river, it’s full of people who are streams that feed into it, that bring that transforming life. You in this vision, you in this picture matter because you are a stream and we are a river and we are called to be a transforming power in this world.

A river, like the Missouri, reflects the streams that pour into it. And just like a river in real life, the church reflects the streams of people that pour into it. We are the sum of our parts gathered together, not me, the person who stands on stage, but us together are that transforming agent. In the Jesus world.

You matter in the Jesus world. You play a part. The Jesus vision for the church was never meant to be driven by someone standing on a stage, but a community of people participating together. A river reflects its streams as a river reflects its streams. A church reflects its people. And here’s that outreach challenge, that outreach question.

The risk, perhaps, that we see in that picture of the Dead Sea before it is healed. It’s not enough to find unity, nor simply enough to find common worship. The church must find a common outlet or it risks becoming a Dead Sea. The church that doesn’t care for the world around it becomes lifeless. It dies.

It has no flow to go out. And so it sits and stagnates. What the Dead Sea becomes, we have a picture of right now in front of us. These are some pictures of the Salton Sea in California. These are fish that sit rotting on some of the playa. As the waters have diminished, the salt Sea was formed by chart.

Salt and sea was formed by chance. A riverbank broke and poured into a basin, and then the water just sat there with nowhere to go. It’s 220 meters below sea level, just like the dead sea. So the water sits slowly evaporating, and the salt in the water, the salinity becomes greater and greater as more water disappears.

But there’s no fresh water to flow in and no outflow to go. out. It just sits there and things begin to die. In 1992, 150, 000 of a species of bird died in one year because the water slowly became poisonous to them. A couple of years later, 7 million fish died in this place because slowly it disappeared.

And yet, it was once a place. of refreshing a place of life. In the fifties, it was one of the number one tourist destinations. Frank Sinatra sang in this building right here. Old Blue Eyes. And now it’s dead. Now there is no life. That’s the result of what happens to a church that doesn’t have any outflow to it.

Slowly things begin to die. It itself begins to die. How do we avoid this? How do we avoid that individually? How do we avoid becoming people that have no outflow to us? How do we avoid becoming a church that has none of the same? Stephen Croft, the Bishop of Oxford, prayed these words. The only place to begin is by coming again to the living waters.

We need to dig the wells to unblock the springs of new life. To come again to the place of prayer and sacrifice, and stay long enough to notice what God is doing. The beginning of a river source, new life. We need to come again to the living waters of our baptism, of repentance and faith, to die and rise again, to put on Christ.

We have to be that church, and I suspect we are. We are at its heart, a church that isn’t a stagnant pool, that is a river that is participating in this world that is seeing transformation happen. And to give you an idea on this Next Step Sunday of the sort of thing that you might be invited to jump into, we asked the staff to sit and describe some of what they experienced.

Get to do and some of what is happening in this place. And so for a few moments, just enjoy some of the water of life that is pouring out of South Fellowship.

Enjoy some of the water of life that is pouring out of South Fellowship. I

could sing you a couple of Frank Sinatra tunes while I’m waiting. You would not want that.

Hey South, I’m here editing this video that we’re about to show you. And as I’ve been editing and listening to the stories the staff have been telling me, I’m just sensing some threads of what God’s been up to over the last year.

And so I’m going to take you on a little bit of a journey and trace these threads for you. Let’s check it out. Let’s

I love the fact that our website acts as a front door sneak peek into our community for people who are looking for a church home. They get to watch sermons ahead of time. They get to see photos that our volunteer photographers are taking at events and gatherings and on Sunday mornings.

When we’re worshiping on Sunday mornings, when we’re gathering with friends and family over a meal in a lobby, when we’re gathering in small groups in Bible studies, when We’re actually creating a welcoming atmosphere that encourages people to look in and to think, maybe I can see myself in that place.

This looks like a place that I could belong.

We continue to see people come in. New people come in on Sunday mornings, which is super fun because we want to continue to create environments that feel like coming home. Seeing people connect with other people in the community and for them to find their space and to be able to say that this could be home, or this is home for me.

People feeling safe, loved, and to feel, ultimately, the love of Jesus present. We’ve

done the landscaping out front. It’s And we’re hoping that before the summer is out, we’ll be able to get some flowers growing, maybe some trees, and make it a great place that people will feel warm and welcome.

My favorite things this year has got to be Pentecost Sunday, and the bringing together.

Everybody. We’re talking about the Holy Spirit, we’re talking about church and community, and taking steps with Jesus, and all of that merged into this beautiful one Sunday in just this palpable way. In that moment, you can see the connection happening. And the connection isn’t the end.

That is often the beginning. But around those tables, the connection that’s happening there, people getting to know each other. That’s what this church, that’s what the body is about. That’s what we get to do. That’s kingdom development. That’s putting a foundation of planting seeds for generations. That’s, yeah, and that’s my jam.

That makes me accepted. I

think our hall is, when I’m at the end of the service, I’m like weaving through big clumps of people just hanging out and talking and I think it’s just there’s a buzz growing and just relationships building.

There’s so much, energy in that hallway on Sunday mornings, you really are dodging different families and people that are just connecting in a way that probably we hadn’t seen before this last year.

Yeah. So I don’t want to take credit for something the Holy Spirit is doing because it’s just obvious that he is involved in that.

Yeah, we’ve been very focused on getting the students more involved. That’s been something that For years being here at South I’ve always wanted a student section in the front of the church because I’ve always been trying to encourage the students to come up there and we’ve been getting that going over the past year and that’s been really fun for me to see that just the students bringing this heart of worship and this excitement and this joy into the service.

So there

is an energy around South it’s it’s in the kids hallway it’s in the way the students are worshiping the services it’s in the energy in our lobby and all of that. We’re doing it south. We’re becoming a church that creates environments that feel like coming home.

And people are, they’re coming here and they’re finding community relationship. But more importantly than that, we’re not just attracting people to us. You South Fellowship Church, by the power of the spirit are going beyond these walls and we’re taking the way of Jesus all around our city and all around the world.

Let’s check that out.

Our care ministry really ends up. Helping people with all sorts of needs, spiritual practical community wise. Sometimes we get to hear the outcome of those stories, which if they’re not in our community, we don’t always get to see. But hearing someone come back and call Dan the other week and say, Hey, I don’t know if you remember me, but you helped me cover rent when I was looking for a job.

I found one and a coworker of mine is going through. Loss and need someone to talk to. And I told them to call you because you were such a helpful space for me when I was going through this hard time getting to hear every so often God works, God did something, they’re in a better spot.

That’s a really wonderful thing.

We get to serve so many people in the community. I love the way that South, even long before I started in our DNA. We feel like this is God’s building. So we’re going to share it with as many ministries and partners that we can. And so there are people daily coming and going and using this room or using that room or booking these rooms.

And then you spread that out to volunteers who are coming and I’ll help paint this. I’ll help fix this and I can wire this. And God’s using many people to keep our building going.

I would say for Food Bank, what comes in, goes out, and then it comes back in. It’s almost like the shelves can’t be emptied if we try.

We give it out. We see all these cars fill boxes and we look in the shelves and go, And then, Someone calls up and, Hey, I’ve got a

delivery that we want to bring in. I think what has been just the biggest blessing in my life is being able to meet people, whether it’s over the phone and then they step into the office or just coming in off the streets.

Whether it’s people needing different forms of assistance or are on house friends, like the relationships that I’ve created in that space have been amazing. Just so lovely and so challenging at the same time I thought that you know I had nothing in common with somebody that was homeless because I had never experienced that and I think when you step into Other people’s stories like we’re all wanting the same thing We all want to be seen and loved and heard and so creating those friendships and just sharing different stories about our struggles And that’s been just

so

The best part of my

job, and we sent a team in February to Guatemala and for them just to be able to share about Jesus with kids that don’t even speak the same language.

You can communicate love pretty easily. We have some incredible ministry partners, and I would love for the congregation to know them better. The church planters have some just incredible story. We’re involved with children, both rescuing them from Sex trafficking to helping them get off the streets, that’s a big heartbeat of mine.

So to really experience the heart of Jesus, you can’t do that unless you are loving your neighbor, unless you are feeling that love for your neighbor, whether it’s a local neighbor or whether it’s a global neighbor.

This summer, it was one of our park nights, and when we arrived, there was this gentleman, and he was really concerned that we were going to ask him to leave, but what happened instead was our students began to interact with him.

Everyone came together and saying, we want to pray for this. This individual and for his family and for his father, he said to me, I thought that you guys were going to judge me but instead you welcomed me. That was our students living out the sermons that, that we’re teaching, that Alex has been teaching it.

I get choked up thinking about it because that is what we’re doing in South.

The students actively living out in his way with his heart without us even instigating that.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like we’re becoming a church that our city and world would miss if we were gone. And if I’m honest, I didn’t even notice how much ground we’d covered until I was editing this video.

But there’s another thread that many of you may not see. God is up to something really special for our next generation ministries. That’s students and that’s kids. They are in many ways becoming the tip of the spear to shape the culture of South Fellowship. Not only today. But long into the future, let’s check that out.

Some of the really fun things that we’ve done this year is we hosted the Eagle Lake day camp for the first time and it was a blast. We also started merge Sundays. which is a collaboration between student ministry and kids ministry on the four Sundays of the month. So all of our kids, regardless of their age, get to interact with one another and the students have an opportunity actually to take on leadership roles and lead the younger kids.

And so one of our biggest goals in this year was to ensure that the South students wasn’t a separate entity from South Fellowship as a faith community. And we’ve seen that in beautiful ways this year through things like Merge, where South students and South Kids Ministries are working collectively together.

So we had a an event recently, just a couple of weeks ago, where we invited families to our Wednesday night end of year barbecue and mini golf. And when we prepped for the event, we took out the volleyball net, nine square, a bunch of other games that we were expecting the students to, be playing with as we do whenever we go to these park events.

But what actually happened was, we took a moment and looked around and parents are visiting with each other and just like breaking bread together. And then on the playground and out in the field, all of the students were just Being with and watching and engaging with the kids. No one was on the volleyball court.

No one was playing nine ball. They were just being together collectively. It was just like this beautiful thing that really took what we’re doing in merge outside of the fourth Sunday of the month and demonstrated that it transcends that. And it’s just, developing those generational.

Ties together instead of silos,

but we also have the privilege of watching God work supernaturally in the lives of kids.

I love how little kids pray. I love their to me, it is just awe inspiring listening to them pray, but also the things that they boldly ask him for that sometimes I’m. I’ve stopped asking him for it.

I love it when parents out of the blue will text me or catch me on a Sunday and tell me something that their child has repeated to them or in school that they have learned at church. Just last week I was talking to a mom and she said, I just could not, it just overwhelmed my heart when he said one of his favorite things was his Bible.

The students have experienced a lot of transition over the last few years. And something that we really stress during the interim period and now transitioning to this time where Sean and I are both on full time staff, is that we don’t have to just be transitioning from person to person or from thing to thing throughout life, but we can continually be growing closer and closer towards Jesus.

And so over the last year, we’ve seen a lot of growth of relationships with Students and the kids, but also we’ve seen a lot of growth between the relationships of students with each other and the students with God

What I’m excited for this year is to continue to grow on the foundation of some of the things that have been well established Over the course of this year.

Wow, it is so exciting to hear about what God is doing with our kids and students, isn’t it? Something else. I wish I had time to share with you in this video is that It’s all of the time that these leaders referenced many of you and how you all have participated in seeing all of these stories come to fruition.

But something else that they did is they each described this longing for more of you to participate in what God’s been doing here at this community. And it wasn’t like they just need holes filled. They had this longing to see all of you get to experience the joy of what it means to get in the game. I think Amy and Kathy say it really well in this next clip.

So I just want to cut to them as they invite you to step into the

game. And I would also love to see more volunteers. Even if people just come for one Sunday a month, I think they will be amazingly blessed by what they see going on with the kids. And I think I think a lot of our teachers would say that they get more out of these things, the interactions with the kids, than even the kids possibly, because it’s just, it’s amazing watching kids faith grow.

And it’s getting to be a part of it is an honor. And I hope that I’d love to see some other people step into those roles and see how God uses that in their own lives too.

If you’re a person who maybe has been following God for a long time and you’re a little stagnant in your faith, Come and hang out with some kids because it really will challenge you and change you.

You’ll see things in a very fresh perspective

What you just heard was just a few of the stories that are happening in the middle of our community There’s so many more that we could tell. We could talk about mops and the way that it’s gathering young mothers together, bringing new families into our community.

We could talk about men’s work ministry, women’s ministry, how we have more men studying scripture together than we’ve had in the last four years. At least we could talk about all of these things. We could talk about how so many new people coming into our community are saying something like this. I’ve given up on church.

Kind of wasn’t sure that it was for me. I’d been hurt by church, wounded, and for some reason I found a home here at South. Could talk about the people that have said, I haven’t been to church in years, but something here is speaking to me. I’m coming back for more. South, we are learning to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.

We’re doing that together, and I’m so excited to see what the next year looks like in this community.

I just love the heartbeat of the staff that we have in this community. Love that they love Jesus and love leading us in living in the way of Jesus, with the heart of Jesus. And we would love to invite each one of you into that in some way. Here’s my suspicion. If south is a river, we need more streams. So my encouragement to you as the pastor of this community is don’t stay on the sidelines of that, participate in what God is doing here.

Here’s a great question you might ask in this season as we go out into the foyer in a few moments with next steps outside and ways that we’re inviting you in. Is, what is mine to do? What is mine to do? Hold that with open hands. Perhaps God is calling you to be part of this giving community. Perhaps you’ve never financially got involved in what God is doing here.

We would love to have you participate. However small that might be, you are part of a stream that makes. a river. You can do that out there. We’d love to have you serve in some way. You’re a stream that is part of a river. We’d love to have you group up with some people and build relationship and become more and more that community that we long to be.

You can do that out there. That is the invite. But there’s another possibility. I read to you the words of Jesus, our Savior, who came brought us new life. He said that you and I are to be streams of living water. And maybe this morning you just say, Alex, like the last thing is the last thing I feel is like a stream.

I feel like this stagnant place that just isn’t changing, isn’t growing. And what I want to offer you is this encouragement. The only thing that stands between you and refreshing is God’s willingness and ability and your thirst to be transformed. He says yes to the first two. Only you can decide that thirst within you.

And so I’m going to ask Hannah and the team to close us with this beautiful song as the deer pants. And we’re going to remind ourselves that everything that we do stems from our experience of Jesus who transformed us, who loves us, who is the center and the heartbeat of this community. We are a river for Jesus living in this way with his heart and where the river flows, everything will live.

Man.

As the deer panteth forth the water, so my soul longeth after thee. You alone are my heart’s desire. Desire and I long to worship thee. Sing as the deer. As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee. Alone are my heart’s desire and

Ask

you to do something a little bit

to encourage you to do something with your body, whether that’s stand and saying, yes, I want. We’re gonna sing that again. How’s it do? As

the dear panteth o’er the water, so my soul longeth after thee. Alone are my heart’s desire, and I long to worship thee. You are the

My strength, my shield, to you alone, may my spirit, you alone,

desire and I long to worship you,

to worship you, long to worship you.

We worship you, we worship

you, we worship you, it’s all

about you, it’s all about you.

Salt,

we salty

we

Jesus, thank you that you are the God that transforms

you. Create streams that become rivers. Where the river flows, everything will live. You transform us from plants on the verge of death to ones full of life.

You create new worlds. New creation coming out of old creation. And you use people like us to do it. And we are grateful. Amen. I’m gonna close us with a benediction. A couple of invites for you. If you don’t know Jesus, if you’re questioning maybe what all this is about, be some people at the front that would love to have a conversation with you.

If you’d love someone to pray with you, if you have that sense of, I just feel like, dry, I feel. I’m not sure what’s next. There’s people that would love to pray for you. As you go out into the foyer, there are all sorts of things to say yes to. There’s ways to give. We would love to have your participation in that, to become a community that is healthy, sustaining, able to grow.

We’d love you to sign up to serve in some way. We have all sorts of ministries that need people to jump in and become streams for that particular We’d love you to connect with each other, to build those community groups that just help us to thrive in our faith. Find something to get involved in is my encouragement.

Ask what is yours to do.

God of our pilgrimage, you’ve led us to the living water. Refresh and sustain us as we go forward on our journey. Let living water flow from us. Lead us to immerse ourselves deeply in your community life, feeding the river that changes the landscape around us. As we have been given, help us to give, to share who we are with those around us, knowing that you bring transformation and new life through it.

And may the blessing of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be on each of you this week.

Go in peace.