 Isaiah 43, 18, and 19 is our foundational scriptures. When I began this fellowship in our very first Sunday, it was Isaiah 43, 18, and 19 that I taught out of as I was sharing about a new church, a new beginning, and so in Isaiah 43, 18, it says, do not remember the former things nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Now it shall spring forth. Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Our first Sunday morning church service was held on July 26, 1981, and on that morning, I laid out our vision. My primary concern has always been that Jesus is the center of attention in this fellowship. Love for and faith in Jesus Christ would be and still is our foundation. In Psalm 127, verse 1, it says, accept the Lord, build the house they labor in vain that build it. In 1 Corinthians 3, verse 11, for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So we desire to keep Jesus the center of our ministry and in all that we do as a church. In 2 Corinthians 4, verse 5, Paul said it like this, he said, we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves, your servants for Jesus's sake. You've been in this church for a while, and if you have been, you'll know my spiritual gifts include exhortation, teaching, and preaching. And my exhortation is always to a full commitment, and I attempt to make disciples through the whole counsel of God. In Matthew 28, 19, and 20, Jesus said it like this, he said, go and make disciples of all nations, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I've commanded you, and surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. And because of this, our desire is to produce disciples, not a large crowd. And for me, obedience to Christ is paramount. In John 14, verse 15, Jesus said it like this, he said, if you love me, keep my commandments. My original vision had four elements, and those elements have not changed. And over time, I began to refer to them as our four pillars, the word, worship, witness, and witness. Those are our four pillars, and we have them when you walk in our foyer, as you're about to enter into our sanctuary. I don't know how many in this church have ever taken the time to look up and see them. So I'm saying it to you, these are our four pillars, our fundamentals and our foundations of ministry, the word of God, and the worship of God, the witness of God's people, and the witness of God's people. My goal as pastor is found in a written bulletin where it will say, every member a minister. That is what the equipping of the saints is, to make us ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4, 11, and 12, he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. And so every member is to be equipped for works of service. I cannot do all ministry. Because I can't, there are a good number of people who attend, and I simply can't reach them. So it's no longer physically or emotionally possible for me to know everybody. I've had people over the years who have wondered why I seem to be unavailable. And sometimes they need to understand that if they were to turn around and look at the rest of the people, there are many with the same question. Are you available? And the fact of the matter is I can't be, it's not humanly possible for me to be available to every single person who would like to know me and all. And so I realize that in early age, and for some people that hasn't been acceptable, and they want to be known by the pastor, and I understand and respect that highly, but I'm not one of those that can be. And I had to accept that too. I actually had to die to that. Some of you don't know me that well. Some of you don't know me really at all other than what you're seeing right now, and others know me extremely well. And you would know that I'm a very person-oriented person. That's why I pastor pastors is because I'm a very person-oriented man. I like relationship. I like to spend time with people. I like to have coffee with people. I like to visit with them and have relationship with them. But many years ago, I came to realize if I was going to be able to see God do what I believed God wanted to do, I had to get out of the way in order for him to do what he wanted to do. And that's where I began to equip servants for the work of ministry, because that's what you guys do on my behalf and on behalf of the Lord, is you reach the people that I can't spend time with. That's what you do. And that's been what I've wanted since I discovered I can't be physically and emotionally with everyone. I cannot be available to all the members of the church. And so I've encouraged people to grow in their gifts as they serve. Recently, we had a funeral here in our fellowship, and I was talking to Marie about it, how I was actually the one who officiated the funeral. But when I walked in the door, we had our ushers. When worship began, we had our worship team. Everything was set up. We had our MC, if you will, everything. All I needed to do was concentrate on what I came to do, which is to console the bereaved and to give a eulogy. And I was talking to Marie about that. And I said, you don't really realize how well equipped the church is until you become a member of it for a moment. You guys do not realize how valuable you are. You really don't. You really don't. You really don't realize how well trained you are. You really don't. Why? Because that's what you do. And you see it that way. But I go to other fellowships. I go to other churches. I see other places. And they don't have what we have here. Not to glorify this church. Forgive me if it sounds like I am, but let me boast in the Lord about you. You guys are well trained. I have people who have left our fellowship, who have assisted in ministries that I didn't even really know personally, who are assistant pastors in other churches now. You were that well equipped. And the meetings and the ministries and the times that you have had in training have placed you in a position where I have actually had pastors approach me to thank me for training men who are now serving. That happened when I did a pastor's conference in Tucson not that long ago. And a senior pastor in the Calvary Chapel in Arizona approached me and said, I want to thank you for these two young men who were standing with them. I already knew them. I was visiting and teasing with them because I've known them. He said, these men have become pillars. One's doing children's ministry and the other one's doing this ministry. And they have enhanced this my church so much by the quality of their service. They have been taught well. They know what a philosophy of ministry is. They know how to do. They're responsible. And he thanked me, but that's what we're all. That's what ministry is, isn't it? That's what we're called to do. You will be surprised if you go to a lot of other fellowships, how the pastor will see you and say, this one can lead this ministry. You will be surprised at that, but it's true. It's absolutely true. And I've heard that many times because that's what we're intending to do is to equip the saints for work of ministry. When we began, I shared that we would have to be open to change as our church continues to expand. And I encouraged our people to have an adventurous heart and to live in faith. I could remember somewhere on tape if we still have them somewhere, but there were times when I would say this, I would say, we have 200 people here today, but this church is not called to be 200 people. God is going to grow it. Then I would come up and I'd say, we have 300 people here today. God isn't going to keep us at 300. He's going to grow it. I would walk up and say, we've got several hundred people here today, but my vision is to reach as many as we can, and God is going to grow it. That's always been my belief because healthy sheep beget sheep. And we've never had to have gimmicks and ways to get people in. It's because if Jesus isn't enough, then we're not given what is right. It has to be Jesus. It has to be all about him. And that's always been my heart in ministry. And I've seen the Lord move. Our church grew to 2,000 members within eight years. And you don't understand because that's not the world you live in, but you need to realize that that is exceptional. And we have a tendency of looking, oh, no, the stadium filled with this and all these people over there. And no, no, no, the average church has less than a hundred members, has less than a hundred members on a Sunday morning. God has done fantastic things and he's been doing it all along. And so when we began, I said, we need to be open to change. And yet I kept the same foundations, the word of God. The primary role for me is to teach the word of God and to equip our staff and our saints to be ministers of the word. And I see my responsibility as giving attention to prayer and the ministry of the word as it states in Acts chapter six. This is the ministry foundation of our church. Teach the full counsel of God. Acts 20 verse 27, Paul said, I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. And over the years, I've done that systematically, expositionally, which speaks of a detailed explanation and book by book. So we emphasize God's word. And through that, we've seen so many ministries develop. That includes every aspect of our church, our children's ministry, junior high ministry, high school ministry, young adults ministry, men's ministry, women's ministries, conferences, retreats. And our Spanish language ministry is doing very well right now. And I praise the Lord for that. And so it's a ministry of the word of God. The second, we speak of worship being one of our pillars. Worship is expressed here in contemporary praise. John 424 says, God is spirit. And those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And music ministry has got to go beyond style. It has to be spirit filled. It has to be fresh. And the words have to be correct. There are songs that are popular that that I will I will hear, or at least the title or here of it. And then Jared, who is overseer of our worship ministry, we will have on occasion, not always on occasion, conversations about songs that are being sung. And he'll bring them up. Have you heard this song or that song? And I'm going to give you an example. It's an old example now. It's over a year old, or even more than that. But there was a song, it's still sung. I've heard it sung still on the radio. It still played you in a reckless love. I think that's what it's called. Reckless love. Is that the right title? Reckless love. How many of you have heard that song? I want to know. Okay, you've heard it. That's theologically incorrect. We don't sing it here. Why not? Because I looked at the word reckless. And I looked at its definition. And God is not reckless. And love is not reckless. And so when you start attributing to God a character trait that is not of him, you have to discover a better word to describe him. And reckless is not the word you use to describe our God. Our God is a God of purpose. He does all things decently and in order. And he doesn't take chances. I mean, come on now. And so you, but people, oh, reckless love. And I say, that's how bad theology enters the church. It comes through songs. It comes through a misunderstanding of the character of God and who God is. God is not reckless. He didn't take a chance. And so Jared and I spoke about that. Now there are words that better define him than I would be willing for us to change the word reckless too. But I'm not going to sing that God is reckless because he's not. But see how theology slips in through music because today emotion is greater than reason. And if I feel this is true, and I know what the word reckless means to me, and wait a minute, the word reckless has a definition. And people who are in, we were, I'll put it like this, Christians have been called the people of the book. There's a reason for that. It's because the word of God matters to us. And because we're the people of the book, that means that words mean something. Whenever I exegete passage, trying to delve into it to see what it is saying, exegete, when I do that, I have to know what those words mean, or I'm going to give to you bad teaching. There was, I'll give an example, there was a guy who gave an entire message on the theology of weeping, the theology of weeping because he was quoting how that Jesus wept. As if weeping, and the theology of weeping is to be discovered in Jesus weeping at the, at the grave of Lazarus. And, and, but he says, oh, see, this is the theology of weeping. No, it's not. There was a theological truth that was being communicated to us through that experience that we should know, not just that it's okay to cry once in a while. And I'm telling you, that's what, you know, when I've been called to be, I think you guys appreciate it, not everybody does. I'm called to be a watchdog. That's what I'm called to be. That's what shepherds are. We see the wolf coming and we take care of the sheep. And sometimes those sheep will bite you because I like reckless love, you know. That's a fact. That's a fact. I like it. It's a great song. Why are you such a nitpicker? Because truth sets you free and lies bring you into bondage. And if this is teaching you something about God that isn't true, your theology is going to go down the wrong road. And you're going to become emotive. You're going to become a person I feel this is true. Therefore, it is. No, God's love isn't reckless. And it isn't without plan. And it isn't taking chances. It just is. And we have to understand that. And so music ministry, we worship in spirit and truth. Psalm 40 verse three says, he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise into our God. Many shall see it in fear and trust in the Lord. Third, withness. Christian fellowship is incredibly important to us. I want our church to be a church, not just a group of strangers that gather because we like something. We're the body of Christ. And we should see ourselves as that. In Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. And so when you go into the church building, you walk in into the foyer and you look to the left. Somebody says, why do we have couches there? Fellowship gives you an opportunity to sit down with a friend and visit fellowship. It's wasted space. It's just space. Why not use it for fellowship? Right? That's why we did that. When you look at that area there, Jesus' people community, people think, well, is that our purpose? No, our purpose is to develop into the reality that we are a community. I want people to know that we share values. And that's what community does. It shares values. I want people to know that. But the values are built on the word of God. And the values are built on the worship of God. And the values are built on the withness of God's people. These are our values. And that's why I call it a community. That's why I put that there. To remind us that when the church was birthed in the Book of Acts chapter two, after the day of Pentecost, it fully arrived and the church was exploded into being by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And they poured out into the streets and proclaimed certain things. And people saw them magnifying God and all of that, that the apostles began to minister. And so the people remained in the apostles doctrine and fellowship the break in a bread, et cetera, that you see in Acts 242 through 47. It was a community where people knew each other. It was a brotherhood, a sisterhood, it was a family. There's nothing wrong with that. If there's anything this world doesn't have, it's relationship. When we have people who are kind of saying these are my Facebook friends, and they've never even met them face to face, but they're friends. That's a sad statement, guys. We just haven't realized it. It's a sad statement to say that's my friend. And then you have people who are crying on Facebook. If you have Facebook, I read it every day. I look for news feeds and I keep up on things. And I'm saying to you, it's sad. I want all my friends to pray for me. And then you get these people say, nobody's praying for me. I'm going to block all of you. And I'm thinking, how sad. What you need is one person in your life. All you need is one, you've got Christ, but you need a human being. Sometimes Jesus's arms need to be encompassing you by a human person. And that's what Jesus did. He brought 12 in order that they might be with him. So they might have relationship. And then he would impart to them. And he gave them the power of the spirit. And it was his unity. They went out one, two by two to take the word out. This is all community. That's what it is. But I'm so grateful for relationships. I'm very relational. And a friend with me is a friend for life. I'm not one of these guys that, oh, you're my friend right now because you helped me to get to this place. Oh, this guy will help me to get to that place. I'm not that guy. I have friends. I have one of my friends. I had a pastor friend say, how come you hang around with guys who don't have big churches? You've got a big church. Don't you want to learn from these? And I said, because friendship isn't built on what God has given them to manage. Friendship is built on relationship. And I love them. It doesn't matter how big their church is. Why would it? Why would my friendship be based on what they can do to make me better? I don't need that. I just need real people in my life. People who love me for what I am and not what I do. That's what I, and so do you. That's us. That's what people are. I know that. And that's why I say we need a community. That's why I say we need to have relationship. We need to know one another. We need to have somebody that I can call up and say, you can call up and say, listen, can you pray for me? Not some Facebook post where, you know, my toes hurt. I'm sorry your toes hurt. Or pictures of myself in a hospital bed with a sad face. I see that all the time. My heart goes out to him. I say, you know, why are you doing this? Why are you wanting this attention? Because people want that desperately today. And some people do ministry that way, by the way. They do it like that. When I was 14, no, I'm sorry, 16 years old, we had to swim. I'm not a swimmer. You know, I'm not a swimmer. So we, the older kids, the juniors and seniors, we kind of just floated next to the edge of the pool, just floating there, holding on to the lip. And we visited for 40 minutes because we had a swim. And I'll never forget this. I was at the deep end of the pool with my friends kind of visiting and talking when a freshman got on the 10 foot high dive and yelled across the pool to our coach. And he said, coach, look at me. I'm going to jump. And so all of the older kids naturally look up. And there's this kid standing on the edge. Coach, look at me. I'm going to jump. Well, what do, what do teenage boys 16 and 17 do when some kids being a dork? What do you do? We started yelling, coach, look at me. I'm floating. You know, we started goofing with this kid. Yeah, look at me. Look at me. We would do that. And then the kid jumped and the coach finally had to turn and look at him and he jumped. And then the coach had to say, good job. I have seen people do ministry that way. Hey, church, look at me. I'm going to do this. Then we post our pictures of us with important people. So you think I'm important? That turns me off, man. It really does. That's one of the things that turns me off in ministry when I'm seeking attention and taking it from Jesus Christ. All glory has got to go to him. That's what it's all about. And we need to understand that. We really do. We really do. That doesn't mean you don't honor those where honor is due. I loved my pastor, Chuck, but I never put him on a platform. I loved him because he was a man of God, not because he benefited me the way that he did. And he did benefit me. He blessed me, but he showed me how to love Jesus. And that's where my heart was with him. That's why I loved him so much. He showed me how to love my Savior and he taught me that. But relationship, it really matters. I appreciate visitors and I welcome them. But one of the plagues of the church is church hopping. It's been called the circulation of the saints. This is why I encourage fellowship. That's why we have a cafe, by the way. That's why we have our different retreats and our different breakfasts and all. And that's why we offer opportunities and encourage people to be involved in our athletic ministry. We have our ministry to moms and small kids. We have our banquets and breakfasts, our brunches, our couple studies, our Bible studies, our small groups, our family ministry, our retreats, our single moms, our dinner ministry, our women's ministry, men's ministry, Bible college. If someone's going to be alone in this church and not have any friends, it's by their choice because we give plenty of opportunity. And then finally, witness our fourth pillar, healthy sheep, beget sheep. So we encourage people to share their faith, to tell other people. And it's an outflow. We do offer opportunities to learn how to do that with our street witnessing ministries and a variety of ministries that help to equip us. We do, but it's an outflow. Our prison ministry reaches many people. Our street teams do. Our door-to-door ministry do. It's part of an outflow. It's that not keeping Jesus to yourself. I was raised in my early faith from the day I got saved to tell somebody, tell somebody about Jesus. I was taught to do that. It made sense to me. I was going to hell. I was miserable. I was lost. Why wouldn't I tell someone about Jesus? Oh, they're not going to like you. They didn't like me before. That's a fact. That's a funny, but it's true. It's really true. See, in context, 50 years ago hippies were hated. We were hated 50 years ago. You don't know that. Some of you wouldn't know that unless you were hippie. We were hated. We were disliked. People would speak to us and say things to us. They did not like us. You know, these country and western stars that they have today, I guess they're called country stars, contemporary country, whatever that may be. But during the 60s and early 70s, if a guy with long hair like I had went into some little country town, they would take you and it was not uncommon for them to cut your hair all off. They would beat you up. They would bully you. You younger people won't believe it, but it's true. You actually, when you stepped out of your door with long hair, you were a target and you don't know that, but it's true. People would say things to you, look at you, when you get a job, dirty hippie, put on some shoes. That was common. That was my experience. And I said, I don't care if you like it or not. I don't care if you like my hair or not. My dad told me he was going to kick me out of the house if I didn't get a haircut. When I turned 18, I started growing my hair. He never kicked me out. He just wouldn't. But before then, dad said, if you don't cut your hair, I'm kicking you out of this house. That's how anti hippie our society was. Do some history research on that. You'll discover that. It's true. And so when I got saved as a hippie, I already wasn't liked. I already was rejected. I already had attitude. I already did. So if you don't like me because I'm a Christian, I don't care. You didn't like me when I was a hippie. I didn't care. And that's what I think the Lord used for the Jesus movement, because we already were the rejects. We already were the off scouring. We already were those drug infested, adult brained, you know, revolutionary idiots. We already were that. But now we were on fire for Christ. And that's how God began to move. Because if a person didn't like me, I'm just telling you the truth. It wasn't that I didn't want him to. Every human being wants to be loved and accepted by others. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that who I am in Christ is more important than your opinion of me as a man. And it's still been that way, even to this day. You know, who I am, I'm very confident. I told this to my son. I mentioned this earlier. I had this treatment done on my nose and it made it red. And my son says to me, Dad, why don't you do something to cover that up? I said, your mother loves me. It doesn't matter if anybody else doesn't. That's the truth. That wasn't just some, that's truly me. If you go into ministry with the attitude, you've got to be liked. Don't go in ministry because you will be surprised at how mean people are. You will be surprised at how cutting they can be, how unkind they are. You will be surprised. Some of you have experienced it, but not on the level I have. Because I've been doing this for 46 years. I have had people call me on the phone, and tell me how much they hate me. So we have that. Now that's not a complaint, but that's not a complaint. That's just real. You know, when I go off of the platform and I go down there and I talk to people, some of you don't even know I do that. You may not be in first service, but I do that every Sunday. And when I go out, it's not always how much they love this church. It isn't always about how you spoke to my heart. You'll be surprised at the way people respond and the things they can say. And then you go up for the next service. That's ministry. And I told Randy Walz, when Randy wanted to go out and plant his church in upland, and he stepped into my office and said to me, I want to be a pastor. And I cried, not like boohoo boohoo, but I teared up and I said to him, you don't know what you're asking for. And he just kind of smiles at me. It's kind of like when someone says, I want to get married. You don't know what you're asking for. He celebrated right around his 25th church anniversary a couple of years ago now. And he told me, he said, you remember when you told me that? And I said, yeah, he says, I didn't know what you meant. Now I do. I said, yeah, it takes time. It's not just walking up and talking, John John, wherever John John is, John John follows me around because he thinks that I'm going to give him something to do that makes him important. But I'll tell him, after I teach, I'll say, now ministry begins. Now ministry begins because the people are responding to what they're hearing. And sometimes they walk up and they say that spoke to my heart. And sometimes they're not kind. That's just a fact. That's just a fact. And so you have to have a desire to encourage people to be healthy in the Lord and to learn these things so that they can reach out. And to close with a couple of thoughts, healthy sheep, you get sheep teaching ministry produces healthy sheep who do that. We want to worship God. We want to have fellowship. And we want to talk to people. And that's what has led us to just see church's birth directly from our church. I've had pastors recently who have come to mind. There's one brother in Colorado who approached me at a Colorado pastors conference that I was teaching at. And he approached me and he said to me, my name is Matt, he says, and I am from Virginia. And he said, you came and spoke 20 years ago in Virginia at a men's retreat. He said, I got saved at that retreat. And now I pastor a church out here in Colorado. Jose was just back from doing some ministry and out there by Tahachapi. And Jose talked to me and said, so and so says hello. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't remember his name. And he says, oh, he got saved here in this church. And now he pastors Calvary Chapel Tahachapi. And so there are ministries that have sprung up that I'm not even familiar with that people have gotten saved here in this church or in an outreach somewhere, you know, so we've seen God do that. We have churches in upland with Randy walls, Ray Carter and Lake Havasu. You know, I could tell you stories, it's getting too late to do that. But, you know, Ray, I'm going to be going out God willing and dedicating their building that they have in Lake Havasu. I'll be doing that on the 30th, I think of this month. I think it's a Thursday. I'll be going out there to dedicate their building. And Ray had just gone out to Havasu. He was from here. He had been involved with our drug and alcohol ministry. And he went out there to kind of like get out of the rat race here and just go to church. And he showed up at the church and the pastor said, where do you come from? And he says, I'm from Calvary Chapel Chino Valley. He said, good, I'm going to give you the church. That's how he got the church. That's how he got the church. Because the guy said, I'm quitting. That's a fact. He says, I'm quitting. He said, I'm glad you're here. You're going to be the pastor. And now I'll be going out there to dedicate. That's over 20 years ago. And so we have Ray, we have John Barolero. John's doing great work in Mexico. He's got daughter churches, which makes them our granddaughter churches in Mexico. We have Rod Carver and Corpus Christi, Dave Trujillo in South L.A. We have a brother named Dan Nelson in Ohio, Mike Curcioli in Ontario, John Higlin in Wairika, Mike Whitney in Great Falls, Montana, Jeff Sowall in Madison, Wisconsin, Jess Dizon in the Philippines, Dan Rencher and Clay Allen Washington, Joe McTarsney in Montclair, Dan Vasquez in Fontana. These are people who came out of our fellowship who have planted churches in our pastry. That's where the word goes. That's how it happens. That's what God does. And so as I already mentioned, you know, the Lord has given me opportunity to be on the Calvary Chapel Association Council. And so that's a great ministry to oversee churches. And that's all going all the way back to where I began when I was sharing with you guys that I was just a kid, 23 years old at Biola College, trying to find a place for God to move in my life. And this has been the result.