Prepare to Meet Your Creator

Well, good morning, everyone! What a beautiful morning, and what beautiful music praising God. I probably enjoy choral music more than anything else because it brings up a big part of the congregation that sings so well. Not to say that the others don't sing well, but they sing a...

Praising God is a group, and it's just very, very wonderful, and I appreciate it very much. It was good to see Catherine Roland, who I have known for a long, long time, and the work that she's done with a choir in directing it. So that's absolutely, absolutely wonderful. Well, I had some oral surgery done this last week. I wasn't going to even bring it up, but now all of a sudden, I think I'll make it through okay. Although, after services, I may just have yes or no questions to answer, so that'll make it easier. Anyway, welcome to everyone who is on the webcast.

I believe that there are a hundred people or so who are connected, and they represent a number of other people who are in attendance services with them. Bev and I have just returned from Australia and New Zealand, and it's always very interesting to go to our international areas and see not only what they do, and to see how their culture, how they are the United Church of God and their culture, but also to see how they relate to us and how they relate to the home office. And I was just very pleasantly surprised and actually awed and even sobered by the fact of how much they do look to our example.

They do look to the content that we deliver. They look to our services and the things that we conduct in our services and their connectivity to our services. The Australian website, for example, has a member section in it. They call it something a little differently. They call it Fellowship Section, which does have access to the churches in Australia and New Zealand, to Brisbane, Sydney, and Auckland, New Zealand. But also, there very prominently is Cincinnati East. And I just got a shocking to see that it's there, except that it's two o'clock in the morning there right now.

I'm not sure if we're a ministry to insomniacs or what, but nonetheless, they are there and they have access to us. And they do listen to us. They do hear special greetings to all those who are up or who are listening to the delayed webcast in Australia and New Zealand.

Which I will be talking about here a little bit. There were a number of things that could be talked about. One thing that I was very pleased about is that there have been a number of messages given in preparation for the Passover. But I thought that, well, I do have a few things to say about the Passover. I do want to talk a little bit about three or four different items that are very much on my mind right now that I want to share with you.

Because oftentimes we don't communicate some of the information about ongoing events that are happening at the home office. And this is one thing, too, that struck me at visiting overseas, is that it seems that every little thing that we do here, and not every little thing, but when I was in services in Melbourne, here are the announcements being read.

And here they're reading right from our E-News. They're quoting Roy Holiday and they're quoting Peter Eddington. They're quoting other people. And I say, I didn't realize that our words were so far-reaching. We write them and we struggle to get a proper message out, but we don't realize as to how far-reaching those messages are and how people relate to them. Just a comment first about the Ukrainian orphans and the fundraiser, the variety program, pro-show that ABC puts on.

Some of that expense will be going towards a number of ABC students that will be going. There's a delegation of seven going to work with the Orphan Street Children's Camp in Ukraine from about the 1st of July for a couple of weeks. We had some of the group there has gone before, and we have one from Estonia, a young man from Estonia going, who's a member of the church, and six from the United States.

So that will help pay for some of their costs in going over there. Western Ukraine has been shielded from the fighting that's taken place in Eastern Ukraine. However, all of Ukraine is affected in that any excess space or living space is being used for refugees. So far, in what's happened in Eastern Ukraine, there have been nearly a million people that have been homeless from the fighting that's taken place. And they're being resettled in many places, including in Western Ukraine, in the area, even in the city where the camp or the street children's program is held.

It'll be a very eye-opening. This is about the fifth or sixth year that we've held the camp there. And we have two, I believe, from two or three from ABC that are going there, and a number of them are repeats from the past.

I'd like to mention a couple of things that are very much on my mind. We have two deadlines coming up, or the General Conference of Elders that's being held in just a little bit more than a month from now. We have two items that we want to prepare for the Council of Elders to look at, and also for the GCE, the General Conference of Elders, to see some prototypes of what we're doing.

And one is the unveiling or the opening up of our mobile-first website. And you might say, well, what's the big deal about a mobile-first website? I thought our website was great. I thought that we were a leader and so forth. All that is true. But we are truly now beginning to step out with a mobile-first website that we have a beta version in process. And I have been talking a lot with Tom Disher here and also with Aaron Booth about the site, about how it functions, about how it works. And yesterday I just stayed off of almost anything but that website just to kind of get the feel of it and see how I navigate through it.

Because while the technology is very, very specific and digital, the way you come across is very, very subjective. And you can be accepted very, very quickly as a place that, hey, I want to learn more, I want to stay here.

Or you could be repelled in a matter of a second or two saying, I don't like this, I don't like the colors, I don't like the feel, I don't like the woman in the front, you know, I don't like the way she looks. I don't like, you know, anything that would repel a person can cut you off from having people dig deeper into what you are. There are thousands, there are millions of websites. People have lots of choices to make. And people can go to a site to learn, but they can easily be blocked from going further.

And what they do is completely leave you and go somewhere else. And we want to be a place where people come to and want to stay with where we're at. But the new ucg.org truly, I feel, is spectacular from the standpoint of the way it navigates and also from the content that we have on it. I would say that the United Church of God has been a content king.

It's been a place where people have told others to say that if you want information about this subject, whatever it may be, go to ucg.org. They've got it. Go to their search box and you will find information about that. I just did a search again on just a number of topics. I just did divorce again this morning. And I just said how many? I just typed in divorce in the search box.

6,900 references to the subject of divorce. And you've got all kinds of information from our overall teaching on it to references and articles. That's how much references that we have to the subject of divorce. You'll find that if people are looking for services in many major cities and ask for Sabbath services or just Sabbath, that they will come upon the United Church of God as a primary place. We want to retain that spot and be a place where people look on us as an authority, as a place that they can get not only that information, but deeper information.

Just the way that I find myself working on the Internet is I have a Bible program, actually I have a couple of Bible programs, PC Study Bible, but oftentimes I can't find very quickly in PC Study Bible what I'm looking for. So I go to the main URL line, usually I use Chrome, and I type in words that I think are in the Scripture, and boom!

They'll take me right away to Bible Hub or Bible Gateway, and I find myself being there immediately, not only looking at that verse, but looking at about half a dozen translations of a Scripture that I want. Then I'm happy there that I can go to my Bible program. That's the way I work, and that's the way more and more people will be working.

But also on the Internet, more and more people are working in mobile. We have had up to as many as 80% of our first unique contacts come to us as a result of the telephone or the tablet. The big screen on your desk with the wide screen is becoming less and less used. But more and more people are finding that they go to the telephone to find what they want.

Not only to find what they want, but also to look for videos and to look at things that are what we consider to be very, very heavy as far as bandwidth that couldn't be used. Now we have more and more things available that people go and look at. On my trip here to Australia this last couple of weeks ago, we just returned. In fact, last Sabbath, Bev and I were in Auckland, New Zealand for services.

I put a number of videos on my telephone. It's surprising that you can be on a plane that has over 100 videos or 100 movies and there's not a one to watch. So much of it is just absolute trash. Unless there's a documentary or something else, most of it is absolute trash. So I had a few from the TCM, Turner Classic Movies. I had Nicholas and Alexandra that I wanted to watch. I thought it to be very, very respectable to watch this on my telephone, the little over five inch screen.

And I watched a three hour movie on this. I just sat there with my headphones and I found it to be acceptable. And I can take a look at a number of Beyond Today television programs also, which I have had, which look respectable as far as their quality, and lookability is very, very good. So we do want to bring our website up to the point of where it will be publicly released.

Right now, we're still in beta testing. Yesterday I was with Tom Disher and asked him a number of questions. And this morning I was just looking at various things, everything from the search button to the feedback button, to make sure that even these simple things can be easily found. Because people, if they can't find even the search button, it's like removing the Holy Spirit. You just lose your whole ability to even communicate with the whole thing.

You've lost your ability to get to where you need to be. And so we want to be able to be a place that's premier in not only appearance with bells and whistles, and hey, it can do this, it can do that, but in usability from everyone from who's a geek or a nerd, which I tend to associate with that particular group, because that's what I was in high school.

I really was more that way, to somebody who's impatient and who wants to get information now, but if he can't find it in three or four seconds, he'll leave your site and go somewhere else. We want people to stay on our site because we do have a lot of people who come to us because of content. We want them to stay there and get more information from us. Right now, on our beta site, which I'm really excited about the way it looks, it has to be one column. It cannot be the big screen with all the tabs across the top.

You might see that and say, oh, what a beautiful site. Well, that's becoming passe and talking with Tom Disher that yesterday that when you open up and you have the menu bar across the top, that is something for becoming less and less. It's still important because there are people who sit behind a big screen and study, but more and more people are on their telephone or on their tablet, and we are developing our website to make clear for that. So we have a nice big menu button. I don't know. Maybe we need to make it red or something, but we have a menu button.

I'm not telling anybody what to do. Please, don't. I'm just thinking here. Let's see here. Then we have feedback to where we want to make it easy for people to ask questions, order something to come back, and we want them to be able to scroll through the material very, very quickly like they do on Instagram or Facebook, to where things are very easy to find.

They can move through things that are less relevant and also get to the things that are more relevant. We want them to be able to find messages that they can listen to. We want to have a series of messages that are popular, based upon not what we say are popular, but by how many people visit them that get moved up to the top.

We also want to have an archive of messages that are useful. But we want these things to be found easily. So there'll be much more said about this and how we will work this. On my trip to Australia, I was thinking to myself, what am I really looking for when I'm on a trip?

The biggest thing I was looking for, what time is it in Cincinnati? So I could call back or send a message. I wanted to find out about exchange rates. And I just talk into this and find out what the exchange rate is immediately. But we want to make our church website with the questions that we have that people may be asking to be intercepted by us, and people be directed to our website to get our material, to get our content and the things that are here. We are content king among those who are Sabbath keepers.

We want to be a place that I already hear people making comments and other organizations. If you want information about this subject, whether it be the Holy Spirit or whether it be the Kingdom of God, go to the United Church of God. They have the information. They've got the booklet. They've got the thing that's important for you to read. And then people will get used to finding information from us because they get used to coming to us. And not just one item or one product organization, we have a series of an array of literature over many, many subjects that people can find. We're also working on a welcoming message on our website. We first thought about having an hour-long sermon, which I think that we're kind of steering away from. People won't watch a one-hour welcoming sermon. They'll leave in the first two minutes. We want to have something shorter, maybe in a 15-minute range, that welcomes people, tells them about the website in a more casual way, and something that could be rotated, not something that just sits there. We want the site to be very, very dynamic and have various people who can give and deliver messages about relevant things that are happening in the world. We may make them in the studio. We make them as part of services. We do want to make them things that could be useful to them.

As I said, I was able to watch an entire movie this last trip over. I didn't finish what I said. I watched the movie Nicholas and Alexandra, which is actually a three-hour movie about the Russian Revolution and the last tsar, which I wanted to see. I hadn't seen it in 41 years since it came out in 1971. I found this device to be very, very respectable. Hopefully more and more people will find it a respectable device to watch some of the products that we have in video. Television and video, whether it's broadcast or not, is something that is going to be extremely important for the future. That's what we are going to be doing here with our new website, which should be released hopefully shortly after the general conference of elders and be mobile first. The second thing I wanted to talk to you about is our meeting with LPK, which is a global brand design agency in Cincinnati, where we are designing a new logo for the church. Now, first, it might seem while you're designing a new symbol for the church. Well, it's far more than that. It actually is our identity and the way people will relate to us and the way people will perceive us, and it has connotations and denotations that go beyond that. But as you know, earlier at the end of the last calendar year, the months go by so quickly, we have made a decision, the Council of Elders approved, to changing the name of the good news from the good news to Beyond Today magazine. It may have seemed to be just a small move, or, well, significant in the fact that we've had that for 19 years. But it's far more than that because we do want to have the entirety of our media and the way we are perceived to the public to be Beyond Today. We want people to even say BT or Beyond Today, and that will include everything from what we have in print, what we have on the Internet, and what we have on television or broadcast television, cable television, or Internet television. But in the process of all this, we have wanted to design a logo, which is more than just putting a pretty picture up or a couple of animals or something and typing in a font and say, here's our logo. It's far more than that. It has to be a representation of what you are that could be perceived in a small bug on a television screen to a whole billboard. People say, oh, that's them. We know them because of the color, because of the font, because of the way that it is represented in a larger way.

We have looked at two different agencies. Actually, both have been very good and I was very impressed. And I really do enjoy talking to people outside the church about the church. I'll say that this is one of the most enjoyable experiences that I have, whether I talk to the Rotary or whether I talk to an ad agency or like we did with LPK. I enjoy talking to people who are sincerely interested in what we have to say, because I feel like in this world of insanity, we have a sane message that has a very, very solution-oriented, hopeful knowledge base that can help direct people towards what they really need and want and are secure in. And so when we had our visit to Hyperquake, which was downtown Cincinnati, we talked about what we did. We really appreciated the response that they had to some of our needs and what we are and the questions that they asked. But also, we had another agency that we investigated a much bigger agency called LPK, which is centered in Cincinnati, which is a worldwide agency having offices around the world. And Peter Eddington and a group of people, including Daris McNeely, Mitch Moss, and others, Clint Porter, went down to LPK, and they were so excited about their visit that when I was in Australia, I wasn't able to go, I was in Australia. It was 6.30 in the morning, and here I get a text from Peter Eddington. Hey, Vic, call me. Oh, what's going on here? 6.30? I know it's later than that over there. So what is Peter wanting to talk about? Well, I called him right away on Skype, and he said we just had a phenomenal visit to talk about the church's logo with a group of people at LPK that was really, really astounding. He called Daris into the office and a few others, and the thought was to go with this agency because of its worldwide connections than the first choice that we had. But it truly was very good. And this last week, or actually the week is yesterday, time goes by so slowly, yesterday, four principals from LPK came to our office here and spoke to our media department and interviewed us, I would say, asked us some of the terms that we used to attribute what we are to our thoughts and our philosophy and so forth. They want to know more about what makes us tick so they can start designing a logo both for the United Church of God and for Beyond Today, also integrated with international offices. When I talked to Australia and when I talked to New Zealand about the fact that we would like to integrate them into what we're doing, they were so excited. So whether it be Beyond Today Australia with a subhead, whatever, a subliner, this is what we want to do. But our new logo design will be for the church and for Beyond Today media. In fact, on our new website, there's going to be two major areas. We're really simplifying our identity in a big way. As I said, it isn't just a change of name. It's simplifying and unifying what we stand for. For example, on the church's website, there are going to be two major areas that people will go to.

One will be the United Church of God. That will represent the church side of things. It will represent our congregations. It will represent our ministry. It will represent our literature. Then there will also be Beyond Today. That will be television. Actually, all of our media and our print material as well. But those are the two areas that they will choose from.

I need to talk to Tom about getting them more prominent and very clear that those are the two areas that basically represent where we're at. On our menu bar here right now, we have the United Church of God Beyond Today. Then we have a lot of other sub-items which I consider to be important, but not of the same height which I would like to see separated out. I'm new. Congregations, sermons, webcasts, contact information, all are important. But I want people to be able to see that there's two major things that represent us as an organization. The United Church of God, UCG, and the other is Beyond Today, which includes television, internet, and print.

One thing that I'm still very grateful for, and I just feel like we're in the cusp of something very big happening as far as being able to go out to the world, is that we're finally getting our mobile-first website. Once we get that, talking with our engineers here, we're going to really bump up even higher in the search engines. Number two, it'll integrate what we have with the content that we have. And thirdly, we also already have television. We have the magazine, which is important. It's very important for us to have the magazine. Some people don't feel like you're an organization unless they can feel the crinkle, you know, the crinkle in turning of pages. Otherwise, they feel like you're error. However, the internet is not free. Internet costs a lot of money. And I actually would like to see us put more money into the development of our internet, because that'll be the bond with all of our everything from church to our ministry to our print to our television. So that's where we're going with that. With our group that we talked yesterday, they wanted to have a little bit more understanding about what we think and what makes us tick, so to speak. I was just very, very impressed with the questions that they asked, because some of the questions or some of their assessment, which was kind of informal at the end of about a two-hour meeting, was most telling. They said, we really learned a lot. We have a lot of information to work with here. We have more information than we oftentimes get with people who want us to develop their identity, of us making their identity and saying what we think they are, rather than us coming forward and saying, here's what we are. This is our identity. Of the four who were in the group, one seemed to be more religious than the others, because what we said about the content of what we are was not that we're activists or that we're specialists.

We're not trying to push for tea party or to be something that's a very specialty group that works with anything. We're actually quite broad and biblical in what we do. We cover many aspects of life, everything from prophecy to what is happening in the future, because it's in the Bible, to human relations, behavior, and ethics. And I think that when we talked about the subject of who's your audience, in a way we kind of had a little bit of a stop there, because down deep we know that our audience is huge. Our audience is more than just boomers or millennials or people who have a special interest in, you know, whatever subject of prophecy. We go all the way across the board. And why do we do that? Because that is the subject of the Bible. We said we are biblical. We use the Bible as our base. We use that as the foundation of what we teach. And one of the men there yesterday made a profound statement. Oh, you're like the Bereans. So we call him the Berean now among ourselves. He was actually, I think, surprised that we would take the Bible as literally as much an authority of what we do as to a document that we look up to rather than something that's in the mix of things for us to be able to use to do our work, as other organizations may have. That the Bible is good, but then we also have this. We've got the writings of this. And we have our history there. The Bible is our authority. Questions were asked about what words define you or are attributes to your organization. Give us some words that could help us be able to think in terms of what might be defined as a logo. Because we already told them up front, no crosses, no doves, no birds, you know, that type of thing. We're not going to get into that. We're going to be looking at other concepts that will steer people to the way that they perceive the United Church of God and beyond today. So the words that were used were relationships, and that has been defined as our essence. And relationships kind of blows hot and cold because we have had a history, sometimes not a very good history with relationships. But nonetheless, relationships are very, very important. And meaningful, godly relationships is still kind of the main essence that we have with other specialists that we have worked with. Another attribute is looking to the future or the future. We live in a world that is lacking in hope, lacking in any type of surety of what the future will be. We are a church that offers security in the future. We also offer meaning, not as just saying that this is what this means, but really making sense in your vibrations and what you are, with what the Bible says, with what reality is. Our subline with Beyond Today is, help for today and hope for tomorrow. This is very important to kind of explain a little bit further out what Beyond Today is. Some people feel that's not enough words. Well, what do people want? Well, Beyond Today, and Aaron Booth has a very good explanation of it, which he went through yesterday about how we came to Beyond Today. But it is talking about how we are offering in a very, very direct way help for today. Everything from counseling to service to relief to education, all these factors, all these features. But also, we offer a great hope for tomorrow. It's not just an organization for making things work now, but we really do have answers for tomorrow. We talked about the kingdom of God yesterday. We talked about how that's an important part of our structure, our makeup, if you will, our DNA, as what we do understand about the kingdom of God, what we do understand about the future.

Also, we talked about how we are Christocentric. Jesus Christ is the very center of our beliefs. We're not something that uses Christ, or we believe in the pre-existent Jesus Christ who came to this earth from the born of the Virgin Mary, who is to be King of kings and Lord of lords. And that is our faith, our religion, and our hope. We talked about truths. We talked about life-changing. We talked about transformation from the standpoint of we talk about changing people's lives and giving them understanding and education of the same.

So that was very interesting to us. They will have some designs for us to look at, for the Council of Elders to look at when they come in, and also maybe even show the general conference of elders of some of what we're going with our identity, with the United Church of God logo and the Beyond Today logo as well. Then thirdly, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about my trip to Australia and New Zealand that Bevanai just returned from.

They are very far away from here. Believe me, Australia and New Zealand is a long, long flight, especially if you come from Cincinnati and have to go just to the west coast and then 15 hours to Melbourne, and then the locations which are not that close even to one another in that area. They are a long ways away. And yet there are brothers and sisters who look very, very closely to us. I was amazed as to how much they look to us and how much they are connected with us and how much more contact they want with us.

For example, just on their local website, they have a fellowship site called fellowship.ucg.org. C-A-R-A-U. And that's where they have their webcasts. And I was surprised to see that everybody mentioned this, but they have Brisbane, Sydney, Auckland, and Cincinnati East. And probably what they do is they listen to repeats from our webcasts because right now it's between somebody at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning and they're right now on a Sunday morning.

But they really do desire a lot of connectivity and working with us. What I found to be so interesting with the Australians was just to see them in their own environment, to see Bill Eddington, who had come here, had made as many... He made 30 trips as a council member in six years coming to the United States. But it's interesting to see him in his own environment as a song leader, as a jovial person. I just never thought of him that way.

I thought of him mostly as just pouring over documents and working on bylaws. But he's really quite a dynamic person in Australia and just good to see him. I was interested in seeing how they watch what we do, whether it's with good works or with life nets or with the church. They look very, very closely as to the things that we do. They're sending three young adults to youth corps projects, one to Chile and two to Jamaica. We're just very happy to see these Australian youth be incorporated in them.

While in Australia, we met with the churches in Melbourne. We had 199 in attendance three weeks ago, and they represented the Melbourne East. Bacchus Marsh, which is a good-sized church on the western side of Melbourne. They also have churches in Tasmania and a few other areas around. We had 199 people in attendance. Then we had a Deacons and Elders Day altogether. It was not defined as a conference, necessarily, but in the morning, all the pastors of the southern region of Australia gave reports about their churches, which were excellent.

It was just really wonderful to hear what they had to say. The one thing that I found so beautiful about the spirit of the United Church of God is that I felt so at home in Australia, and you would too. There's a certain spirit about the United Church of God, a very generous spirit, a very caring spirit, a very respectful spirit that we have among us. We thoroughly enjoyed being with all the elders, and we had a chance to actually visit with and talk to all the elders in Australia and most of the Deacons.

In the weeks that we were there, I was able to speak to probably two-thirds of the membership on the Sabbath. Then in the afternoon, they said, you can have all the time. Thank you very much. It was about three hours. And so I gave little snippets, little pieces of some of the area conference lectures that we have given to our ministers in our area conferences in the United States.

And some of it was about doctoral integrity, some of it was about peacemaking, some of it was about leadership training, and so forth. I was also amazed as to how closely they look to the things that we do of everything printed, and particularly the e-news. I was amazed as to how they looked to that as just the latest, hottest, most relevant news. And it just made me feel, oh, I hope that we have everything accurate.

I just hope that we have it done right, because that is voiced abroad all around the world. These people read from it, they duplicate it, and they put it out as one of the pieces of information that is probably most looked at with the greatest interest. So then I played part of Randy Stiver's lecture, just about 50 minutes of it, about common doctrinal challenges, because in the church all the time, you know, you have...

The devil is always looking at some new way to upend the church, and I feel that right now, one of the wiles of the devil is just new things that come up from people that just invent things, whether it be calendar issues, or sacred name issues, or I just had somebody else write to me this morning about some other oddity, you know, just things that they feel very strongly about. And as long as they believe in themselves, that's fine, but when they pass them on to others, it does create problems. But we have a lot of material that is very relevant to training our ministry.

Australians have the same issues regarding the future of their church as the United States does. We have a ministry, many of whom are in their last assignment. There is not going to be transferred. Where am I going to go? Where am I going to move when I'm 95 years old? You know, that's not going to happen. Those assignments will not be there. And we are preparing for more ministers to retire, but that does not mean that the church will be left without leadership. Australia, in a much smaller scale, has some of the same issues, as well as Canada and other places around the world.

And so we're looking to, at the same time as ministers in the course of a lifetime in the natural course of events, which is coming to me as well here in not too many years, is that we're going to have to look to new leadership, developing leadership. We can't just look at people who are in their 40s and say they're too young.

I can't believe that I was 21 years old and I was answering... I was called Mr. Cubic by more people when I was 21 than people call me Mr. Cubic now. I just really feel like we need to bring up our leadership more quickly. We've done a survey where we've contacted all of our elders and say, what are your plans for succession from your congregation, who are the people that could be used?

I said, well, we've got these people here, but it'll be years before they're ready. Cross out. Sorry. Cross out years and put in months. We need people more quickly mobilized to be able to move the church forward. In January of 2011, we had to replace more than 30 ministers virtually overnight, and we did it. And every one of them has worked out very, very well. So I thought, if we could do that many very quickly of people who have been preparing for, who have been giving sermons, who have been either elders or deacons in their congregations to step up in a very quantitative way quickly, why can't we do it in a more measured way, which we are doing, and what Australia is doing as well.

Australia would like to have more interaction with us on education. I would say that if there was any one big thing that I had heard was, is that what are you doing as far as education, training, online training, and any other kind of training that you may have? We need to train our youth. And I was very pleased with Australia in being in services in the combined Melbourne Church, combined Brisbane Gold Coast Church, as to how many young people there were, how many young adults there were that came up to talk and discuss things and talk about the future of the church.

I saw former ABC graduates. It was good to see all these people, and some of them are very, very anxious to help out. And if the opportunity ever came, they would be there. Regular ministry is becoming older, and health difficulties ensue, and we don't want our ministers to keep working until they can't work anymore. We want them to come to a point of where they can transition into a new stage, if they choose to, of becoming mentors, teachers, encouragers, and those who help in a very, very practical way, in a very humble way, in a very good way, to bring up the leadership of the churches to a new level.

I find that when we're talking about our young people, we oftentimes think of them as our sons and daughters who we know too well. But these are people who oftentimes now have their own families, have their own children, have strong values, give sermonettes and sermons and our leaders in their church, and if there was a demand for that leadership, they would step up to those points.

So we talked about that with the Australians as well. We talked about the new models for pastoring. We no longer can have a full-time pastor for a church of 18, another church of 36, and another church of maybe 20, and then the pastor is responsible for all three of them. He would only get to two out of three on any given Sabbath, or maybe even one out of three every Sabbath. We're taking a look at other ways in which we can service these areas. With an elder who stays with that church just for that Sabbath. We don't need a full-time person to take care of 18 people, or for that matter, even 20 or 25 people.

He could be on a stipend. He could help out through volunteer work. And we do have a number of volunteer pastors who charge us nothing, who do this as a labor of love. We find that we have elders right now who are basically pastoring anyway. They're there on the Sabbath. They're there to encourage people. And if they were made pastor of that church, there would be very little difference in what they would be doing.

Except that they might have to speak more often, or perhaps take a Sunday every other week to visit and do things. But we find that we can have people who can work in a bivocational manner. We are learning to do things differently in moving the church forward. So I was just very, very excited about visiting the churches in Australia. I saw our national office in the Gold Coast area that is very, very well run by the manager, who is Ruth Root. I saw her working in her office. Bev and I were welcomed very, very warmly.

Reg Wright works with editorial letter answering, and they have a number of people, including the treasurer, who is volunteer. And media was Jeff Robertson, and other helpers showed us around and saw a very, very tight, well-organized operation. And the spirit between us and Australians was outstanding. So I thought I would just tell you about those three things that, to me, were significant. And sometimes you don't hear the news about what we actually are doing, but we had all these things happening, and I wanted to share them with you. Larry Griffith here always asks the speakers to give us a title for the sermon.

And Larry's kind of a gruff person, you know. He kind of gets unhappy when we don't give him titles, and this time I wanted to make sure to keep him happy. So I did. My title for the sermon, which is not going to be a very long sermon, is to Prepare to Meet Your Creator. Prepare to Meet Your Creator. We're going to be doing just that this coming Thursday for the Passover. And again, I know that we have heard about the Passover, the preparation for it, its importance in our lives.

But I'd like to turn to only one passage of Scripture in this remainder of the time I have. Philippians chapter 1 and verse 21. Philippians chapter 1 and verse 21. Because the Apostle Paul lived his life of having to face his creator and be prepared to meet him at any time. And there were moments where he could have met him a lot earlier than he did, and ultimately he did meet him. The subject of meeting our creator is something that we are discussing among ourselves in the ministry on a friendship basis, more than just kind of a thought of someday we'll be meeting our creator, someday we'll be there.

Now we're going to meet him here in a few years. Jesus Christ is either going to return or we're going to fall asleep and then meet him soon. The time span that we have is short, however you want to slice it. Those who are maybe their 40s and 50s might have more time if we have, but to those of us who have been around a long time for decades in the ministry, or for decades in the membership of the church, we will be meeting our creator very soon.

We will be asked to account for our actions. What about the words that we speak? What about the attitudes that we have? And people say, how in the world can God keep track of all the things that we have said? Well, believe me, every day you're being photographed at least 2,000 times by video cameras and so forth. You know, our lives are very, very transparent even in this world, and our lives are being recorded for accounting at some time. For the things that we say, for the way we treat people, for the way we think, for the way we plan our lives, and our whole vision of our conversion.

When you meet your creator, what are you going to tell him as he brings you to account? Philippians chapter 1, verse 21. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. The Apostle Paul basically took every opportunity as, I win both ways.

That for me, when I meet Christ, I've won. In other words, just a euphemism for if I die, I'll be with Christ. And I hope that all of us also feel that no matter what happens in life, if we fall asleep and we die, our next moment will be with Jesus Christ. The one who will be in worshiping, the one who we have been preaching about, the one that we have been holding up, the one that we've been promoting, we will be with Jesus Christ. And to me, the Passover, every year as it comes around, becomes more and more profound, and becomes even more profound as we come to the last days of our lives, last years of our lives. Where we have to really let him know that I am totally committed to you, I really believe all the things that you have said, and I'm applying in my life as best I can, the principles that you have taught. I'm not leading a double life. I'm not thinking something different, but appearing publicly in this way. I'm not living a secret life of sin, and yet trying to present myself as clean here, that your life is open before Christ. To die is gain. The Apostle Paul could say that if he died, it would be actually a benefit.

No more hassles, no more trips, no more angry people to deal with. Then all the things that he was going through in his travels through Asia Minor and Greece, be over with. The hassle would be gone.

But if I live in the flesh, this will mean fruit for my labor. Yet what I shall choose, I cannot tell. Well, certainly I want to be alive. I want to be able to see how things are.

And you know something? I want to be alive. You want to be alive. You want to see your kids. You want to see your grandkids. You want to see how things work out.

But he says, for I am heart-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ. He was not being suicidal here. He was just saying that he knew what would be the thing that he would experience next in his life experience.

That he would be with Christ. He would be talking to Christ. What are you going to tell Christ? Are you prepared to meet your Creator? If it is from a short time from now, what are you going to tell him as far as what you have done in this lifetime?

For the stewardship that you've had over the time you've had here. For the way you've conducted yourself with your co-workers, with your friends, your family.

Have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.

Nevertheless, to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. I've got to be here. And you need it, and I need to be able to fulfill this role.

I think those of us in the ministry, those of us who have experienced decades of service in churches all around, and as we see us coming to the twilight of our careers, I'm not sounding negative or dour in any way, but that's the reality of it.

We feel a certain relief of knowing that Christ will be the next one we will see. We go into that super retirement of the kingdom of God, you know, where it's just a different existence altogether.

One that we're not totally sure exactly how it will be, but we'll have new bodies, new minds, new attitudes, a different nature, and so forth.

But we still need to be here, and we still need to be here to educate, to motivate, and to move the church forward.

And being confident of this, verse 25, I know that I shall remain and continue with you all for the progress and the joy of faith.

Verse 26, that your rejoicing for me may be more abundant in Jesus Christ by my coming to you again.

So Paul had a personal view, a worldview that was very constructive and positive of being with them, and yet he was still knew that no matter what happened, and the premonition here may be that he would be arrested and executed, whatever.

Hey, he still wins. That if he was put to death or had to have his life cut short, that he would still be a winner.

Verse 27, only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ.

And this is what I want to tell you and me both. Let our conduct be worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the way we conduct ourselves, the way we talk, the way we work.

I know that the people that I work with at the home office right now, more than anything, I yearn and have a spirit of teamwork and togetherness that is so outstanding.

The one thing that I talked about while traveling in Australia is that I have said there has never been a time in a church.

I'm not talking through my head either. I really believe this. I've never lived through a time where there has been so much peace and goodwill.

Some people say, well, you're talking about it so much, what's the matter? I really truly believe that.

I feel like with the people I work with, every single person I respect, I honor, and I appreciate the work that they go forward.

I feel like I can listen to anyone. I can talk to anyone. I feel that if somebody tells me something and makes an observation, I'm going to, well, maybe be a little bit defensive about it, but I think, well, what is it that we can do better?

How can we apply what you're saying? How can this work better? There is a good spirit.

And frankly, I felt that with the Australians as well. I did not feel a defensiveness, did not feel any negativism, for any things that may or may not have happened in the past, an excellent spirit of peace. I talked about how important it is for us to maintain that, and how the Apostle Paul opened every letter, and even some of the personal letters, may God's grace and peace be with you.

It's more than just a pleasantry, but as a wish of his, of that aspect of God's nature and spirit to be with us. Let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit, that you be unified.

I hope that our conduct is always of the highest value and worth, and of the highest ethics.

And with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, and not in any way terrified, verse 28, by your adversaries, which is to them proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God.

What a tremendous statement. The Apostle Paul could see the good in whether it was evil or adversarial. He could say that there was adversarial things happening, that it was proof that God was a helper of us.

Instead of falling apart and feeling that, oh, is this all going to fall apart? Paul was an optimist, and he knew that no matter what happened, he would be a winner.

And I certainly hope that we as a church know in the times in which we live, that being a small group, it was interesting that when we talked to the people from LPK yesterday, they talked about some of the values that we had, and we told them about how biblical we were, and one reason why we're not any bigger group than we are, although I do want to be able to grow, is the fact that we will not sacrifice or compromise, I should say, our values.

We will not try to diminish or compromise with any of the laws of God in order to gain membership.

We will not compromise with national mores or with national values of where we are as a nation.

We will not compromise with the Sodom of society that we live in.

But we're going to be able to stand for what is right, being diplomatic in what we teach, and stand firm for our values and beliefs.

And again, Christa Berean yesterday said, oh, you're Berean. You do search out the Bible, and you stay by the things that you have proven to be true. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.

That's one thing that's going to be inherent with all Christians, is that even though we can live through a time of peace, suffering is included.

And I'll be talking about that in my sermon on the last day of Unleavened Bread, about the meanings of unleavened bread.

Is that in the meanings of unleavened bread, suffering that Christ endured was a part of that meaning.

And Christians, we ought to be ready to suffer. Suffer humiliation, suffer rejection, suffer injustice that may and most likely will happen.

But, you know, we as Christians should be prepared for that, and that is part of the unleavened bread experience.

Verse 30, having the same conflict which you saw in me, and now here, is in me.

Then chapter 2 begins with Philippians chapter 2.

Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

And if there's anything that I can leave you with as words at this time of year, as we all will be prepared to meet our Creator on Thursday, or in a broader sense meet our Creator in a few years, and we all will be meeting our Creator at some time when you were baptized, you came to believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and you're looking to the moment of where you will be united with Him, that is this the way you think?

Are we of the same love? Are we united and of one mind? It is so important for us to stay together to be bonded as one group, as one body, and as one loaf of bread, of unleavened bread.

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit.

Now, one thing that LPK saw in us is that we worked together as a team. There was no one big guru.

We all worked together. We all talked to one another. We have no persona that is famous in some way.

The position of president is something which has changed out periodically. It's not a lifetime position.

We all work together because we truly care and love one another.

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit. But in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.

I truly believe that we're getting there, that we are showing respect for others.

And then this verse 4 mutipifies the way we work at the home office and how less than 40 people can do the work that we do.

Now, I was amazed as to how in Australia they look to the people that work in the office and they commented about different people, you know, which we see daily.

I know that they pray for them. They pray for them to do their jobs. Well, how's Clay Thornton? How's Tom Disher? How's Aaron Booth?

These are people that I just walked by. Hi, Aaron! We just talk to each other so casually.

But there are people all around the world who really do look to us as a team and stalwarts of strength and friendship.

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others, where every single one of us is looking to see how others can succeed and do well.

Where those in the ministry are looking and praying for those who are doing the telecast to those who are writing the articles to be successful and to be doing the very best job that they possibly can.

Those in media are praying for the ministry and praying for the churches. And where we really do pray, not from the standpoint of being able to just pray as just this, but just pray so that we can say that we've prayed for them and that's our duty, but really for them to succeed.

We all should be praying for each other's success.

We've been doing work with the Content Committee that Darris McNeely, who's here, has been doing work. We're preparing content for the July-August issue of Beyond Today magazine and then also Beyond That to August-September.

Working on the cover for the Good News magazine for this next issue that's coming out.

Now, we really do care about one another. We really do care about producing a good product. And there's no sense of striving or pushing one another but trying to see everybody be able to grow and to be successful.

So, I wanted to, again, in this particular message, be able to tell you a little bit about our trip, about the work that's being done with the website, and also with the logo for the United Church of God, because I feel like this has a lot to do with where we're going to go and how we'll be represented in the future, and also give direction to the emphasis of the work that we have. I look forward. My wife and I are very happy to be able to stay back here in Cincinnati for the Passover. I'll be with Steve Myers helping him in the Passover service. So, I look forward to talking to you after services.