[Victor Kubik] Well, today I'd like to continue talking about the vision of the United Church of God. And the reason that I'm talking about it is because I'm reading it very, very closely, probably more closely than I ever have in spite of the fact that I was in on many of the discussions when I was on the Council of Elders, in crafting the wording of our vision mission statements. However, two years ago, the council, this is when I was not on the council, added a significant and explicit statement to our vision statement. And I know that when we get listings of here's what we believe, and here's what we do, and all this sorta thing, we can very quickly go over it and it kind of goes over our head, not realizing that every single word was very, very carefully put into that sentence.

Often times with many crossed out words, and words added, words taken away, the final outcome is the result of a lot of people spending a a lot of very careful time. And one thing that really struck me in reading the statement on our vision is the fact that it's so explicit. It doesn't say, “Well, here's what we'd like to do, here's what we want to do," it's a very explicit statement which I will just read in total. It's not that long but I'll be commenting about it in the entirety of my sermon this morning.

Our vision and our vision is where we want to be. Vision is what you see down the road. Mission is how you get there, but a vision is here's where… here's the promised land, here's where we want to get to. Our vision is: “A Church led by God's Holy Spirit, joined and knit together by what every member supplies,” every member, not most, not the Council of Elders, not what a ministry, not what the, you know, pastoral ministry. But what every member supplies, “with all doing their share and growing in love to fulfill God's great purpose for humanity to bring many children to glory.

Okay, I read it quickly there, but let me go back, “what every member supplies with all doing their share.” This includes: Tim Sipes, Larry Griffith, Jason Nitzberg this morning, what everybody has done. Some of you, what you have done is pray for the sick, pray for the hurricane, the typhoon victims. Some of you, what you did was to bring goodies for the potluck or for the snacks. Some of you have some very, very special things that you want to do in fundraising, in praying for, encouraging, writing letters, singing music, playing the piano. There are so many things that are here and available for all doing their share, and “growing in love to fulfill God's great purpose.” In other words, here's where it's kind of going to.

And this is actually the remnants of our old vision statement which was only stating that our “great purpose is to bring many children to glory.” It was actually quite bare. And when we talked to people about what is the vision of the Church, a number of people said, "You know, you need to have a little bit more in there," and I'm so glad that we had this added and it was given very wonderfully by Bill Eddington in a sermon 2 years ago, or a year and a half ago at the G.C.E 2012 to the upgraded vision statement. But what we do all together as a whole Church is we are growing in love. I mean, this is our… what we really want to see, just like a family that loves their children, and loves their siblings, and loves their parents, we're growing in love to fulfill God's great purpose for humanity and to bring many children to glory. What a wonderful vision.

This is something that we really need to memorize. We no doubt have memorized our mission statement because it is so simple, you know, preach the gospel unto all the world and, you know, care for the disciples. You know, I'm sure that you have that down pretty well, and would know it very quickly, but the vision statement you may not. And I'm speaking for myself because so many things are like platitudes, they sound wonderful, all encompassing, like they've been written by a speechwriter, but actually they have not. They've been written by people who have spent decades in pastoral work to focus on words that would describe where we want to get to. And I think it's important for us as we preach and as we speak, and as I do my work as president, to ever be vigilant of our vision, and have it right there in front of us. I have two copies of the strategic plan which has all this on my desk. I have it to where I can grab it anytime I need to, because I feel like it's so important for us never to forget who we are and where we're going.

Again, this is not the work of the ministry only, which has actually morphed our understanding or our, let's say, getting into the area of spiritual gifts. It's not something that's only for the ministry. But as we had modified the statement of vision, we also opened it up to the fact that it's not only the ministry that have gifts. In fact, we know that. Though there are people that have tremendous capabilities in teaching, in encouragement, in organization. We've opened the floodgates, so to speak, I can just say very openly to everybody doing their part, we've stated that in our vision statement, what all doing their share, what every member supplies. And to me, that's a great statement of permission for you, for us.

This is a work in which every man and woman, young and old has a part in doing. It's a work for those of us who are the older ones, and I consider myself now old, as much as I hate to say it. But I am a boomer, I'm 66 years old, wish it wasn't 66, you know, next year will be 67, sound better. I sound like some kind of beast. But we are a work of those who are the older, we are the work of the Generation X, which are those 40 to 55 or so, depends upon how people measure those dates, and also very, very importantly is the work of the younger ones, the millennials, who are up to about age 35 or 40, from age 25 or 20, which are a very important aspect of the work. They are not overlooked, they're not considered unimportant. They're very, very important because our vision statement says so, what every part of that body provides.

I'd like to invite all of you to have a greater part in the work of God. You might say, "Well sure, I've heard that before, and I try to do this or say that I want to do that, and never have really gotten very far." Well, I do want to talk about how we can do more things in the work of God. And this sermon will only be a start. I don't have everything quite down as to all the details, but more and more things have come to my attention that really could be done if we're going to be doing an effective work in reaching the world, in reaching our community and going forward. How much have you considered the application of the statement of the vision of the United Church of God? If you didn't get it written down in what I said, go to see coe.ucg.org and take a look at the strategic and operating plan, it's in there, where all these things are listed on about page eight or nine, I didn't quite look at it this morning exactly.

Ephesians 4:11. I like you turn to Ephesians 4:11 because it's this verse that we have added to the vision statement. Before we had Hebrews 2:10 in bringing many sons, many children to glory. But Ephesians 4:16 is the other passage that we added, but actually in reading the context of it I find it even more powerful by starting in verse 11. And I'll read from verses 11 through verse 16 Ephesians 4. "He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists," already describing that there are people of differing skills even within a proclamation ministry. Some are apostles we know who they were.

We know who they were in Christ's time, different people and different ages have been apostles. Some have been prophets, preachers proclaimers of the Word of God, and some have been evangelists, and that's the people who have a special gift of being motivational speakers. They're the kind of people that can stand up and really move a crowd, and that's their specialty. They may not be good pastors, but they can be very good motivators of people. Some pastors are very good in caring for people but may not be the motivational speaker. They say that God has given people of various skill levels even in the proclamation of His words.

“Some pastors and some teachers,” there're some people that are phenomenal teachers. I recall back when I went to Ambassador College, there were certain individuals that were just really good teachers. One of them was not a minister, he just didn't want to be one, that was not his interest. But more than anything in his life, he enjoyed being able to look at the eyes of students and see them get what he was teaching them. That was his special skill. Some pastors in the pastoral work is I talk to our new pastors, we've had 30 new ones added, you know, 3 years ago where's it's just bang, we had to add new pastors, I say it's a special skill, it's an art.

There're certain things that yes we can train you pastorally, but there're certain things you just going to have to get, you're going to have to kind of understand dealing with people. Because about 80% of your work is your skill set of how you manage people, and how you talk to them, and how you regard them, and how you respond to them, and some of that you cannot teach. You can teach certain abstract skills, but it's very hard to teach people skills. You either have it or you don't. I feel like pastoral work and those who become pastors is a gift, and it's a gift that has to be recognized by your peers or by your superiors. That's why we tell people you can't just choose to become a minister. There's a good reason for that. There are certain things that come with the job of being a minister, but there are certain things that you just don't understand, and you don't know that you don't understand.

There are some people that, you know, just the ministry is just not their cup of tea. They don't have that skill set. But those who do, you know, may God bless them to continue doing the work, and I would say that of the people that we added to our pastoral ministry, the vast majority, if not every single one of them, has made a major contribution in the churches that they have been put over. And the purpose is for the edifying of the Body of Christ, is to build it up. Some people are the motivational speakers, some people are the pastors, some of the ones that can have seminars and teach people skills, and hold a marriage seminar, a family seminar, where you could even have a pastor who may not be good at certain teaching things. He might, of course, part of the job of a pastor is to be able to teach. However, some are much stronger than others and they're teachers that are superior to pastors in being able to do knowledge.

I really am amazed that our ABC teachers, who I feel all have the gift of teaching, as to the stamina that they have to have to be up here in this room here every day, every day basically giving a sermon. And I can do a sermon but I just don't know if I could do that. I just don't know that I could stand up every day with that type of scheduling. But there are some that is their second nature that they can stand up and teach in one hour, two hour class. They can go and perhaps teach another one in the afternoon, they do it, you know, four or five days a week, and that's their ability and skill. But all this is so that we can build up the Church of God “for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith,” of course, this is mentioned in the vision statement “and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

So in our vision statement, we're trying to get everybody involved in building the Church. Building it from street level to becoming the bride of Christ. You're all invited. You're all asked to, you're all positively being beckoned to help out in that process. In contrast to leaving behind, verse 14, "that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning  craftiness of deceitful plotting." Now we're to build within our membership a sense of understanding whatever doctrines it is that are being taught, so that all of a sudden some sharp person from left field comes in and all of a sudden has them worshiping on another day, or, you know, has them believing Christ is some different composition from when He was before.

But we want to ground our people into the fundamentals of our belief, into the very, very bedrock of those things that make us what we are so that we won't be like little kids, so if we get, you know, another blast of air, which we no doubt will from somebody who has a very convincing argument, who says, "Oh, the Feast of Trumpets is not about the resurrection of Christ, it's Pentecost," or whatever, "Oh really? Oh, I didn't know that" you know, and then all of a sudden they get involved in that and find themselves, you know, being swept away. Part of what we do and part of the pastoral work is to ground our brethren in the very, very basics.

As part of building our Church, we have ABC to build our young people in the very basics. We have online training for our ministry now where we have two classes going, and we're trying to get another one going concurrently as well to train our ministers in some very, very important aspects of being able to answer questions of the hopeless within them to the outside. We're just starting a new round of area conferences for our ministry, and we've asked them to give us listing of subjects that they want. And we're just very, very impressed by the kinds of things that first of all what they ask for, and the types of things that we really want to provide in training our ministry in the second round of our area conferences. “But, speaking the truth in love," verse 15, we've come to the point where we speak the truth in love. That we “may grow up in all things unto Him who is the head—Christ." Part of the building of the Church is to help this baby grow up to no longer be immature and be knocked around with every wind of doctrine, but to be strong and to be able to withstand onslaughts which will come.

I'm always amazed what happens whenever there's some new thing that passes through, either something doctrinal, or something that's a personal thing, or whatever, as to how many people bite into something because they're not grounded. And in one moment they can turn on a dime and follow after somebody else. Part of our job is to make people grounded in the main aspects of our beliefs. In the importance of church unity, in the importance of, you know, who we are, what we stand for, and where we're going together.

Verse 16, and this is the one that is quoted in the vision statement, "From whom the whole body," and emphasis was on the whole body not just the head of the body and not just a part of it, "The whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies." And what this suggests is that there are different parts of the body that do different things, but they're all joined together for one purpose, as my hand is part of my body, it has certain functions it performs. My feet perform another function, my lips perform something else, but it's all me to communicate and to do one particular thing. And we as a Church have various aspects of feet, of mind, of arms, of voice, that is doing the work. "According to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love." So that's our mission statement. Pardon me, that's our vision statement. Most of all… and this was not included not until a year and a half ago, verse 16, which I feel was wonderful that it was added.

On January 20th, 1961, we probably had one of the greatest speeches delivered in this country. It was the inaugural address by John F. Kennedy who became president. And that was almost 53 years ago, when he was inaugurated as president. I was in the eighth grade. And this is what he said, I don't know if words like this could even be said now, but he said this, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." You probably remember that very well, it's etched in our minds.

Interesting that that's not where the speech ended, it had a few other important quips in there. One of them is the next sentence. "My fellow citizens of the world:” he continues, "ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." I thought that it was interesting that, you know, that is not quoted but that, to me, is almost as important as the original statement about “ask not what your country can do for you.” Is not our mission, brethren, much higher than any physical mission of a nation?

Two weeks ago, last Friday, Bev and I went through the Reagan Library in… near Thousand Oaks, California when we were out for the conference. Larry Darden lives about 15 minutes away from it and he said, "Hey, let's go out there, I'm sure you'll enjoy it," and truly it was a wonderful experience. It was a wonderful experience in a couple of ways. One was he was a president who still stood for value but also showed our nation at another time in history when values and God were still held up very, very highly. Also, it was sad that as we exited the library, you feel and you know that you left something behind that was the past.

But you know what we're building, brethren, is something that's immortal and will continue on for all time. What we're building, this Church, this Body, this building that we're building, is not a temporal one. It's not just our country for a decade or for two decades that will, like every other empire, will eventually crumble into history if Christ didn't return. What we are building is the Church that will become the important aspect of the family of God entering into the Kingdom of God. Can we get that vision? Can we see how important that is and how valuable our work is?

So what can we do? And I had actually a number of ways that I had tried to construct this sermon, and I just realized that I cannot finish it today because I have certain specifics that I want to talk about, how we can build this Church: from rock bottom specific things, from how we could improve church services, how we can improve our local church websites, you know, how we can, you know, do this, this, and that. To beginning with attitudes that are very. very important in this building process and what we can do for the Church. Well, let's begin with some of the attitudes that we really need to have down pat before we get into specifics.

What can we do? There're some who work here full-time, part-time. There are others here who have a number of jobs, many jobs, like Steve Myers. There are others here who are volunteers. There're others here who just come to services, you're all part of the Body of Christ, and every single one of you is important. Every single one of you is important, your children are important. Your children are important because they are like little olive plants that you bring into services here, to remind us of the future of the Church and their value and importance for the family of God. But first and foremost, every single one of us as we read that vision statement needs to take ownership and responsibility for what we do in the work of God.

Take ownership of that statement. We don't just say, "I work here. I'm just… I come here at 8:00, 9:00, and work till 5:00, and then I basically tune out." But being a worker and being a part of the Church of God is a 24/7 operation. And I know that ever since I have been in the ministry… actually ever since I came to Ambassador College, I was just very, very driven by the mission of the work of the Church and maybe to a fault. It's been something that occupies my entire time and now more so than ever. But the Church and the work to all of us needs to be nothing more than just, "I just work there," or "That's where our family goes." “That's the denomination that we have selected.” “It's the place that has a very nice place and our good friends are there.” I know that for some, perhaps that has been the reason that they were part of the Church because they could sure leave it very quickly.

But, you know, the Church is so much a part of my fabric and mind, and the importance of being unified, and importance of maintaining peace so that we could be under God's grace is something that just grips me so fully to the point of where almost every night now, especially the last couple of weeks and after the conference, I just think about all the time what we should be doing, how can we do it better, how could we put things together? And I'll be talking to you about some of the things that we've got are on the horizon, whether I'll cover them today or not, I don't know. But I will be covering them in writing and in the things that we're doing as far as the content that we want to come forth with, with some of the ways that we want to proclaim our church and our work to… I can tell you more, just don't want to say it all right now.

Take ownership and responsibility for what we do in the work of God. Yes, it is the work of God. People say, "Well, it's not our work, it's the work of God." Yes, of course, it is the work of God, that goes without saying, but also it's not somebody else's work, it's our work. It's very much the work that we have been plunged into and that we need to be doing. Our mindset is that this is us doing the work of God. When I was still working primarily with Ministerial Services, one woman here came to me and said, “You know,” this is… “Vick,” she says, “What are they going to be doing about such and such?" I forget what it was, there's some… something upstairs that we were doing as a program. I said, "You know something, there's no them, there's no what they are. The 'they' are us. What are we going to be doing about it?" I said, "Well that's funny," she says, "The 'they' are us now." You know, we should be thinking in terms of, "What are we going to be doing about this," and take that ownership and get away from, "What are they doing?"

When you come to services here, "What are they doing? What are we doing," is the way we need to be addressing this question in talking about this is a work that's done by us. Of course, it's God's work, but it's being done by us. We're the ones who do the planning, we're the once that are trying to figure out how to finance it, we're the ones who are trying to figure out how to bring on people to make it work. If we didn't do it, it wouldn't get done, and maybe then God would have turned away to have somebody else do it.

But the way God works with us, it's a kind of… it is a partnership, where He commissions us to do certain things and we work with Him. And believe me, believe me, ever since I started working here, even more so, I know that God is working here. He's working in my life. He's working in the lives of my fellow workers. He's working in the lives of every single one of our ministers. He's working in the lives of all of our members. It's a living Jesus Christ. And perhaps that's where we really, really need to start and get our life right with God.

Do you ever think about Jesus Christ dying for you so that you can have life eternally? That our faith, who we are, our identity is “Christ-ians,” you know, those who follow Christ, is about the fact that we are followers of Jesus Christ who individually, for you individually, gave His life, and His blood was shed for your sins and for my sins. That I need to be asking forgiveness of what I am and what I think on a daily basis because the model prayer says so and I know that I'm not perfect. And we make ourselves right with Him that we live this, we don't just say it, it's not a platitude, it's not something we just leave behind, or that we hypocritically say one thing but do something else. As I wrote in my column this week for the United News, you know, is our heart and mouth in sync? You know, do we think one thing but say another? They need to be in sync. They need to be in sync in the right way.

And that's the first thing where we need to get right with God, that He gave His only begotten Son for you, and that gives you power because now He lives in you through the Holy Spirit. Because as the mission statement or as a vision statement states, it's through the Holy Spirit. And that is how the Holy Spirit works, it works in each one of us individually, and you cannot have the Holy Spirit unless you've accepted Jesus Christ's death for your sins and through receiving the Holy Spirit through baptism and daily asking for that Holy Spirit to have you continue. This is bedrock, this is so basic. But, you know, I have to realize that I have to go back to this in our professionalism and of being important and doing all these things we can maybe get away from that and be very corporate. But all of us as brothers and sisters have the same… the exact same cross to bear, so to speak, journey to take, path to find, and road to the Kingdom of God.

So whether you write a blog, or edit a video, or write an article, or answer a phone call, or mail out literature, answer questions, or give a sermon, or update a website, give a Bible study, visit someone, or patiently listen to them after services today, do it as something that you own, you do it because you represent the Church. You represent Jesus Christ and you have power over this aspect of your life. You have power over your time, your skills, and good will. Some people, what they can exude is their warmth and kindness to someone else to feel approved, and that is important as well. Some people exude an approval and confidence that helps others. This helps the body grow. Does everything you say and do contribute to the growth of the body? Or does it take away from the growth of the body?

Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Is our demeanor welcoming, approving, inviting, grateful? Are we normal? Are we not weird? We want to get away from all this. We should, you know, look at ourselves and say, "Are we always the needy ones? Are we always the contrarians? The annoying ones to others? Are you a peacemaker in this congregation? Is everything you do working towards bringing peace and exudes a positive spirit in this Church?" Because that positive energy, believe me, adds to a grid of positive energy from everybody and nothing will stop us. Nothing will stop us. We right now stand on the cusp of some phenomenal growth. If I can be so bold to say that. We have a legacy of 18 years of working together, of content that just needs to be reconfigured and to make work right. We are so close to seeing some real phenomenal growth in the Church of God, and I will not rest until I see some of that growth come out.

There's a principle known as Pareto's Principle. That's what I want to get back to here to make yourself a valuable person. It's the 80/20 rule that you may have heard many, many times. It was actually an Italian fellow who figured this out that, you know, 80% of sales are made by 20% of people. Then he noticed of all things, that 80% of his peas in his garden grew in 20% of the plants. And he said, "Well, all nature must be this way, you know, 80% of everything." We find too, that, you know, 80% of our time is spent with 20% of the people that we're in contact with, 80% of problems come from 20% of the people. Well, what I'm saying in this is that get yourself into the 20% of the ones that are productive and good.

I know that every time we speak, whether we speak about participating, about overcoming, really 20% really take it to heart, unfortunately. But, you know, as Christians, I like to beat the odds, I like to beat the statistics. And just I would like to feel that when I'm speaking to a crowd of people like I am today, and over a webcast, that you're going to take it more seriously and say, "I'm not going to settle for mediocrity, I don't have to. That I have been called to something very, very special. And I want to be part of that 20%." We're always looking for good people to be the ones that represent the Church.

There's one thing about being a leader in the Church is that it's based on so many, many things that have to do with your personal conversion. With your personal conversion. You cannot be a leader and you cannot be a sustained leader who leads one life and thinks one way, and who is one way at home, but has a public aura of being something else. That's how we have collapsed from time to time. But if we sync together — God’s Holy Spirit in that that is what we really are, and how we think, and act, and the way we talk to our mates, and our children, and the way that we do our work, and relate to everybody else, nothing will stop us. That's what Christianity is.

You know, one thing that we really want to do, I'm not going to let any cat out of the bag because it's not even gone past the Council of Elders, and it has a lot more discussion needs to take place, but we're trying to find ways right now, more than anything, to engage our audience. Because this is a big question that we have, those of us in management. We have a million people who've come to our website, but where are they? You know, are they here? “Anybody here? Hello?” You know, I hear an echo.

There's something about the fact that we have not engaged people. We haven't got them into our building. And we're just taking a look all the way across the spectrum of steps that people have to take in order to come to the point of making some type of commitment. We say and we ask ourselves, "Where is… what's missing?" We have called this ladder of involvement as climbing a ladder towards, you know, first of all, starting at the lower rungs of getting your first Good News magazine, watching Beyond Today television, you know, somehow coming across a link on the Internet, and then you take the first step by either watching, reading, or clicking, and so far so good, you like what you see, you climb up one rung.

Then you want to find out after listening for a while more about, well, who's behind it, and is there something local perhaps in what we do? And so what do people do? One of the first things that they'll do is they'll go to the Internet, nice safe place. Nobody will know that I'm even looking for this Church. In fact, they make it easy. They make it easy where all I do is type in my zip code, no names, just my zip code, and they'll tell me about what's locally. "Ah-hah, 45103. Look! There's a church that's 10 miles away. Hmm, interesting.” And then they can go to that church and they can click on that church. They don't want to call anybody. They don't want to call Myers. They don't want to call, you know, home office, they'll get telephone numbers, but people are afraid about that.

We have people call us all a time, but really, it's not like a huge volume of calls, people will click because they can come in more anonymously. And then what do they see when they come and click on our website? Well, this has been a big missing rung, it's been a very damaged rung because people when they come to some of our websites, it does not compute with what they have seen. And this is an area that we're going to have to fix pronto. A number one job of making certain that the impression that people have, after they come to our website, is commensurate with the joy that they had or the curiosity they had with the quality that they see when they come and request a booklet, or see a Beyond Today television program.

Peter Eddington just two weeks ago came to our Rotary Club and did a presentation about Beyond Today, and he played clips of three programs. I was astounded. We also had Darris McNeely come. He was one of the programs that he showed clips of. People were even asking Darris McNeely for his autograph. He said, "It's not going to get you far." But they were asking him for his autograph and at Club this last week, they told me, "You know, that was a phenomenal program that you guys have. It's really, really something." In fact, our club president, when the club ended, he said, "Now remember, WGM 8:30 Sunday morning." I mean, he was so impressed by that that he directed everybody towards that.

But okay, so these people who have offices here at Park 50, you know that we have services here. They want to see what it's all about. Will their experience match expectations of what we stand for and how well we express it and how well we do it? I do believe that we have some improvement, in fact, we have a lot of improvement that we need to make as far as how we come across and what we look like. What do they see in many, many areas? My wife and I… actually my wife has just gone through a lot of websites across the country, and we have other people in talking with our leadership in Southern California that have taken a look at our websites and said, "Oh, these things are out of date, the calendar's totally empty. Does this church do nothing?" Another church said, "Well, here are some activities for November, oh good.” We click on them. They're for 2012. What does this tell you about the Church? Or there's a spot there for the pastor, but it's empty. Now, what's happened to him, did he die? Is he not here? What gives? You know, there are so many things that are just not there.

People don't realize how important web... I do everything on the web, maybe you don't. But I pretty much have gotten rid of my old non-copyrighted Bible sources for reference because I'm too lazy to go up to the bookshelf and get it. They're all online. And they're all indexed, I can find everything I want. I'm looking for a church, I'm looking for some leaders, I'm looking for other people, I go online. I just… it's just too much bother to go to a file folder to get something out and the way my mind is now, I forget. And you just don't do it that way, people think on the Internet. And people are going to have to see that we really need to upgrade the way we look on the web right away. That's their first point of contact.

I told the leaders and the ministry in Southern California. I said that our websites are our receptionist. When people come into our office, who do they see first? They see Whitney Creech. We want her to look good. She always looks good. She's always friendly. She always makes you feel good. She's always courteous. That's what we want our websites to be: professional, courteous, responsive, and that sort of thing. Well, that's one thing that we're going to have to improve. Enough for everyone to say, "Whoa. We aren't doing what we're supposed to be doing." So we're going to be going back to those responsible in areas.

And if you're listening, you go to your minister and tell him, "Have you updated the website the way you should have?" You know, what represents our area? What is representing us as a local church area in whatever State of the Union? I do believe that this is a very, very bad broken or missing rung in people's coming to where we are. Another missing rung, another area that we really need to work on overall, this is going to be a major area of discussion at the next round of area conferences, is our church appearance and church services. If people get to the point of where, okay, now they come to a place where they find out where church services are, now what do they see as to what the church service is?

Now with some of our websites, as they have been, as one person told me, their first impression was after they saw the program, "I don't want to go to this church. I don't know what they're about, but either their webmaster is… something's really wrong because their website is so out of date." But let's say that they do come to services. You know, what is it that they experience in coming to church services? Do they have a friendly greeter at the door that makes them feel welcome? Believe me, it is so hard to come to a new group of people that you don't know. It is very, very hard. You need to have somebody who will greet you, and then if you're a brand new person, to pass you off to somebody else, "Meet Joe Smith, he's brand new," and have him passed on to somebody else and to make him feel welcome in a proper way.

Then when he makes it into services, what does he see? You know, what type of order does he see? Does he see people just talking to one another, and he's kind of on the outs? And we have gotten to the point of where we have so few new people who've gotten comfortable in just talking to each other, and really not kind of being on the lookout for others, and paying special attention to those people because most likely there is nobody new in church. But sometimes there is somebody new in church who could be very turned off by not being welcomed, or included or asked proper questions, or be included in the discussion. Then the church service begins. What type of impression does that leave? How does the stage look? How does the pianist sound? How does, you know… what is the special music? What types of things are said by the song leader in bringing dignity to this as a church service?

Again, we may have gotten so used to doing things a certain way that we just don't think of us as really being a public place, but more as an internal family place that only does things very, very locally. We need to think in terms of, "What does this look like to outsiders?" Again, when the rotary saw our Beyond Today television program, and the clips were just really good ones, they were from a program about abortion, another one about runaway children, and I can't remember the third one. But, you know, they really look good. We want to have a certain sense of dignity and professionalism that they see that this is the organization, these are the people that support it, that work on it, and the people who are committed to it.

Then when the songs begin, is it something that really sounds good, or is it just robotic, and he says, "Okay, turn to number 22. Okay, turn to page 64," opening prayer is mechanical? Or is something that appears more natural, people are enjoying, and are gratified to be part of the worshipful experience, and services and people look forward to the first message which is given with dignity as the one was this morning, and to everything else that's done in the program to really glorify God. And people say, "Yeah, yeah, I see that."

All these make impressions. And they are impressions that all the way from the beginning of looking at the website that if they're turned off, they're turned away at any one of those points, you've lost them, they probably will never come back. You know, God certainly is working with them, but it may be a delay of a year or two or they'll go to somebody else. God certainly has His way of working with people, we want them to come and to be with us. We want to share the joy of salvation with them. I want to be able to share my 60 years almost being… no, no, not 60, 50 years of this faith with them; that it works, that it's good, that I don't regret anything that's happened in my life as far as God working with me in my life and to share that experience. And I certainly want to have that way open and cleared for others.

We also have to ask ourselves a couple more things. We have to be, every single one of us, open to some type of evaluation. And I say, "Well why is he talking about that?" Well, let me explain because being evaluated and asking certain questions about ourselves is good, and proper, and something that could be very, very difficult. In fact, we've just recently had employee assessments here. We haven't had something like this in a long, long time and some people are fearful of just what is this all about. But we just wanted people to talk about their work and so forth, and every single one of them has gone by real well. Peter Eddington, myself, and Roy Holladay have been going through and talking to various employees about their job and have no intention of, you know, telling anybody that they're not doing a good job. In fact, we are so pleased with the work that most everyone is doing, but all of us should ask ourselves the question as we're doing the work of God in not being a hireling, which I had mentioned, before, "I just work here." We all ought to be open to be evaluated and ask ourself… or the question of how we are doing.

I'd like you to turn to John 10:11. John 10:11. Find that Christ said some very, very interesting things about workers, workers in the gospel. "I am the good shepherd." John 10:11, "The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them." There's something very special about all of us working not only when it's full-time, but also in holding the body and to hold the Church together, that we don't feel like we just are here because we're here because of friends, who are here just because of... you know, we just want to keep the Sabbath, whatever, we're here on a mission. We're here on a very, very important mission of doing something much bigger and greater than just being here in church services.

Because if you read the vision statement, it talks about the thought of it is much higher than just another good place to come to for church. It's a place that's the crucible, it is the incubation point of bringing many children to glory, and are you doing your part in bringing that about? Well here, Jesus Christ talked about Himself as a good shepherd who gave His life for the sheep. And He literally did for you, and me, and everyone. And we need to stop thinking of ourselves in any kind of terms of we're just biding our time, "I just do this is a job," and don't feel a sense of commitment or the sense of very strong commitment. And if things don't go right and if things are hard sometimes, which they will be, we don't just throw our hands up and leave and run, we say, "What can I do to make this better? What can I do to turn this around?"

One of the things that I have done as president in my personal thoughts, I'm just sharing my thoughts, is that I don't want to just see this thing coast for the next three years. What can I be doing better? What I do better to implement or to effect positive constructive change? What can I do to change and improve our environment? I'm trying to do all the best I can with employee relations, with some of the areas that we want to go into with expanding our media, as I mentioned, talking about the process of engaging our audience, which is, I see I won't have time at all to discuss that. We want to do those things and we want to do them soon. We want to improve our appearance on the web. We want to improve our church services. We're not doing things to change or to do things aimlessly just to do things different, we want to do them right and we want to do them better. That's what we have to do.

Verse 13 of John 10, "The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep." Even Jesus Christ realized that there would be people like that. And this is a reference to pastoral care. There are pastors that He was referring to here that really cared for the sheep, they would give their life for the sheep. I'm not going to do anything to hurt this congregation, I'm not going to do anything to cause harm to it. Others will say, "It's a good job." I’ve go three more years till retirement, I got to just hang on.

Christ said in verse 14, "I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and I'm known by My own." One of the skill sets of a good pastor is that the people know he's a good pastor. And he knows the people as well. He knows them very well. He's visited with them, they've counseled with him. If hardships have come to their lives, they've talked to the pastor about them. He knows His sheep, I'm known by my own. Verse 15, "As as the Father knows Me, even so, I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep." This is Jesus Christ's view of pastoral care. He was willing to give His life for the sheep. And then He says too, "Oh, by the way,” “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd." How that's all going to come about, I don't know, but there are other people that Christ works with.

I had an interesting discussion with somebody of another group here just this past week about how are we all going to get together. And I say right now we're still living in too good of times. We're still fat and sassy, you know, we all have our views, and discussions, and philosophies, and everything, we're not ready to get together. I'm ready any time, and we have tried to make forays with other groups and talk to leaders and so forth. I think the day is coming when that will happen. There'll come a time when there'll be great tribulation. There will come a time when things won't be so easy, and then issues about who's really in charge and exactly, you know, what do you believe about this will not be so important. It'd be like, "I love you,” I think security. “Let's all be one,” but not until that time.

It's interesting that in wartime cultures in the Philippines, when they were going through the siege of the Japanese, and they suffered a great deal, a lot of persecution, a lot of people died. And the people said, "You know..." This is after now, after the war and survivors had a discussion with one another. They said, "You know, we would never want to go through that again. But you know something, while we were going through that tribulation, we sure appreciated the brotherhood, and friendship, and people helping one another, and people being there to support one another when we were all facing the same danger.”

I have all kinds of stories I could tell about my parents as well. We have to feel that when we are in this church at whatever level, whether you're just sending out magazines, or you're working the stuffing machines down here, or fulfilling literature requests, that you have a sense about this as, "This is my business. And this is important to me. I'm responsible for it and in order for it to succeed, I've got to take full responsibility for it." I talked to a small business owner, actually wasn't as small as I thought at first, he had about a dozen people working for him. But, you know, he said this, he started it maybe like two, three, four years before that time. He says, "Every day I go into work, I realize this whole business depends upon me. I've hired a lot of people, but none of them really has a sense that I do about this business. That if I would just kind of think like they do, it would collapse in a short order." But he's always looking for how he could make it better, how he could save money here, how he could cut expenses there, how he could, you know, postpone something else. You know, he's just always trying to figure out how to make it successful.

Are we doing that ourselves? And we've had to. We… I just went through our audit this past… which was completed this last year for the year 2012. And I have to say, thank you to everybody who was able to help us through the real belt-tightening year, where we spent $2.4 million less in 2012 and the year before, in real belt-tightening. In order to get things going again, we want to increase that, we want to help our employees, we want to get the gospel out. But, you know, people really stuck together, they disregarded budgets from the standpoint of, "Just because it's in the budget, we got to spend it." You know, what people really were careful about expenses, churches were careful about expenses. Those of us, you know, who had to travel so far used frequent flyer miles.

So we really cut our expenses down a lot the past year. And, you know, I look upon that year as a year of retrenchment. You know, it was a good experience, it was a good feeling of knowing that we did not have to spend all we did. Oh, it was tight, and was uncomfortable, and, you know, it was… we couldn't do all things we wanted to, and we have the contact we wanted to with everybody, but we were able to make turnarounds. We have to feel like we own our business and we are responsible for our business.

Whatever job that you are doing in the Church, you have to ask yourselves the question, "What is my job actually accomplishing? How does it add to our bottom line?" Our bottom line is not dollars and cents, our bottom line is sons and daughters for the Kingdom of God. "Am I doing something that is totally irrelevant even though it might be something that's been done traditionally, or is it something that adds to the bottom line?" A person will look upon that kind of addition to a bottom line as very, very important to being a visionary in helping bring people along as a whole church effort and bringing them along towards salvation.

Yes, we have an amazing work, which is not shutting down. I might say this, if anybody thinks that we're somehow in some kind of shutdown mode because things are slow, forget it. Here's what Christ will say to those that He meets upon His return. Matthew 24, please turn there. Mathew 24:45 and he asks a question to you, to me, "Who then is a faithful and wise servant,” Matthew 24:45, faithful and wise employee, faithful and wise church member, "whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?” You know, all of us have been given something, some resources, and, you know, to whom much is given, much is required. And I realize that passage also. I know that much has been given to me and much is required. So I'm on the block probably more than anyone.

"Blessed," verse 46, "is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing." That when Christ returns, He wants to see us all at our desks. He wants to see us all working hard. He wants to see us with plans in progress. He wants to see us looking out over the next 18 months of what we want to accomplish. And not be shutting down. "Assuredly," verse 47, "I say to you that he will make him a ruler over all his goods. But if that evil servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying is coming…’” Hey, things are slow, things aren't moving, things have been upsetting, maybe we shouldn't be preaching the gospel, maybe we shouldn't be fulfilling the Matthew 28:19-20 vision or mission. You know, “maybe that’s for the two witnesses, and as a result, let's not do anything, let's just kind of collect the contributions of the Church and take care of ourselves.” No way. If anybody thinks that I can buy into that, you're talking to the wrong person.

"But if that evil servant says, 'My master delays coming,' and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards," he loses it, no longer is converted, he's reveling, he's profligate. So “the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him in an hour that he's not aware of, and he will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Doesn't sound very good, does it? I’d like to conclude… again, I want to talk about this subject more because there are several points here that I still really would like to talk more about as we develop them, about what this church will be doing. What a team of dedicated people for media, from ministerial development, and from every other aspect of the churches wants to do.

But I’d like to conclude from President Kennedy's inaugural speech, which I really recommend that you go find, just type in "The Ask Not Inaugural Speech" on Google, and you'll find all kinds of versions… all kinds of places to find it. And it's very short. I was surprised how short it was. He concludes with this paragraph, "Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.”