You Move the Mountain

I've seen you move. You move the mountains and I believe I'll see you do it again. I cry when I listen to that song. I've listened to that song over and over again for the last two years. Two years ago, when I saw Josiah Sleeper sing that during COVID, I said when we come back together as a Boston Church for the first time and we talk about what he wants to do with this church Josiah, I want you to sing that song before I come out to preach. God has been moving mountains in the Boston Church for the last 40 years. God's moved the mountains of local evangelism. We have gone from a church of 30 people to 2200 people in New England and Boston where churches are closing their doors. God has moved amazing mountains. God has moved the mountain of church segregation here in the Boston Church. This is not what church in New England looks like. Don't be deceived. This is a miracle of God Almighty. God has moved the mountain of world missions. 70 plus churches and millions and millions of dollars given by you and people given by you. Boston Church for over 40 years, God has moved the mountain of maturing, conviction and disciples here.

We have over a thousand disciples that have been disciples for 25 plus years. So many mountains have moved. I've seen you move. You move the mountains and I believe I'll see you do it again. I do believe it. Do you believe it this morning, Boston Church? You know, you could clap if you believe it. Give a clap. You know, we are going to be talking this morning, this afternoon about writing the future. And God writes the future. He's been writing the future through every generation that chooses to obey and believe Him. Will we allow Him to do that through us now? Will we allow God to write the future in Boston again? Will we hear his voice? Will we proclaim his name? Will we allow God to write the future?

In the Valley

Can I take you down to the valley? Let me take you down to the valley in 1 Samuel, Chapter 17. It says that Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites, another with a valley between them. A champion named Goliath who was from Gath came out of the Philistine camp his height was six qubits and a span. There were two hills and a valley in the middle. And on one hill stood God's imperfect and flawed people. And on the other hill stood the enemies of God. And down in the valley was Goliath. The world changes down in the valley. It doesn't change up on the hill. It doesn't change sitting on the hill on your couch with a remote control in your hand. Can I get an amen? In the Valley it's scary. David called the valley the Valley of the shadow of death. Nobody wants to go down to the valley of the shadow of death. The valley is where the enemy is. The valley is where the obstacles are. Goliath. Goliath is down in the Valley Boston Church. You know, since the beginning of time, god has asked every generation to take their stand down in the Valley. Here on October 9, 2022, God is asking the Boston Church to stand again down in the Valley. I am so excited to preach to you this message about our 2030 vision. I've literally been waiting to preach this message to you, preparing for it for over a year. In this week, for like the first time in my life, I lost my voice.

I've had so many people praying for me this week because I lost my voice days ago. It started to come back last night. And what I have before you now is all I have to give. But with the voice I have, I'm here to ask you, Boston Church, will you write the future?

The First 20 Years

You know, the first 20 years of our church, we're going to talk a little bit about it. The first 20 years of our church, the 80s and 90s, they were marked by explosive growth. It was a spirit moving time full of heroes. It was also an incredibly immature time in the history of our church. Most of the oldest members of our church were about 25 years old at the time. I'm 47, and I would be ancient by the standards of our church in the 80s and the 90s. Seriously, seriously, the immaturity of our church in those times took its toll in the early 2000s. We had to deal with sins that we had to repent of. The last 20 years of our church were marked by a deepening and maturing time. Correcting of mistakes, a desire to get more biblically grounded, to let gifts like that of the elder and the teacher make a more prominent stand.

It's also been a Spirit Led time. Can I get an amen? We were led through it by men like Windham Shaw, my father-in-law, and Doug Arthur, who was my mentor for most of the last decade. However, that time was marked by a cooling off in the mission in our fervor to see the world won the last 20 years. What are the next 20 years going to be marked by? You know, there's a couple terrible quotes that I'm going to read to you right now by a man named Arnold Cook. He wrote a book that Wyndham gave to me 15 years ago called Historical Drift. It's a super inspiring book if you'd like to be depressed.

Historical Drift

Let me read you these quotes.

Historical Drift is the inherent tendency of human organizations to depart over time from their original purposes. At every level of Christian living and ministry, time takes its toll. Complacency gradually replaces commitment. The desire to be served subtly displaces the desire to serve. Monetary motivation slowly takes priority over ministry. Wants evolve into needs and through it all, Historical Drift becomes the winner.

There's that old song by the Rolling Stones, time is on my Side. No, it's not. It's not on our side. Time is not on our side. You know, Larry, Melissa and Stewart just did an amazing job laying on our vision, and they spoke of some of the sobering realities facing our Boston church. Truth is, these realities are being faced by most of the churches in our family and churches all around the world. Our status as a church filled with transforming people, being sanctified by God's spirit is in jeopardy. Many among us are stuck in lives that don't satisfy, in marriages that aren't growing, in unrepentant sins, in unchanging characters. We are a church of 2200 people. We have been that for nearly two decades. 2200 people that convert about 100 to 200 a year.

Do you know what that means? That means that most of you are not involved in the mission. That means that most family groups are not helping people become Christians. It means that most of our mission work is being done by a very small number of people here in this room. Our church is aging. 70. Stewart went through the numbers. 71% of our churches is over 35 years old. It's not that we don't love the veterans. We love the veterans, but we're not reaching the youth. These are hard realities. These are hard realities, but they're true. When the vision team looked at these realities, we were all ten of us, sitting in a room. And I had asked Larry to be my partner in this vision construction because he's so amazing at vision. But he was in the room as we were going through some of these things and as we talked about stuck marriages and the lack of growth and the aging, after we got through the first sort of set of data, Larry just said, dang. And then we got through the second set of data and he did a little louder dang. And then we got through the aging bar and he just went, dang.

It's Okay to Say Dang

This is Larry Reid dunking a basketball with his short shorts back in the 80s. Dang. It's okay to say dang every once in a while. It's okay to look at the hard realities in the church and say, oof. We don't speak these things to you because we're hopeless. We're just the opposite. I am just the opposite. I feel deeply resolved and faithful that God wants to write the future through us. But there are some who say there are some who have told me, don't tell the church these discouraging truths that we're aging or that we're stuck or that we're not growing. It'll just demoralize the church. Don't tell them that. Is that true? Is that true? Would you just rather me would you rather me tell you there's no Goliath? Goliath doesn't exist. There's no goliath. He's not down there in the valley yelling up at us going, you can't do it, church. You can't grow. You can't reach the next generation. You'll never sanctify the body. Is that what you want? Or are we gonna take a look at this thing and write the future?

The Old and Young Alike

Ezra, chapter three. This has been a passage that's been very near and dear. I've been preaching this as I go all over the Boston Church. In verse ten, I'm going to skip through that a little bit, but in verse ten it says, when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they took their places to praise the Lord. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord. All the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. Check this out in verse twelve. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads who had seen the former temple wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping because the people made so much noise, and the sound was heard from far away.

This is a story about old and young coming together to build the kingdom of God in their time. Old folks were there. These were people these were people that were building amidst rubble that hadn't seen that had seen, rather, the temple 70 years earlier.

So these people had to be 80, 85 years old, building the temple, leaving the comforts of Babylon to go all the way across wilderness to build again. Heroes, endurance. We have a lot of folks like that in this room, and we need you. We don't need you to be done. We need you to be ever engaged. You know, it's glorious to get baptized. It is. But it's much more glorious to be around 30 years later. For real. Some of you older folks, you've all seen not some of you. You've all seen friends leave. You've seen church go through ups and downs. You've seen your children leave in some cases, and yet you're still here holding to the truth. My bible says, Jesus says, you got to love me more than mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister. If you're here and your kid left and we're praying for that kid to come back, but if you're here, you don't need to hang your head in shame. You're a hero. But there were old folks there. There were young ones there, people born in Babylon. These kids, these young people, they didn't know what was going on.

They had never worshipped at the temple before, but they heard the call. Leave Babylon. Let's go build the kingdom of God. Sounds good to me. They showed up building. They're building this crummy little temple again. Didn't look half as good as the old one, but they were fired up. Look at what we just did. Look at what we're doing. And they're worshiping together, and they were fired up. And we've got young folks like that in here as well. Young revolutionaries. Are there any among us in here today? Come on, now. And the glory of the leadership of that era, right, was that Zerubel and Joshua who were leading the charge, they didn't go to the old folks say, hey, hey, hey, hey. Stop crying. Don't you see we're fired up here? And they didn't go to the youn folks and say, hey, hey, hey. Don't you see we're doing something deep here? Shut up.

I preach this very verse in the pioneer valley church, and one of the brothers, Kevin Santa Cruz, he came up he came up to me, he was like, I'm so fired up that you preached that sermon, because right before you got up there, I was yelling, come on. And some old lady in the service told me to shut up. I was like, well, that wasn't why I did it. That wasn't why I was saying it. You know, like the leadership back then, if we don't learn to be like this group in Ezra, chapter three, we're never going to write the future.

Not Going Back, but Not Standing Still

Boston Church, we've got an opportunity like we've never had before. We're not trying to go back to the 90s, but we ain't trying to stay here either. There's a wisdom and a maturity among us, and we got to trust that wisdom and maturity. But there's also a faith and a vision and a strength among us that we've got to let run ahead. And if we don't stop and we don't stop every time some young rattler goes, I'm going to share my faith with 100 people, hey, don't do that. You know what? We made mistakes doing that before. I know. And James and John wanted to burn down a Samaritan village, but you don't see Jesus going, you know what? Let's kick these guys out.

But we also, every time an older, wise person goes, hey, hey, young one, you might want to think about this. Oh, they're not radical. We don't want to do that either. Ezra, chapter three. We got to come together to hear his voice, proclaim his name and write the future.

Hearing His Voice

Can I talk to you about our vision here? Let me talk to you about hearing his voice. One Samuel 17. This is what we're going to go through here. One Samuel 17, verse 22. It says, David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and asked his brothers how they were. As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance and David heard it. And David heard it. If you skip down to verse 32, it says, David said to Saul, eventually, let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him.

David comes on the scene and he hears what everybody else was hearing. But when he heard it, it made a difference. Because before David ever heard Goliath's voice, you know whose voice he had been hearing? David was out there under the stars as a shepherd boy, singing his songs, writing those psalms, praying to God and hearing his voice. And that's why it didn't scare David. David shows up in One Samuel, chapter 17, and he is the best version of himself because he had heard his voice. We are all very sinful people, aren't we? We are. And God loves us. Thank God. We're all very sinful people, but God loves us and he gives us this opportunity by simply hearing his voice, to be more than what we are. I love that passage in early Corinthians. I think it's First Corinthians three or four. And Paul says, Are you acting like mere men? As though they weren't mere men. They were men and women, but they were more than that, because in Jesus we have the opportunity through hearing his voice, to be more than what we are. There's a lot of voices speaking very loudly to us here in 2022.

It's like you ever look at the stars when you're in Kenmore Square? You can't see any. You got Fenway Park right there. You got all these lights, you got all the businesses. You can't see any stars. It's light pollution. And that's what a lot of us are doing, hearing his voice. There's so many other voices that you're taking in. It's time to recommit to our devotion to hearing God again.

I've spent 27 years, I have not done anything, I've not done anything as consistently in 27 years as I have having a quiet time and praying every single day. I haven't done it every single day, but I've come close. I haven't come close to doing anything for 27 years? There's a couple of things that you can't mention behind the pulpit that you've done. But she liked that right there. We've got to recommit to our devotion to the Bible in prayer. It's the only reason that I'm here. Family groups. Family groups. Small groups. We are not a church with small groups. We are a church of small groups because we believe that one another Christianity is one of the pillar things that God has given us to help us sanctify, grow and change. We've got to recommit to this again.

We got to get back to family groups where everybody shows up. You're wearing your family group leaders out. They spend all their time their good family group leadership is dragging you to family group. That's not what they're supposed to be doing with their time and energy. Show up. We've got to get family groups where discipling is real again, one another relationships are real. I know, and I'm going to talk about this. You just clap. Amen. But there are words like discipling that are like triggering. Somebody told me the other day that the word evangelist is triggering. Well, I'm an evangelist, so I'm triggering, I guess. But we need our young families to transform. We got to be getting our parenting cue not from the latest podcast. I'll show you a picture. We're doing some new things. We just hired Mike and Kristen Lamb. Yes, there's a number of new things happening. One of them is it's the first time we've ever hired staff to exclusively look at the young families of our church. Zero to twelve years old. Just how are the families doing? This? Is what they've been hired or they moved out of regional leadership to just look at this for the Boston Church. It's a great idea.

They're passionate about it. They've been made by God to do it. And there are more plans that we've got. But ultimately it's about you hearing his voice in the decisions you make to do that down in the valley. Goliath's voice is screaming out in our world. We've got to hear God's voice. We have to proclaim his name.

God is Crazy about His Glory

You know, in one Samuel, one seven, David gets down there in the valley and Goliath is speaking to him. And then he says to the Philistine in verse 45, it says, you come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day, the Lord will hand you into my hands, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day, I will give you the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the wild animals. And check this out, and the whole world will know that there's a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it's not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you all in our hands.

You know what I love about this little speech that David comes up with on the fly as this giant is coming right at him? It's just, you see what motivated David to get down into the valley. He wanted the whole world to know. He believed he would have victory because God wanted the whole world to know. You know God, you know what God is crazy about? God is crazy about his glory. If God is not and it's not because God is arrogant, it's because God knows that unless he's glorified, unless he's visible, unless he's seen, unless he's spoken about, the world won't know. And if the world doesn't know, then no one's getting saved. God wants his name proclaimed Boston Church. God watched his gospel spread. We dream of seeing a church grow from 2200 people today to 3000. Yes. By 2030. By 2030, let's see a church grow again. Let's help all these other small churches that are stuck in not growing to see, wow, the Boston Church grew. We can grow too. I didn't mean to rhyme that, but I did. We dream of family groups that are neighborhood family groups, not family groups were like they're made up of people from, like, 16000 different towns.

You know, I live down in Plymouth, and I'm part of a family group with someone who lives up in Pebity. That's not effective on a lot of levels, and it wastes a lot of gas. We need catalysts and shepherds filling our family groups engaged together. We dream of a recommitted people that knows how to teach their neighbors conversion. We're going to unify the Boston Church study series against our first principles and retrain that across the Boston Church. But we need every we need every family group to commit again to converting two people a year. Two people every year. We have family groups of 15-20 people, two people every year.

How God has Grown Us

In 2021, we saw 114 souls saved to the efforts of the Boston Church. So far this year, we've already seen over 120. We're moving in the right direction. This is a picture I want to talk about the metro region for a minute. This is a picture of the Metro region. Metro region led by the Van Lakans since 45 Ad. And now they just gave it over to Brian and Christina Campbell, who are now the region leaders of the Metro region. But this is Jim Mo. Now. He's not in the metro region. Jim Mo is downtown. He's the man, and he's one of our elders downtown. And Jim Moe is an electrician downtown, and one of the apprentices electricians that he works with is Jaime Alvarez. And Jim Mo, who is 57 years old, he's a young looking 57. He reached out to 22 year old Jamie, invited her to church. She lived down in the Framingham area and started coming, and as you could see, she got her sins forgiven down there.

Awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. The Metro region saw ten souls converted in the region last year, all of last year. They've seen 15 souls converted already this year. And before you clap, my voice is I can't speak over your clapping, you know. Twelve of the 15 people that have been converted in the metro region this year are under 35 years old. There's no campus ministry in the Metro region. That's not through campus. That's just and most of those people were met by people like Jim Mo. True Blue, over, 35 year old veteran disciples who were loving and sharing with and helping young people to find Jesus. Now, we want everybody saved, but it's just a great example that we don't need anybody putting down their torch. We just need everybody raising it up for the next generation. We dream I think I hit pause on my timer. I'm like, wow, I got a lot of time left. I don't think I have that much time. But we've got we dream of every family group converting two people a year. In the campus, I'm going to talk about the campus, but they're doing way more than that. But that's what they should do. But everybody can do two. And we got out of the box plans and adventures and mission teams, but it begins with you.

How We Continue to Grow

And I want to talk for a minute, because I know what some of you think when I start talking about growing to 3000, and we want to see 400 college students, and we want every family group to be fruitful. And we've been going around talking about evangelism goals and things like that, and people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, when we got with the focus group, some of the veteran disciples went, okay, are we going back to something that traumatized me? Why are we talking about numbers? Why are we talking about goals? You know, it's a funny thing if you come up to somebody in the fellowship and say, I want to be a better reader. I want to be a better reader. This year I want to be a better reader. You know what they're going to ask you probably? How many books? How many books are you going to read? How many books am I going to read? How dare you ask me a question like that? What do you mean?

It's just a normal you want to grow in reading, you read books. I'm trying to get in better shape. Hold on. I'm going to humble can I humble myself before you for a moment? Is that okay if I humble myself before you for a moment? I'm going to show you this picture, but just for a moment. But this was me in Orlando trying to we were in Orlando at the conference. There was some intense meetings going on. I decided to go out for a run, and I was trying to encourage some of the brothers. So I got up on the bathtub, snapped that picture, and sent that to them. That's not a picture of me in the best shape of my life. All right, let's get rid of that picture. But, you know, I started to run again. I'm trying to lose weight, and I want to just get in better shape generally. I go for, like, a two mile run. I started doing this, like, two, three months ago. When I put those socks on, my wife is embarrassed of me. She is. Those are called compression socks, and if I don't wear them, I pull my calves. So I wear those stupid looking socks, and I go out in the neighborhood, and I put a mask on so that no one could see my face, and I try to run. And if I don't do that, I break down. In, like, a two mile run I'll stop, like, four or five times, and I look at myself in my phone, and I tell myself, affirmations, you can do it, Kevin. No, I don't do that. But if you have to do that for yourself, God bless you, you know? But I started going, oh, I stopped five times this time. You know what my goal is next time? Stop three times or four? Stop. I can do it now. I don't even stop. Whoa. I actually love going to the gym. I could probably bench right now about 265lbs. Some of you can run 6 miles, but you can't do that, so back off. Back off. But I'm just saying, if you're out of shape, you can't grow unless you start going, I want to grow. I need to grow. This is how I'm going to grow. I'm going to tell people that I want to grow. I want to try to run 2 miles and get all the way through. You have to do these kind of things. Now,

if you're Valkoha and you've been running marathons all your life, then God bless you and leave me alone. But I'm trying to grow. And when we shared this with the focus groups, if people were struggling, why do we have to say all these things and do it like this. And Jason polyarko blessed his heart. He's a 35 year oldish maybe, 40 ish brother down in the Soko region. And he kind of went in the focus groups. He raised his hand he said, I don't understand why everybody's struggling with this idea of getting to 3000 and growing again and all these kind of things. He goes, Seems inspiring to me. And I said in front of everybody, I said, Jason, let me ask you a question. He said yeah. So how many years you've been a Christian? He went nine. There it is. You missed that whole episode where some of us were beating each other over the head over issues like this.

It's Time to Decide Who We Are

It's time to decide who we are. I have this other picture that I can't show you of myself, and I'm, like, a junior in high school. My mother took it. She's right down front, and I'm on my uncle's diving board. I'm a junior playing football in high school, and I'm ripped, and I'm going like this, and I have, like, a six pack. That was an awesome picture. I've shown my kids that picture, and they're like, you looks like this?

That's right. I did. Never again. But there was a day. That kid back then he didn't have to worry about. I used to make these milkshakes, and we saw the Rocky movie, and we would put all these raw eggs in the milkshakes. You know, and we'd do it because we were trying to gain weight. I couldn't even gain weight back then. We were like, we need to gain weight to play football, middle linebacker. I couldn't even do it. And we were doing football practice every day. I was probably burning 20 calories a day out there. That's not where I live today. That's not who I am today. You got to decide who you are. You're just in the oh, I'm just in the best evangelistic shape of my life. Yeah, right you are. You're not. You're not. Some of you have not been in a Bible study in years. I don't believe in setting evangelism goals or pushing myself. Oh, yeah, yeah. God moves in spite of those things. Yeah. When's the last time you had a visitor to church? Don't give me that. You've got to grow. You have to grow. You're not doing the ministers.

Oh, you know what? I'll do it when I see the ministers leading the way. Let me help you out. The ministers are leading the way. I've been with the ministers for a while now. We're setting evangelism goals, bringing visitors to church. I'm not saying this to Boast. I'm just letting you know I've been fruitful three times in the last I have met three people, one of them with my beautiful, wonderful 13 year old daughter. But three people I met her. I invited her to church. It counts. You better believe it. In the last twelve to 18 months that have become a Christian. The ministers are out there. Are you following their example? This is an Ezra three moment. You got to go. I know I've got some stuff in my past, but this is right. This is biblical. Let's go. I'll let you lead me. We need that from you if we're going to proclaim his name.

Writing The Future

Lastly, I want to talk to you about writing the future. Second Samuel 23, are you still with me? I know it's late. We're going to close up right here. Second Samuel 23, verse eight. We're jumping out of one Samuel, but look at this.

This is the end of David's life. Verse eight. Second Samuel 23, verse eight. These are the names of David's mighty warriors. David. And it goes on to talk about them. You skip down to verse 15, starts talking about a couple of them. David longed for water and said, oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem. So the three mighty warriors broke through the Philistines lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem, and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink it. Instead, he poured it out before the Lord. If you skip down to verse 20, it says, Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, a valiant fighter from Kabzeal, performed great exploits. He struck down Moab's two mightiest warriors. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion.

You know, the chapter begins with the words, we didn't read them, but the verse one of this chapter says these are David's last words. And it gives you his last words. And then it skips to this section talking about the mighty words. And this was David's last words and his legacy.

When David arrived, there were giants in the valley that put the existence of God's people at stake. There was real danger for God's people and no one would fight that giant. No one did. David did. Fast forward to the end of David's life now, and this is his legacy. Now, not only are people fighting giants when it's really needed, but they're also putting their lives at risk to get cups of water and going down in a pit to kill a lion. Why? Well, what's up with that? Courage and faithfulness had been passed down to the next generation. Now it was invoked to do these kinds of things. When he arrived, no one would do it when it was really needed. Now, even when it's not needed, it had just become a cultural thing. It had been passed down. David had written the future. We got to write the future and pass on our convictions to the next generation and we're on our way. This is a picture and you know these people. This is COAL, chance of a lifetime. That's what Cole stands for, chance of a lifetime, the first group and Chance of a Lifetime, the second group.

These are these radical, young, crazy people living in Attics for free with no heat in the Boston Church, making nothing. Eden, Edin has done. She's the only sister that's done both of them. She's in both pictures. She did the first time she was at Tufts in Central, and now she's up at, UMass Lowell with Northeast. She came up to me and she said, Kevin, after she was signed up for the second round, kevin, thank you so much for letting me do this. I was like, for letting you work for the church for nothing and live in questionable corners and preach the word all day? Oh, you're you're more than welcome. You're more than welcome. Radical stuff. Radical, radical stuff. This next picture is a picture of the campus ministry downtown. Just baptisms. I mean, it's just last fall, fall of 2021. We were going into the semester with 65 campus disciples in the downtown campus ministry. And in those two semesters that school year, those 65 kids converted 40 of their friends on the downtown schools. We went into this fall with 95 college students. It's our dream to see the Boston Church campus ministry, 400 people. That's never been done before. We never had 400 in the Boston Church. And that's not just downtown. And what's happening is not downtown. We have got revivals going on at UMass Law, at Bridgewater State, at Tufts. There have been more conversions at Tufts over the last couple of years through the work of the Central region and Ryan and Tyler and Sagovia and that whole band of radical people than we've ever seen before. There are all these athletes being converted there at Salem State. Pedro just took his band of crazies up there from the Spanish up to Northeast. There's a revival happening. Thriving campus ministries. Not just downtown, but in all the suburbs. Churches all over the country lack young people, and they are looking for young staff, and there's nowhere to be found. That is not our problem in Boston. We dream of sending 100 people into the ministry over the next eight years from Boston all over the ICOC. We want to do this for the church's. New life in the singles professionals, yoPros Impact Ministries of the Boston Church. Mike and Karen Arsenal. They're baptizing their third born today. Maya. Maya Arsenal.

He's getting baptized. That'll be three for three right there for Mike. Last year, we saw 13 teams in the Boston Church get baptized. Maya will be our 21st this year. Revival, we're putting staff there. 20 years ago, we had so many young families in the Boston Church. Where did those young families come from? They came from singles campus and teens that were converted that fell in love with each other inside the church. Not all. We converted a number of young families, but most of our young families ministry came from that group. And we've got to see a revival in that group. Can I get an amen? If there's a lot we're doing, there's a lot you're going to hear about. If you're young, can I speak to you? Be inspired. Be inspired. Be willing. Lose the cynicism and get engaged. If you're older, if you're a veteran, celebrate the direction. Don't feel left behind. We ain't leaving you behind. If we're going to get the 30, we can't leave you behind. We need you to work with us. Join us in raising this generation up like parents raising children. There is no idea if the focus is to raise a child you don't think I guess the parents work is done.

No. We need you to help raise the generation up. And I want to ask you to support with your hearts and support with your money. You know, people are moving to Boston because of what we're doing. You may not know that, but over the last couple of years, we've had a lot of people move in because they like the spirit of what we're building and what we're laying out to you today. We can continue to fill the campuses and the singles and the teens all or even around the country, but we need your money to do it. We actually do. This isn't time to not give. This is time to give. There's a vision that God wants to fulfill, and we need you now more than ever before. Please give.

In Conclusion

Hear his voice, proclaim his name, and write the future. Is the future set in stone, or can we change it? I believe we can. Please join me. Let me show you this picture as we end. This is Ms. Rachel Cooper and Malvina Lipsch, mother and daughter, and they've been disciples for a long, long time. Ma Rachel on the left, she passed away a couple weeks ago, full of life at 92 years. And their story represents so much of what I hope we fulfill in this vision. Malvina heard his voice and became a Christian in 1983. She and her cousin Nancy and others were zealous to proclaim his name. She was persecuted by her family. That sweet woman on the left was persecuting her vigorously, but Malvina persevered and Miss Rachel eventually heard his voice as well and was baptized. Malvina and mom and cousins reached out to cousin Ken Cooper. He heard his voice eventually. This next picture, this is Ken's daughter Katrina on her wedding day marrying Josephus. And Josiepus was a heathen at, UMass, Boston that Katrina reached out to and invited to church. He came to church. He sat down with Steve Schnell to study the Bible and proceeded to teach Steve the studies until Steve said, no, no, no, I'm here to teach you. And he went, oh. He eventually became a Christian, and they had a son named Julius. This next picture I love. This is Josephus and Katrina. You can go to the next picture. Just leading a bunch of heroes at UMass Boston. They are leading the campus ministry at UMass Boston now, just being heroic.

This next little video. This is their son Julius. I taught him what you're about to see, I did. When I'm with Julius, this is what I do to him. You. And he goes, you. And I've been teaching him that since he was born. I have you. If you listen to the video Joseph's watched by and go, where did he learn that from? Katrina knew. She snapped the video and sent me a picture. You know, I wonder if Malvina knew in 1983 that the decision she made in the Valley would have the potential to write the future for this young kid, being able to be raised with the gospel. We're down in the Valley, Boston Church, and we have got decisions to make. And what young Julius said is true. This is all about God, but it's also all about you and the decisions that you are going to make. Will you hear his voice, proclaim his name and join with us and God in writing the future?