Annual Celebration Pastor’s Message - LONG!

Where Are We Now?
So, in the Hansen household our baby is due on October 25th. It is so exciting. I have been playing footsies with our little girl almost every day (feeling for every kick!). And as we get ready to welcome this new family member, our household is changing. Our house is about 1,600 sq ft. so we moved Toby and Noah into the same room to share the room; they got bunk beds. At first it was exciting – you know a slumber party every night, then it was difficult, because the little one has different needs than the older one… And now they are getting used to it. And as parents, we’re helping them to see that they are making these adjustments and sacrifices for love. For love for this other little person we haven’t even really met yet- except me – we play footsies. And my wife is in ‘nesting’ mode – so we just painted the living room for the 7th time. We re-assembled the crib, we’re about to paint the Baby room light pink! It’s work, effort, sacrifice, adjustment, but it is all for love. But, any way we shake it, it is a time of adjustment in our household.

And it is a time of adjustment in the household of the Lamb’s Fellowship of Murrieta.

Here we were – just a year ago – a church with about 250 or 300 people. Basically, we had about 150 adults, and 150 children and youth. We now have about 350 adults, about 125 junior-high-ers and high-schoolers, and about 125 children. Many of us have felt a bit like my Toby and Noah – sort of ‘sqeezed’… and we’re having to learn how to adjust to what it means to be a church family with a home – base facility; learning what it means to live up to our mission of loving and leading people to a life-changing connection with Christ. We’re having to learn how to adjust to what it means to share this body-life with 350 adults (and more!) instead of 150 adults.

A long-timer in our church, Tony Kestle, just said to me in the hallway between services on 9/16, “You know, there was a time when I would see every family that came in – and I would know each one of them. By name. I’d know just where to walk them in and seat them because I knew by heart where their family always sat… Today – I look at all these people coming in and I am thinking ‘I don’t know half of these people’.” Then he paused and said, “And that’s so cool”. Now the reality is, some of us have perceived what Tony said as well; what is our response?

My oldest son, Toby, has gotten used to sharing his room with his brother, and is also willing to say “That’s so cool I get to share a room with my brother so there’s space for this new sister”. Yet at the same time, these days I have been having talks with him and will be having more talks with him to give him a chance to put into words some other feelings he may be having, like ‘I’m sad that I lost having my own room’ and ‘I am a little afraid that when this new baby comes, you might not pay any attention to me’ and ‘I’m excited that we’re going to get a new little girl, but what if she stays up all night crying and wakes me up all night? I won’t be happy about that’.

I mean, of course we’re doing it all for love – and we are going to love this little girl, but it’s important to recognize that one stage – the stage of being a ‘just two boys’ family HAS ENDED. And of course, with our church, we are going to look at all those people coming through the doors – that we don’t know- and we’re going to say ‘that’s so cool! That’s what we did this for (built this facility) and do this for (operate with an outreach mentality)!’ but at the same time, I want us to acknowledge something and let the thought be expressed that our time of being a small church with 250 people HAS ENDED. It’s healthy to just pause and say ‘I recognize that, and while I am excited for the good things to come with this next stage, I’m sad a little bit because I also loved that time when we were a little community at the strip mall’.

Would you just all sigh – and say ‘we’re not a small church anymore’.

That’s part of making this adjustment – acknowledging where we’ve come from. If we do that well, we’ll also remember why we are where we are: because we prayed for it, asked God for it, believed God for it – and He is faithful!

You know, adjustment never stops. It’s not like ‘well, we just need to get adjusted, and then things will stop changing and be normal again’. No – here’s the reality: Dynamic Shift is the New Normal. Fluidity is the new normal.

In my family – we’ll bring this new baby girl home, and we’ll adjust to getting up 3 times a night to feed her. Then we’ll adjust to Toby learning how to decipher our code as we spell out words to get past him (5 year olds learn to read!). Then we’ll be adjusting to this little girl becoming a crawler, having to use those gates again. Then we’ll adjust to Noah going off to school. Then we’ll adjust to the little girl starting to talk – maybe even talk back, I’ll adjust to how Daddy will do discipline with Daddy’s little girl. Help me Lord. But you get the point: Dynamic Fluidity is the new normal. Actually, it always was.

And for us at Lamb’s, God is going to allow us to make these adjustments, then some others, continuing to be His people in this little corner of the Body of Christ His bride called Lamb’s Murrieta, continuing to make room for others to join us on the journey, continuing to make room for ‘them’ to become ‘us’.

LOOKING AHEAD:
Again – here we are in this situation where we have twice as many adults, teenagers, and children as we did a year ago – growing in the Lord in our church. Why are we here? Because we WANTED this and prayed for it – and God is faithful! And where are we going: We’re going forward in this journey of loving and leading people to a life-changing connection with Christ. Here are some things I am praying for to become reality in this coming year – please join me in prayer over these hopes:

• For the Lord to cause us to become an apostolic movement fueled by the Holy Spirit, multiplying healthy disciples and groups. By apostolic, I mean ‘sent out by the Lord in the power of the Spirit to accomplish things that could only be accomplished by His Spirit at work in us and through us…’
• Be a healthy church where Jesus Christ is honored, the lost are saved, disciples are growing in Christ, people are enjoying great fellowship, growth challenges, inspiring teaching and worship on the weekends, and where children and youth are also experiencing all of the above.
• Send out 100 people to experience being on a mission trip; Mexico, Inner City LA, Africa, you name it.
• Grow to 30 LifeGroups ( we currently have 12)
• Develop a Men’s Ministry with 50 men connected and growing in the Lord.
• Our Choir to reconvene and sing at least 4 times
• See 50 people to come to Christ – in our ministry or through our people
• 6 church-wide MERCY outreaches to the poor and disenfranchised in our valley
• For us to resource a church plant in Arbegona Ethiopia to get established
• For us to begin to sponsor the development of a school, orphanage and clinic through Empowering Lives International or FMCSC in Sudan or Ethiopia.
• Double our giving to missions to $100,000 (currently about $50,000 through direct support and FMCNA giving)
• Pay off all of our debt on the building; if not all, I’ll be glad if we can pay off $100,000 more OF THE PRINCIPAL (we currently service facilities debt of $2,550,000; total project cost was $4,400,000 – wouldn’t it be awesome to have our church have no mortgage?).
• Add a third worship service so we can adjust some more and make space for others, specifically, to accommodate a total of 700 adults and 300 youth and children in our weekend services.
• See many sweet moves of the Holy Spirit in our worship gatherings
• Develop a quarterly ‘afterglow’ worship gathering for more free-flowing worship with time for ministry
• Do 3 forward-thinking outreach events like our ‘Comedy with a Cause’ night (that’s #1!)
• See all of our staff team adequately compensated; add to the staff team as needed
• quadruple our Good Sam giving to $10,000 per year (benevolence giving to local and church families in need)
• Develop a Servant Evangelism ministry to engage our community with acts of kindness and love outside our walls on an ongoing basis;
• See 100 people sent out from our Body on specific Servant evangelism projects
• Develop a street evangelism team that will preach the gospel
• Develop an opportunity for training and experience in Spiritual Gifts such as healing, prophecy, knowledge and Wisdom
• Develop a comprehensive advertising strategy and begin to carry it out
• Further the development of our pastoral Care team to provide overall care to every Body member as needed, complementing the care provided through LifeGroups
• Other things that the Lord has yet to reveal, but we’ll make room for!
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For any of these things to happen, they must be birthed through the Holy Spirit in prayer and then carried out by you – God’s faithful people at Lamb’s who have decided that ‘seek first the kingdom of God’ is more than a novel, quotable Bible verse – but the high calling of God meant for each of us to respond to.

THANK YOU ALL!
Lastly, I want to end by saying a huge thank you to all of you. I know you serve among this Body as unto the Lord – not for my measly words of appreciation. But this is the truth: we would not be who we are as a church without you. We are who we are because of you being who you are as a dedicated member of the Body of Christ at Lamb’s. I want to make this specific now: I want to thank all our leaders for your service in the lord:

M.E.R.C.Y. TEAM
Tina Nicholas Thank you Tina!
MEDIA TEAM
Jason Lacasella, visual; JASON FOUNTAIN, audio Thank you both, Jasons!
MEN’S TEAM
Kerry Holmes Thank you for stepping up, Kerry!
MISSIONS TEAM
Joyce Sandberg Thank you for your heart for missions!
MOM’S MINISTRY
Ann Hansen My wife is the best – this is just the tip of the iceberg of all she does in our church family!
OFFICE TEAM/Front Desk
Thank you for your voluntary service Patty Eatmon!
CONNECTIONS MINISTRY TEAM
Lori Kestle Thank you for your loving hospitality and service Lori, and Patty, and CeeCee!
OFFICE TEAM/Bookkeeping/frontdesk
Thank you for your devotion, Kay prior, and Cecillia Fountain; Cory and Michelle, you both are excellent administrative warriors! We are so blessed to have you as part of our staff team here!!!
PASTORAL CARE TEAM
TOM SHAPPIE, Rod Fink Thank you men for being godly, spiritually minded men, unafraid to be spiritual warriors!!!
PRAYER TEAM
TOM SHAPPIE –again, thank you for double duty, mighty man of God!
PRISON MINISTRY
Frank Casciari; You Rock, Frank – thank you for launching this ministry!!!
USHER TEAM
Dana Martin – Dana, you sweat and haul, and serve and watch, and lift, and carry; you are a mighty man of God carrying big burdens in this body! Thank you for helping with your forklift that day, too!
WELCOME CENTER TEAM
Melanie Thomas; Your smile lights up the welcoming are! Thank you so much! You have a great sense of humor with those mugs, too!
Women’s Ministry Team
Anna Irby; How we all thank the Lord for you, Anna; for stepping forward to serve as you do, may the Lord bless you and Clef – Hallelujah for you!
Worship Team
James Doezie; we are so blessed to have a worship pastor who can write awesome songs, wants nothing more than to stay inside heaven’s door and liten to Him… and who isn’t afraid of speedos! ☺ ?
Youth Team
Ryan Sharp yes, Ryan sharp is the rockinest youth pastor in the valley, AND he is our associate pastor. Thank you Ryan for bein’ you and bein’ here!!! A huge thank you to Justin and Katie, Adam and Christy (sp?) Trigg, John Tobin, Matt Rouse, the other Matts, TYLER DOZIE, Katie Lowry, and everyone else on our youth adult leadership team!!! How could we possibly love on all these students and disciple them without you! God never meant for it to happen without you – so thank you for stepping up!
Middle School Ministry Team
Frank Shelter We have been so blest to receive you Frank, as our Middle School Pastor. How awesome! Love your sense of humor and more than anything your earnest heart before Jesus.
GREETERS MINISTRY TEAM
Chris Olsen – how very cool to have such a knowledgeable and experienced man leading our greeters ministry. I absolutely LOVE your high-tech approach to training and visualizing what you do. I love that and thank you for going over the top to make it excellent.
CHILDREN’S MINISTRY
Kristi Gedeon; Heather Fretz; Angie Bierle Thank you Kristi and Bob for giving our kids you ALL! And Heather Fretz and Angie Bierle– thank you for blessing us all by taking leadership in the PreSchool and Nurseries as volunteers. Your service is awesome and beautiful before the Lord and for all of us! Thank you! To EVERYONE ELSE that teaches in children’s ministry, nursery, pres-shool, club 45, you all ROCK and I am so grateful for your loving service!
LIFEGROUPS
John & Ann Hansen; Craig Westbrook Craig, thank you for all you did to get things set up and running so that we could enjoy a wonderful launch of groups – with now 145 adults signed up into groups… Aweosme! Thank you again Ann, for all you do to support me in this ministry, also including lifegroup action!
FACILITIES MINISTRY
Thank you to the several men who have given countless hours of voulunteer service behind the scenes in our facilities: Dana Martin, Martin Doran, Mike Downing, Larry Snadberg, Sean Archer, Johnny Balos, Ken Cobb, Jose Gutierrez, Jonathan Peterson, and then every man who worked on the playground! – and most of all Rod Whiting – Rod, you come down here about 5 hours a week or more voluntarily taking care of trees, planter boxes, landscaping, weeding, fertilizing – you are aweosme. May the Lord bless ALL YOU GUYS!!!!
CLEANING MINISTRY
Samantha Archer, Vincenza, Liz, Debbie, Laura – and anyone else – you have been AWEOSME in being our voulunteer weekly whole-church cleaning crew; thank you for your loving awesome service in this Body – even though no one recognizes your service. Jesus does!
BOARD: Jim Thomas, Diana Bendiksen, Karen Robertson, John Richardson, Jose Gutierrez, Stephen Christie

To all of you, and anyone I forgot, may your reward from the Lord be all the greater! So, thank you to all of you!!!!! Thank you – let’s rock on in the Lord!

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