Realizing the Vision

The last couple of weeks, the elders and I have presented to you the vision that we have for 1997, such as it is such as a vision that we may have that God has granted us. And I'd like to review some of the details of these presentations in order to prepare us for the comments that I'm going to make today. First of all, I said that we had two main goals here in Choctaw. I mean as a church here in Choctaw. Two main goals.

Our first main goal was a personal one. The personal goal that each of us should have, and that is salvation. In 1st Timothy chapter 2 verse 4, Paul says that what God wants is that everyone come to a knowledge of Christ and be saved. You know, if someone were to say, Well, what do you think God wants? What God wants is that every individual be saved.

And so that is a personal goal that each of us should have for 1997. Nothing we have and nothing we do is of any consequence if in the end we are lost. I mean, if we do not go to heaven, if we must suffer eternally in hell, what good is anything that we have done in the short amount of time that we are here on earth? And so, each of us this year must measure all that we say and all that we do against its final effect on our personal salvation. How will this affect my personal salvation?

This needs to be a question that we ask ourselves often this year. And so I personally want everyone in this room, and all of those that you love, to be saved. To be saved people, to become Christians. And of course this will not happen unless each and every person believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. That each and every single person in this auditorium is ready to acknowledge their faith publicly in Christ.

That each and every single person is willing to repent or change their ways and their habits of sin. And that each and every single person in this auditorium is immersed in the water or baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin. Only if these things are done, can we say, I am a saved person. That is the first and most important personal goal that we have here in Choctaw, to be saved. The second goal, there are only 2, was a congregational goal, as a group.

And the goal that we have as a group can be resumed in one word, and that is readiness. Our goal as a church is to be ready. Paul tells us in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 6 that we should be, we should be sober, we should be watching, we should be ready. You know, the New Testament continually reminds us that we do not know when Christ will come. We don't know when he will come for us in death, and we don't know when he will come at the end of the world.

We don't know these things. And for that reason, we need to be ready for the coming of Christ. The goal of ministry in the church is to keep the body of Christ ready for the return of the head of the church, who is Jesus Christ. So all we do here, as far as teaching, and worship, and activity, has this ultimate goal in mind. The ultimate goal in everything that we do is to keep the saints ready.

To keep you sharp. To keep you prepared. So that you are ready for the coming of the Lord in your personal life, or the coming of the Lord at the end of the world. That's why we do what we do. Keep us ready.

Now, these were the two main goals personal salvation and readiness. Of course it's not just enough to describe the goals. There has to be some strategy, some methods, some means to reach the goals. You know, first you set the objective, and then you devise some kind of strategy to get there. And last week I mentioned 3 things we needed to do in order to reach and maintain our objective.

And I think those are worth repeating now. In order to be saved, in order to be ready, we had to first of all keep the church, excuse me, we had to keep the church Christ centered and Bible centered. If you want to be saved and ready, you have to be centered on Christ, you have to be focused on his word. And we said that we do this with Bible centered preaching and teaching, as well as Bible centered decision making, Bible centered conduct, Bible centered personal study, and personal conduct. If we do that, we will remain focused on Christ, focused on His Word.

The second strategy to keep us saved and to keep us ready was to organize and function as a church according to the teaching example of the New Testament. If we want to be saved, if we want to be ready, we have to function like the church functions in the New Testament. I've told you many times before the New Testament contains information and instructions on how the church is to be organized, and how it is to operate. You know, many churches and many religious groups have good intentions. But unfortunately have ignored the New Testament blueprint.

There is a blueprint in here. There is a plan in here on how to organize, and how to function as a church. And a lot of religious groups have ignored that plan. They've made up their own plan, their own blueprint, their own organization. And if you've studied religious history, church history, especially in this country, you're going to find out that the ones that don't follow the biblical plan for church organization usually go off into heresy.

In other words, go off into false doctrine. Or they become ineffective. If you read the statistics, you see the churches are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Not the church of Christ, other churches. And also, they fall apart because of division.

And the main reason is, they have not organized themselves according to the pattern established by Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Now, according to the New Testament, as I've said so many times, the church has 5 ministry groups: education, evangelism, fellowship, service, and worship. These areas are served by deacons, and preachers, and teachers, who make sure that each area is functioning effectively according to the instructions of Christ. And the entire church is shepherded or overseen by a group of men called elders. And these men are chosen because of their spiritual maturity, and their good lives, in order to lead and protect the congregation as it strives to reach its goal.

Now, when the church is organized and functioning in this manner, it is effective in winning souls for Christ, and it remains ready for his coming. You see the point? If we're organized and we're functioning like the New Testament says we ought to, then we will be we will be effective in winning souls, saving souls. And we also will be effective in remaining ready for the return of Christ. That's why we have to operate in the way that we do.

This is why I teach so much on this particular subject. The effort that we make as a church to create and maintain the church according to the New Testament pattern is what makes us and keeps us on our toes, and what keeps us ready for the return of Christ. When Jesus comes, he will be looking for the church that he designed in his word. Not for churches that were designed by human beings. So we want to make sure that we are the church that Christ designed.

And then thirdly, if we want to be saved personally, and be ready for the return of Christ, the third thing we have to do is maintain unity in the church and of course in our brotherhood. Now I've already told you 2 things that we need to do to guarantee salvation and maintain readiness. You know, we have to be Christ and Bible centered. We have to be the New Testament church. Those are things we have to do to be ready, to be saved.

And then there's one thing we don't, you know, we have to not, we have to avoid in order to be saved, and in order to be ready. And that is, we have to avoid division, and quarreling, and competition. You know, the quickest way to kill a group is to divide that group. And once the group is destroyed by division, then destroying the individual becomes very easy. Remember every angry word.

Remember every bit of gossip. Remember every criticism, Every hidden resentment against one person contributes to the destruction of the entire church. We need to remember that. So basically, I've reviewed and confirmed our goals and strategies for 1997. Again, one more time, hammer them home.

The goals, 1, to obtain and maintain salvation until Jesus comes for us. Strategies, we achieve this by focusing on Christ, the Bible, and the church, and by maintaining unity. Sounds simple doesn't it? Doesn't it sound I can explain it in 10 minutes, but boy it sure isn't simple to do. Alright.

Now that we understand the plan, the big picture, I want to describe some of the concrete ways that we will try to put our strategies to work for us this year. In other words, Yeah, alright. I want to be saved. That's a good thing. And I want the church to be New Testament Church.

Yeah, I agree with that. The problem is, how do I focus on Christ? How do I do that? And how am I gonna be ready? How do I do that?

And how do I avoid division? You know, how do I do those things in a concrete? Give me some things to do. And this morning, I want to give you some things to do. And I call this realizing the vision.

It's it's not easy, but, you know, it's easy to explain a vision. It's quite another thing to explain how 300 people individually are actually gonna, you know, reach that vision. Because we all need to do something. Alright. Well the first step in realizing this vision is to recognize that this is something that I, I person, not me Michael Mazzalongo.

I, I, you know, Joe, Bill, Janice, Rosemary, Betty. I don't think there are any Bettys here. You know, something that I am going to do. Not something that I'm going to watch the preacher do. I've told you before, church is not a spectator sport.

Not something that the church is going to do and I'm going to read about in the bulletin. Well, what about that? Hey, how about that? Look, the church is doing this thing. Uh-uh.

If we're gonna realize this vision, it has to be that each individual person is actually contributing to reaching these goals. It's something that I will be doing for myself. You see, the church grows one member at a time. I'd like to give you my popcorn theory this morning. The famous popcorn theory.

Well, maybe not so famous with me anyway. Think about popcorn. I'm old enough to remember when popcorn came in that. Remember that it was like a pie plate, you know. And it had a cardboard cover on it, and it had a little wire handle, and you had to hold it over the flame.

And then the thing, you know, grew. That was fun. Wasn't it? That was like magic, you know, to see that thing grow. Today, it's microwave, but the idea is the same.

The idea is the same. You see, it's not popcorn if only a few colonels have popped. Right? You put that bag in the microwave, and, you listen to it, and if it just goes pop pop pop, and you stop the microwave and you pull the thing out, what are you gonna have? You're gonna have a bowl full of colonels with only 2 or 3 of those kernels popped.

It's not popcorn, right? It's got the potential to be popcorn, it's got the potential to cause you a $1,000 worth of bridge damage. But it's not popcorn until all the colonels have popped. That's why they call it popcorn. Otherwise, they just call it hard corn.

Alright, now the church is like popcorn. It's not alive and vibrant if only a few members have popped. I believe a member of the church has popped when that member is involved, when that member is faithful, when that member is giving, when that member is sincerely serving Christ, when that member is turned on spiritually, that member is popped. An auditorium full of colonels, with only a few popped Christians, is not the church of Christ. The New Testament church is a church where all the members are popped.

You see what I'm saying? And so our goal is that every single member in this church is popped in 1997. So the things that I'm suggesting this morning, the things that we can do to get our strategy going, in order to reach our goal, they are things that each person has to do in order to pop and guarantee not only our personal goal of individual salvation, but our collective goal of being ready for the day when Christ comes. Alright. Number 1.

Number 1 strategy is to be Bible Centered and Christ Centered. How do we do that? Well we cannot we could, but I don't think it would be wise to increase the number of worship times. You know, oh, okay, we'll be Christ centered. We'll worship Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, and Sunday.

3 times on Sunday. Well, that would be a great thing but that would be a little impractical, wouldn't it? That people work, people have things. We already have a schedule that is pretty heavy. Just being here Wednesday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night, that's kind of a lot.

So I don't think just increasing the number of times we get together would work, and keeping us Bible centered. But there is one thing we can do however, and that is we can increase the amount of time that each person spends with the Lord in prayer and Bible study and Bible reading. That we can do. In other words, personal Bible reading and study and meditation and prayer is the surest way to keep us close to Christ and focused on his word. When, as individuals, we give ourselves over to studying or reading God's word every day, a lot of things happen in our lives.

When we read our Bibles on a regular basis, here are some of the things that happen. And I'm telling you this from experience, not just from a book. When we read our Bibles regularly, study it, and pray over it, we grow in knowledge. Not knowledge about how to tear down a motor now, you have to do something else to do that. I mean, we grow in knowledge of God's Word.

We also develop a stronger relationship with God. We, we understand that our consciences become sharper, and our consciences function better, and we are better able to resist temptation, and all of the things that that helps us with. When we do more Bible reading, our prayer life increases and becomes more effective. And our anxiety level drops and our peace level goes up. And our faith is strengthened and we are better prepared to share our faith with other people.

Now because of all these benefits, here in Choctaw we want to start with what's called the regular Bible Readers Program. RBR, regular Bible reader. Now, this isn't a new idea. You know, people are saying, Oh man, that's an old one. It's not a new idea, but I think our approach is gonna be a little bit different.

You see, in the past we used to have this thing called daily bible readers. Remember that? A lot of people used to do that. Many people still do. And the goal was to read the entire bible in 1 year.

You know, read every day, you finish reading the bible in 1 year. Well that sounds good on paper, like a lot of things sound good on paper. But in real life, that's not easy to do. You know, it's a good idea to read the Bible every day and read the whole Bible in 1 year. But not practical.

If you, for example, if you missed a day, right? You had to double up the next day. If you went on a trip, forgot your Bible, came back 3 days later, you had 4 days that you had to read. And if you were somewhere in Exodus or Genesis or something, you had 40 chapters to catch up. So that was pretty discouraging.

A lot of people quit. Or if you forgot your place. You ever do that? The daily bible reader, you forget your place and say, Man, I thought I read this yesterday. Did I read this yesterday or not?

You know. And then you get confused and you quit. Or, the other thing that the thing I didn't like about it is you had to be perfect in order to raise your hand when the teacher said in your bible class, Okay, all you daily bible readers raise your hand. And if there were 30 people in the class, 5 people raised their hand, the other 25 looked at their shoes. You know, a very guilt producing exercise.

And if you read 6 days out of I saw people, believe it or not, I saw people kinda looking at their bibles, you know, trying to get that 7th day in. Or read in the morning and then read in the afternoon to get 2 days in 1. You know, it was nuts. It was nuts. Regular Bible reading.

Same goal, different approach. The goal in regular Bible reading is to develop the habit of reading the Bible daily. That's the ultimate goal. The approach is gradual. And it's less confusing and less discouraging.

Regular Bible reading has no time limit. You read the goal is to finish reading the Bible through. Right? But, I mean, if it takes you 6 months, a year, 3 years, so what? Once you've finished it, you're gonna start over again anyways.

What's the rush? So there's no limit in regular Bible reading. When you finish, you finish. Here's how this method's gonna work for those who wanna be involved in our congregation. First of all, select a Bible and get yourself a notebook and a pencil that you can leave with the notebook.

Now I recommend this kind of little notebook, this is what I use. A little spiral notebook, it's great, you know, you can tear pages out if you make a mistake or whatever. And this little spiral thing here, you can slip a pencil or a pen in here and it'll hang on. That's what I do. This is mine.

Well, this one's full. I've got another one that I'm working on. Get you a little one of these, got your daughter, gives you an excuse to go shopping at Target, look for other stuff. Alright. Once you got your little book, then begin reading your bible and pick any version.

You know, I've got, you know, 10 different bibles in my house. You know, I just pick 1. I started with the New American Standard. It doesn't matter. King James, New American Standard, NIV, you know, whatever.

Just pick 1. And start reading either in Genesis or Matthew, it doesn't matter either. You can start in Matthew and then when you finish reading the New Testament go back to Genesis, or start from the beginning, go through the end, whatever you want. Okay? And every time, every time that you can, every day if possible, but every time that you can, read as much as you can.

A chapter, half a chapter, 3 chapters, depends. Now here's the trick, While you are reading, you've got your handy little notebook here, if you happen to learn something that you didn't know You know, you ever had that feeling? You're reading the Bible and you go, I never realized that. Well, how about that? I never You know I read that passage 10 times and I never saw that before.

You know, you learn something, a little gold nugget set. Well, you take out your little pencil, and you put down Genesis chapter 2 verse 4, and write down the little thing that you just learned. And write it down. Anyway, it's not gonna get published. Nobody's gonna read it.

Just write it down for yourself. You'll be amazed after weeks weeks how much stuff you're gonna get. Where do you think people say to me, Where do you get all those ideas for your preaching? What do you think? From reading the Bible every day.

That's where I get it. I don't get them from books. I don't have, you know, somebody else's 50 sermons that I preach to you. All the sermons that I get come from you. The needs that you have and the ideas that I get when I read my Bible every day.

That's my children, that's my wife. They see me do it. And I don't do it in the office. I do it at home. That's my personal Bible reading.

Doesn't count. When I'm at the office that's different. That's work. So, while you're reading, you get an idea. Or maybe while you're reading you'll think, boy, this is talking to me about my sin over here, and I need to write that down.

Or all of a sudden you're reading, and, you're taken up by the Spirit of God, and you want to pray at that moment. You don't wanna read another verse, you're just so full of joy or full of sorrow, you just have to break out in prayer to God. Put your Bible down, put your book down, and go to God in prayer. You see, journaling, that's what that's called, Bible journaling, is a wonderful way to keep you focused on God's Word. And I'm gonna tell you, after years of doing this, I'm going to tell you right now that your time in God's Word will become point 0 for you.

You know what I'm saying? By point 0. 0. 0 is reality time where everything comes together. This time, just you and God, will become point 0 for you.

Where you will feel the sanest and the most secure when you and God are together reading His Word. Now, it's not gonna come on the 1st day. That may come the 2nd year, the 3rd year, maybe. It'll take time. But I'm telling you, this method of journaling will help you get there.

Now, let's say you've read a couple of chapters in Genesis, you've taken a few notes of things you thought of, whatever, and the phone rings. Hey honey, it's time, you know, Joe's here. We gotta go with the truck. Okay, I'm coming down. Where am I?

Chapter 3 verse 9. At the bottom just put Genesis 3 verse 9, because that's where you finish today. Close your book, put away your Bible, get on with your life. And then tomorrow you have to go to Tulsa because you got a job to do. And the next day you gotta go, to Ardmore because you got another job to do.

No time for your bible reading. You come back home, you take your shower, you sit down, you just Oh, my daily my bible reading. You pick up your book and say, now, where was I last time? You open your little notebook and you remember. Oh, yeah.

Genesis 3 verse 9. You pick up your Bible, Genesis 3 verse 9, and you push ahead. And since you don't have to finish this year or next year, you just do what you can do day after day and week after week. And it becomes ingrained like a habit, like eating, like sleeping, like Bible study each day. Now don't feel guilty if you can't read every day.

Just do your best. God will help you. When you're finished, you know, Hey, I'm finished New American Standard. What do I do now? Well, get you a new international version and start reading again.

My goal is to read every bible version till I die. So I'm not worried. I've got lots of stuff to read. You know? And it's amazing.

I don't know how many times I've gone through the bible, many times I've read it through. But do you know that every time I go through it, I keep filling up notebook after notebook? Every time I read Genesis, I mean I've taught Genesis and I've read Genesis. I can't know how many times. Every time I read it, I fill up a notebook with ideas and thoughts and insights that I didn't see before.

That's the wonder of daily or regular bible reading. It's so rewarding. Now as far as we're concerned, something to encourage us, something to kind of keep us stimulated. In order to become a regular bible reader here in Choctaw, you have to read at least 3 times a week, not 7 times, 3 times. Now it doesn't count in class.

Alright? In class doesn't count. Flashing your bible, you know, during worship, that doesn't count. If you're at home and you had this little experience, then it counts. Now, when you come to church, hope you can follow this, when you come to church and you fill out your attendance card, we're not gonna have nobody raise their hand.

None of that stuff. When you fill out your attendance card, just put on your attendance card RBR, regular Bible reader, or Bible reader. Whatever it is. Just anywhere on the card and circle it. And we're gonna keep track of how many people in the church are regular Bible readers.

Out of the total number here, how many people are focusing in on their Bible? Now I've said a lot here. Do you remember what we're talking about? We're talking about staying Christ and Bible centered. And I'm giving you a strategy to do that.

And the encouragement is the program. 3 times a week you put it in on your attendance card Sunday morning or Sunday night, and then Marlene will count those, tabulate those. You can't see those things. I think Marlene can you read them from where you're sitting? Okay.

From about half way you can kind of read that. I don't know if can any Jim can you see them from back there? No. Okay. Well those things there are new ways that we're gonna count things.

I'm gonna explain that to you in a minute. But it also says regular bible readers. And we're gonna post up there regular bible readers. How many of them? So don't forget, if you do it 3 times, put it on your cart.

Alright. Now, this will be a way to encourage us to be Christ and Bible centered. Number 2. Gotta move now, I'm late. Number 2 is the New Testament church and organization.

What are we gonna do? How are we gonna, you know, put that strategy into play? When it comes to New Testament organization and function, last week I mentioned that we had 2 problems. And so we're gonna work on those 2 problems. The 2 problems were 1, attendance.

Here in Choctaw, we don't have problems with love. Lots of love in this church. But there's not a whole lot of attendance at times. Attendance is pretty poor. I told you that out of a potential 436 members or people that come here, our average is about 289, 290.

That's too low. I mean, we're always missing people every week because of illness and travel and work. That's true. But 289 out of 436, that's way too low. We should actually be around 350.

That should be where we're at. And I said the other problem was we weren't getting enough initiative as far as service. Not enough people were coming up to the elders and saying, I've got a great idea on how we can serve or how we can help people. The way we're operating it's always the elders or myself saying, Could we get a volunteer please? Could we get a volunteer to do this or that?

And that's fine, we usually get a volunteer. But we wanna move beyond volunteerism. We want initiative. We want people to come to us and say, I've got a great idea on how we can do such and such, or how we can create a new ministry to serve so and so. See, that's what we're looking for.

Those are the two problems. Here's some of the things that we're gonna try to do to improve those things, or encourage those things. First of all, we're gonna give more accurate and realistic information about attendance. Notice, if you can read it, great. If you can't, I'll read it for you.

We've got new categories here in the front and, we'll try to, you know, work with that and get it even better so everyone can see it. But the new categories from top to bottom are potential attendants. Our potential attendance is 436 people. I want us to know that. There are 436 souls in this church that we need to minister to that are not always here.

The next one, the next category is Bible class. How many people come to Bible class? Notice, less than half come for Bible study. Then the total Sunday attendance. That's the third thing.

Total Sunday. Total Sunday is not whoever comes Sunday morning and whoever comes Sunday night. I don't wanna know who comes twice. I wanna know who comes to worship the Lord and take communion on Sunday. How many people do that?

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna count Sunday morning attendance and we're gonna count those who come on Sunday night to take communion. In other words, they weren't here Sunday morning, they come Sunday night. And we're gonna add those 2 together and that will be our total Sunday attendance. That'll tell us out of those 436 people, how many of those came to worship the Lord this Lord's Day, and take communion, and give to the saints, and so on and so forth. Then the next category is percentage of attendance.

We wanna keep reminding you what percentage of our total number actually comes to church. Right now our percentage is 66. We have 66% attendance. I want us to look at that and see and watch and observe our growth. And then we have regular Bible readers.

I've already explained what that number is gonna be. And then Wednesday night. That's simply our attendance on Wednesday night. This will not increase attendance. This board is not gonna increase attendance.

But it will tell us how well we are doing in this area and how much we need to do. It'll always keep that idea in front of us. Another thing we're gonna do is we're gonna begin a serious effort to remodel and expand this building in 1997. We've talked about it for 2 years, but we're really gonna work at it this year. You know the 80% theory.

The 80% theory is that a church will only grow until it's 80% full in its auditorium. In other words, if the auditorium can see 350 people, the church will grow to 80% of 350 and stop growing. But you know what? That's happened to us in the last 2 years. We've filled 80% of this auditorium and it just won't grow anymore.

We keep adding people through baptism, people keep placing memberships, but the total number never gets beyond 289. We believe the reason is we're cramped. It's hot. No parking there. So we're gonna make a serious effort to expand the auditorium, and the classroom, and the parking in 1997.

And the first step is that, the elders and myself and the other teams will go visit every single one of these 436 people, one at a time. And we're gonna sit down with those people and we're gonna show them, we're gonna show you the plan, how much it costs. We're gonna answer all of your questions. And we're gonna ask you face to face, how much can you give towards the expansion, the physical expansion of this building? And once we've visited all 436, the elders are gonna sit down, they're gonna total up how much people say they can give, and we're gonna find out how much money we've got to work with and how much we need to borrow.

That's step 1. And then step 2 is we're gonna make plans. And step 3 is we're gonna break dirt, and we're gonna get on with it and expand this building. I believe that this great project will help solve this problem. I also believe that this project, this expansion will solve our service problem as well.

Because we're gonna need the help of carpenters, and electricians, and people to move stuff around and paint. So I think, a lot of people will have an opportunity to give and serve when we go into this building expansion program. And for that reason, I think we'll solve 2 problems. Attendance and service will be solved with this project that will take us at least one and a half to two years to complete. And then finally, unity.

How do we how do we work towards unity? We're a very united congregation. We have no division, no strife. We want everyone to keep this spirit. What we wanna do is make sure we integrate everyone into our fellowship.

Well, a united church requires that each member belong and no one feels that they're left out or they're not important. So some of the things that we're gonna do to maintain this unity, first, we're gonna continue to work and improve the Care Group Ministry so that each group is able to help individuals know and serve each other. Secondly, we're gonna provide opportunities for fellowship. Do you know we are putting out next week in your bulletins, you're gonna be receiving a bulletin next week, and inside the bulletin for the first time, you're going to have a 1997 calendar with every month and every single activity that's planned for 1997 is already in that calendar. When family day is gonna be, when VBS is gonna be, when potlucks are gonna be, when retreats are gonna be.

Everything is in that calendar. Now that doesn't guarantee participation, but it does help you know what it is that we're planning and how you can be involved. And then finally, we're gonna provide the congregation with better information on what the church is doing. Better ways to communicate with the church. A couple of little things that we've done.

We've prepared, as I say, a complete calendar. We now have email for those of you who have computers. We have email at the church office, so you can leave messages to contact us in off hours, or if the line is busy. Our email address, it'll be in the bulletin, is Choctaw Saints at Juno dot com. We're also working on a web page and we're also working on low frequency television transmission where we could broadcast TV classes into your home, Bible classes into your home on off nights.

So we've got a lot of plans. We've also designed a new bulletin cover that will provide more information about our ministries, our deacons, responsibilities, and the special services that we offer. And of course we have a new minister that you already know, Vince Miller. But he's taken on new responsibilities in 1997. He'll edit the inside of the bulletins.

And that will be 2 working with that bulletins. Now these are some of the things that we've begun to do in order to stay Christ and Bible centered. Stay modeled on the New Testament and united in the Spirit. And all the activities will not work unless each person says, Yes, I will be involved. Yes, I will go to that.

Yes, I will come to church. Yes, I will be a daily bible reader. Now, ministers don't work alone. They plan, they organize, they suggest, they encourage, they rebuke and teach, but the congregation needs to respond if this is to be a success. Now, you will realize our vision if you do get a Bible notebook, if you go to Target, Walmart, wherever, and you get your notebook, and you start the habit, and you write it out on your, on your, attendance card.

You know, it'll happen if you do it. It'll happen if you make a commitment that you will make church attendance on Sunday Wednesday one of your highest priorities. Somebody said to me, Well, but I only come to church like once every two and a half months. Because, you know, I have family problems, rah rah yada yada. You know, and I understand.

And I said to that person, Well, you don't have to come Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, retreats, you know, do the whole thing from 1 week to the other. It took you a long time to get way out there. Maybe it may take a little time for you to get back into the habit. Why don't you set a goal for yourself that you will at least be in church on Sunday morning? And then organize your schedule with time that perhaps you may add a Sunday night.

And then slowly, perhaps, add Wednesday. You know, take a bit take a bite. Take a small bite out of it. But let that be your goal. And it won't happen if we're not prepared to personally be involved in the renovation of the building, either through your work or through your giving.

Well, I have more to say, but I've run out of time. So I'm just gonna just close out with an invitation here. More than anything else, more than anything else, I want us to stay focused on our main goal, and that is personal salvation. I think if you think that personal salvation is important to you, then all these other things will fall in line. You know, the attendance and the giving, all that will fall in line if it's important to you to be saved and to be ready when Christ comes.

And so this morning as we kinda close out this little pep talk, this little session here, if you've not yet confessed Christ or repented of your sins or been baptized in order to save your soul, wouldn't it be a good time to do it now? Not put that off? And we should have a slogan, you know, Let's be ready for heaven in 97. You know, it's not biblical, but the idea is biblical. Let's be ready for heaven in 97.

If you're not ready for heaven at this time, we encourage you to come forward now and be restored or baptized whatever you need as we stand and as we sing.