to speak, it's how godly you are.
It's how much you wanna serve God.
It's not merely how charismatic you are
or how good of a speaker you are, right?
And so Samuel, he loses his children.
How did that happen?
What the end of 1 Samuel 7,
doesn't it say he was going all over the place preaching?
He's going all over the location.
You can assume that when it's saying all these locations,
it's not like Pasig and Pasig and Mutinlupa and Makati,
but he's traveling and he's gone from his family
for periods of time.
And he's gone so much that his kids grow up
and his sons just don't love God like he did.
Doesn't the Bible say that if you raise your children
correctly, they're gonna serve God?
Train up a child in the ways he should go.
When he is old, he will not depart from it.
But unfortunately, Samuel had an improper balance
of too much into the ministry
and basically he didn't spend enough time with his family.
That's what I see when I read this, okay?
Go to Ecclesiastes 7, Ecclesiastes chapter 7.
I mean, when you're in the ministry,
you're always thinking there's more I can do.
Because truly there is more that we can do.
Last I checked, the vast majority of people are unsaved.
You can always learn more about the Bible.
You can always spend more time on sermons.
You can memorize more Bible, right?
You can always go soul winning more,
do more events and things like that.
But all of those things, they take time.
And if you spend too much time on that,
you're gonna forsake your family, okay?
And this is not just true for me,
it could be true for you as well.
Now I believe you ought to be at church.
I believe you ought to be out soul winning.
But at the same time, I don't expect you
to come home from work if you have kids
and just go soul winning for four straight hours
and then just say goodnight to your son
right before you go to sleep
and just not spend any time with your kids.
I believe you ought to spend time with your kids.
In fact, I believe it so much,
I preached on it for months on the family, right?
I don't believe that we should forsake our family
for the things of serving God.
But that is something that any one of us could do
if we have an improper balance on these things.
Ecclesiastes seven verse 16, Ecclesiastes seven verse 16.
Be not righteous over much,
neither make thyself over wise.
Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?
The Bible says be not righteous over much.
Now what does that mean?
It basically means don't put on too much stuff
that you're not able to handle.
It means it's okay not to do the most all the time.
It's okay to say, man, I gotta take a break
and relax for a little while.
And I believe you ought to be in church every single week,
but I don't believe you have to be soul winning
every single day for hours either.
Now look, if you wanna do that, praise the Lord for it.
I'm not telling you not to do it.
What I'm saying is it's okay if somebody else at church
does more soul winning than you.
It's okay, you say, brother Sucky, man,
I read through the Bible twice this year,
but so and so read through it three times.
That's okay, right?
I mean, you don't have to be the best at everything, right?
And look, I take this approach to myself as well
because every single week I go soul winning
at least three times, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.
But I don't feel like I've gotta go soul winning
more than anybody else in the world as a competition.
It's like whenever we have soul winning events,
it's like we win soul winning on Friday, Thursday, right?
Yeah, Thursday.
It's like we have the soul winning marathon.
I win soul winning on Thursday, but I didn't feel like,
man, I gotta just do more soul winning this day
and this day.
It's not a competition.
I don't feel like, man, I've gotta make sure
I read the Bible more than anybody else.
It's not a competition between any of us
and we need to be careful not to try to do too much
to the point we just destroy ourselves
and destroy our lives and wanna give up.
And that can happen sometimes
if you go too much all in for God, okay?
Now turn in your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter 17.
Deuteronomy 17, Deuteronomy 17.
I mean, an example would be a person who's running a race,
okay, and let's say they see the finish line
and you know what, they decide,
I'm just gonna sprint it into the end.
Now here's the thing, if they're able to do that, great.
But let's say they're only able to make it halfway, right?
They can make it halfway to the finish line
and they sprint and they sprint,
then they're gonna be like, woo,
and then everyone else is gonna pass them, right?
We're not in this for one year.
We're in this for the long haul.
And basically, you need to figure out
what's my pace, how fast can I go
and balance all of these things in my life, okay?
And it might be that somebody's able
to go a little bit faster than you
and you know, honestly, that's okay.
And honestly, we're in different situations in life.
I mean, if you have lots of free time,
then you know what, you have more time to read the Bible.
You have more time to go soul winning.
But if you don't have as much free time,
it's okay if somebody goes more than you, right?
Deuteronomy 17, so one thing is basically
forsaking your family for the purposes of serving God.
That's something we gotta make sure we don't do.
Another thing is forsaking your personal walk
for serving God.
Deuteronomy 17, verse 18.
And it shall be when he sitteth upon the throne
of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law
and a book out of that which is before the priests
of Levites.
And it shall be with him and he shall read therein
all the days of his life, okay?
All the days of his life.
That he may learn to fear the Lord his God
to keep all the words of this law
and these statutes to do them.
So the Bible says here that if you're gonna be a leader,
you're gonna be a king, you need to read the word
of God every day.
And certainly that's true for a pastor
or a person running the church.
They need to read God's word every day.
It's also true for all of us though.
We gotta read the Bible every single day,
but obviously if you're the leader
and you're preaching sermons,
you better be reading the Bible every day.
Now here's the thing.
When you're working in the ministry,
what happens is there's always events
and church activities and soul winning
and sometimes you can be spending so much time in that,
it almost feels like you have that personal walk with God,
but you can kind of forsake the memorization
and the Bible reading and just have the wrong balance
because you're spending so much time.
I already spent time with God.
Well, writing a sermon is not the same
as reading the Bible.
You need to still have your own personal time with God.
And this is true for all of us.
Sometimes you can do so much soul winning
that you just kind of forsake the Bible reading.
Well, that's just a wrong balance, okay?
You need to be careful about that.
Go to Acts 20, Acts 20.
Acts chapter 20.
And what's gonna take place is
if you forsake your personal walk,
eventually you're gonna forsake the soul winning too.
It's not gonna mean you accomplish more in the long term
because this is not, it's not like God said,
hey, you know what, we got one week left
before I'm coming back.
Look, we got at least several years
before Jesus is coming back, right?
And I think it's gonna be a long time.
I don't even think it's gonna happen in my lifetime,
but look, we don't believe in a preacher rapture.
So it's not like God said, hey, you got one week.
Now here's the thing.
If it happens in our lifetime
and you count out the amount of time
after the Antichrist declares himself to be God,
or pretty much after that point,
hey, go all out and just whatever.
If you burn yourself out,
you're gonna be, it's all gonna be over soon anyway, right?
Just go all out.
But here's the thing.
God didn't say this is gonna come in 2021.
Sometimes in the past,
you'd have people that would claim
they knew the end of the world
and people would forsake everything and said,
Jesus is coming back.
So I'm just gonna give all my money to the church
and quit working and just serve God.
And then all of a sudden it's like,
like with the seventh day at Venice,
the great disappointment is what they call it.
The day came, they're outside with their wives.
It's like, it's gonna be any second.
All of a sudden they wake up the next day
and it's like, no, we were wrong, right?
And it's just like, God didn't say
the date it's gonna happen, okay?
I'm assuming I'm gonna live to be an old man
so I need to prepare for all of the stages of life.
It's not just a sprint to the finish line.
It's not a hundred meter race, okay?
Another thing is this, not only forsaking your family,
forsaking your personal walk, you need to be careful,
especially if you're running a church of forsaking quality
for the purposes of quantity.
And what I mean by that is if we had like 10 churches
and I was preaching at all these churches,
the quality of the preaching would go down quite a bit.
Just common sense, right?
I mean, the quality would just plummet dramatically
if that were the case.
And look, you're gonna accomplish less in the longterm.
It's not a smart system.
Acts 20 verse 26,
"'Wherefore I take you to record this day
"'that I am cured from the blood of all men.
"'For I have not shunned to declare unto you
"'all the counsel of God.
"'Take heed therefore unto yourselves
"'and to all the flock over to which the Holy Ghost
"'hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God
"'which he hath purchased with his own blood.'"
And so your job when you preach sermons
is to feed the church of God, teach the word of God,
show people what the Bible says
and that they can grow through the preaching of God's word.
It's not merely to just go soul-willing,
but also the sermons are very important.
It's one of my big pet peeves
that people kind of feel like on the mission field,
sermons don't matter, all that matters is soul-willing.
Well, I don't believe that.
I think it's the same no matter where your location is.
It seems to be working
because we do lots of soul-willing
while not forsaking the preaching, right?
Go to 1 Peter 5, 1 Peter 5.
That's kind of a result of the system of missions
because Baptist churches will basically pay full time
for people to be missionaries.
And what happens is all they care about
is how many souls are getting saved.
They just wanna have a number
because they don't wanna go soul-willing themselves.
And they wanna be able to report
our church is responsible for 5,000 salvations.
So basically, they don't really care
if the church in the other country,
they don't even care what they're preaching.
It's like as long as they report a big number of salvation,
it doesn't matter if the sermons are like 1 1 2 minutes.
It doesn't matter what they're doing.
I don't get it.
It really bugs me,
but that's the attitude a lot of people have.
Doesn't matter what happens on the mission field.
Just give us a lot of results
and we'll be happy no matter what, right?
It's garbage.
I've never taken that philosophy.
I've always thought the preaching was important.
My sermons are the exact same as they'd be in the U.S.
Obviously, they're specific to where we're preaching,
but it's not like I'm getting up here and saying,
well, you know what?
All we do is soul-willing, so five-minute sermons.
Well, that's not what we do, right?
Maybe you wish that.
Oh, by the way, we're canceling lunch today.
No, I'm just kidding.
But it's like, no, I mean,
I believe you need to be fed with the word of God.
You need to hear the word of God preached.
I don't believe that my job is to just,
basically, we go soul-willing and,
oh, you wanna learn the word of God?
Hey, listen to Pastor Hermanus preach.
It's like, no, I need to teach you the word of God, right?
First Peter five, verse one.
The elders which are among you I exhort,
whom also an elder and a witness
of the sufferings of Christ,
and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.
Feed the flock of God which is among you,
taking the oversight thereof.
And the Bible says you need to feed the flock of God.
That's your job if you're running a church,
and that's primarily saying by the preaching of God's word,
feeding the church of God,
teaching and motivating people to live for God.
Go to First Corinthians nine.
First Corinthians nine.
First Corinthians chapter nine.
Now, I've heard this analogy before.
You know, this is what Pastor Hermanus told me,
and I think it makes a lot of sense.
You know, if our church, we're starting a new church,
and there was nobody at the church except my family,
which, by the way, that's what I thought was gonna happen
when I decided to be a missionary, you know, years ago.
I expected it was just gonna be me and my wife
and whatever kids we had, and just starting from scratch.
Well, of course, you'd have to spend a lot of time
soul-winning to get members at the church.
But then eventually what happens is
if you have a lot of people at church,
you're gonna accomplish more through the members
than yourself individually,
which will show you the importance
of making sure you're feeding people and teaching them,
because as they grow spiritually,
they're gonna bring people to church,
they're gonna be zealous for soul-winning,
make changes in their life,
and then they're gonna be in it for the long haul, okay?
1 Corinthians 9, verse 6.
"'Or I only in Barnabas have not we power
"'to forbear working?
"'Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges?
"'Who planteth a vineyard,
"'and eateth not of the fruit thereof?
"'Or who feedeth a flock,
"'and eateth not of the milk of the flock?'"
And what Paul said was that him and Barnabas,
they didn't get paid.
He said, we deserve to get paid, we could get paid,
but we chose not to get paid as an example.
Now, there's nothing wrong with being full-time
in the ministry and being paid to be full-time.
That's just not the way we set up our church,
and it's just not what I intend to do in the future.
Now, obviously, I could change my mind in five years,
and there would be nothing wrong with that,
because there is nothing wrong with someone being full-time.
And so, look, by me taking a strong stand on this topic
and saying what we explain,
it's not me criticizing anybody else,
because I think it's great
if people are able to be full-time.
I just don't think it's the wisest thing for our church
with the cost of commercial real estate
and things like that.
I just don't think it's the best thing
for my family either,
so I just choose not to take a paycheck from the churches.
And here's the reality.
If I was fully paid by the church,
we would not be having a lot of these activities.
We wouldn't have the Sweetheart Banquet.
You say, why?
It costs money.
We wouldn't have all these soul-winning activities
where we're paying for the soul-winners and stuff.
It costs a lot of money.
Honestly, a lot of stuff we do, we just wouldn't do it.
During the Sweetheart Banquet,
if we could afford that,
I would tell the singles, just go home.
We're not paying for you to do anything.
Or do what you want, but you're paying for it.
No, it's like, and look,
I think it's great that we're able to do that stuff,
and God has blessed us, and people are very generous,
and we have donators and stuff like that,
but the reality is, we just wouldn't be able
to do all the same things.
So that's the reason why we choose that setup,
and at least for now, maybe in the future that will change,
but that's our setup as we are now.
Go to 1 Timothy 3, 1 Timothy 3.
1 Timothy 3.
1 Timothy chapter 3.
1 Timothy chapter 3, verse number 14, 1 Timothy 3, verse 14.
We'll look at just a few more places,
and then we'll be done.
1 Timothy 3, verse 14.
These things write unto thee,
hoping to come unto thee shortly.
But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know
how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God,
which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and ground of the truth.
The Bible says church is the pillar and ground of the truth.
Look, when you come to church,
you ought to hear the truth.
This is why I don't get up and preach my opinions.
And if I preach something in the Bible,
and I'm not sure on it, I'll tell you, this is my opinion.
Other good people have different opinions, right?
And here's the thing, it also means you come to church,
you need to learn something.
I mean, if church is just,
it doesn't say the pillar of fellowship.
And here's the thing, if you forsake the truth,
you don't have good fellowship either.
These things go hand in hand,
but part of it is the preaching of God's word
where people are actually learning the truth.
That is a large part of church.
And look, I would say that as much as I love
all the things of this church,
the reason why most people come here
is because of the preaching of God's word.
They feel like I can learn, I'm motivated to serve God.
It's different than other churches I've been at.
Go to 1 Kings 10, 1 Kings 10, 1 Kings 10, 1 Kings 10.
So why is it that we would have multiple churches?
Why is it other churches do this?
Well, point one, there's a demand for it.
If there was no demand, then we wouldn't do it.
Point two, what are the potential problems?
Well, the potential problem is you could forsake
your family for the ministry,
or you could forsake your personal walk with God,
or you could lose the quality if you're just too busy
invested in too much stuff, right?
I mean, look, there are 168 hours in the week.
Now let's say you had four full-time jobs
at 42 hours each, right?
Your quality of work at every job's gonna be pretty bad,
isn't it, right?
If you had three full-time jobs, right?
126 hours so you get a chance to sleep each night,
your quality's gonna be just pretty bad, right?
So it's the same sort of concept, okay?
What does that mean for us as a church?
Well, one thing is this.
In order for our church to operate successfully,
we need a volunteer atmosphere.
We need a volunteer atmosphere.
1 Kings 10, verse three, 1 Kings 10, verse three.
And Solomon told her all her questions.
There was not anything hid from the king
which he told her not.
And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom
in the house that he had built,
and the meat of his table,
and the sitting of his servants,
and the attendance of his ministers,
and their apparel, and his cupbearers,
and his ascent by which he went up
into the house of the Lord,
there was no more spirit in her.
And she said to the king,
"'It was a true report that I heard in mine own land
of thy acts and of thy wisdom.
Howbeit I believed not the words
until I came and mine eyes had seen it.
And behold, the half was not told me.
Thy wisdom and prosperity exceeded the fame which I heard.
Happy are thy men.
Happy are these thy servants,
which stand continually before thee,
and that hear thy wisdom.'"
Now, this is a chapter in the Word of God,
which I believe is meant to show us
what we need to try to be as a local church.
That when somebody visits our church,
maybe they've heard the preaching online,
and then they come and they say,
"'Man, this is better than I expected.'"
And it's not just because of the words of the preacher,
but they see the acts that are done.
They look there, it's like,
man, you guys are getting a lot of salvation.
It's like over 200 in one week?
It's like, man, you guys are doing a lot.
It's like you're zealous, you're fired up,
you're paying attention to the preaching,
and they would be saying, this is great, okay?
This is the goal of any church that when they come here,
it's better than what they expected.
And look, I believe that's the case.
I believe that with most people
that have maybe listened to the online preaching,
once they came, they're like,
this is better than I expected, right?
Go to John 3, John 3, John chapter 3.
John chapter 3, we're gonna close up here in John 3.
John 3.
Not only as a church do we need to be,
have a volunteer atmosphere,
we also need to be okay in the future
with investing in other churches.
Because of the fact our church is a church plant
from a church in Sacramento to begin with,
someone invested in us, and the reason why they did that
is that there's people ready for this church.
And it would be the same reason why in the future
maybe we'll start church plants,
and it might mean a bit of an investment.
It also might mean some of the time and effort
is taken away from this church to another church
for the purposes of the spread of the gospel,
to do something big for God.
And we should always have that attitude.
Don't develop this attitude where it's like,
man, we're such a great church,
and let's just keep everybody together
and just never make any changes.
Look, realistically, with people coming
from different provinces, we're not all gonna be part
of the same church in five years.
If we do something big for God,
we're gonna be at different churches
that are still great churches.
And that's okay, because it's not about me,
it's not about you, it's about just spreading the gospel.
And you know what, there is a lot of wisdom
in having a local church, that you have a local church
that is like-minded, and that is in my heart
to try to help people out.
Because I'll be honest with you,
that when I got saved, I didn't have a great church,
but I had plenty of friends that wanted
to hear the word of God.
People that I went soul-winning with,
I haven't really been in the situation
where I was just not around anybody
that wanted to serve God.
I don't really know what that feels like.
I mean, my roommate in college, in one of my years,
one or two years, was Pastor Jason Robinson.
It's like, well, when your roommate's with somebody else
that's reading the Bible, and we talked about the Bible
all the time, right, we went soul-winning all the time,
it's a lot easier to serve God.
I hope that people aren't just stranded in locations
where it's like, man, we gotta listen to online preaching.
It would be better if they have a local church today
to go to.
Even if I don't agree 100% on every single point,
if it's a good church, it would be better
for them to have a local church.
John 3, verse 25.
"'Then there arose a question between some
"'of John's disciples and the Jews about purifying.
"'And they came on to John and said unto him,
"'Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan,
"'to whom thou bearest witness, behold the same baptizer
"'and all men come to him.'"
This is a very rude statement they make.
They come to John and say, hey, John, by the way,
this other guy is doing a little bit more than you.
It'd be like if you came here today and say,
Brother Stuckey, man, this other preacher's
a lot better than you.
It's like, his sermons are twice as good,
I learned twice as much, I'm twice as motivated.
Thank you, I feel great now, right?
It's like, man, this other church,
they're just so much more zealous.
It's like, and look, I've actually seen people
say statements like this before in front of good pastors,
and I'm just thinking, I mean,
how can you be that Bobo, right?
But there's no new thing under the sun, right?
I mean, it's the same thing people do today,
the same thing they did back then.
They basically are saying this to John.
Now look, you could easily see how John
could get in the flesh and get offended by this.
But notice his reaction.
Verse 27, "'John answered and said,
"'A man can receive nothing except to be
"'given him from heaven.
"'Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said,
"'I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.
"'He that hath the bride is the bridegroom,
"'but the friend of the bridegroom,
"'which standeth and heareth him,
"'rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.
"'This my joy therefore is fulfilled.'"
What John the Baptist is saying is,
I'm the friend of the bridegroom.
I am the best man at the wedding, but I'm not the groom.
Here's the thing, the worst job in a wedding
is to be the best man, right?
Or to be like the head bridesmaid or whatever, right?
Because your whole job is to just help the groom out.
It's a sacrificial job, and what he's saying is,
hey, you know, when you're the best man at the wedding,
your job is not to just be like the star, right?
It's like the wedding's over, it's like, you know,
your goal is to just help the bride and groom out, right?
And that's what John the Baptist is saying.
He's like, I was never trying to be the bride
or the bridegroom.
I'm just a friend of the bridegroom.
I'm just trying to help spread the gospel.
That's what my goal is, right?
And he says, this my joy therefore is fulfilled.
My goal is the fact that I spread the gospel,
and if this is what God has for me, then praise the Lord.
I'm serving God.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
And what John the Baptist says is,
for God to increase, I must decrease,
meaning my personal ambitions, they're gonna be less
because what matters is what God wants.
And as a church, we need to have this attitude
where we're okay with always investing in other ministries.
Not just it's all about us,
but it's also about other people, right?
And there's people that live near our church.
There's also people that don't live near our church.
And as much as those people like our church,
I promise you they would rather
they had a like-minded church that was nearby them,
and it would be better for them.
That's reality, right?
Point number one, why is it that you would have
this sort of setup, you know,
starting churches and stuff like that?
Well, because there's a demand for it.
And I believe that as long as I'm living,
there's probably always gonna be a demand for it.
That's probably reality.
And look, it would be great
if there was a church in every city,
and that's the principle, but it's probably never happened,
and it probably never will happen, right?
But there's also potential problems.
And one reason why is you could lose your family,
you could lose your personal walk,
and you could also lose the quality of the work.
And you know, there's things we need to realize
as a result of that, what that means for us.
Now, the one thing I wanted to highlight is this,
and I don't want you to worry,
I haven't lost my family or whatever,
I'm just preaching this sermon about how it is important
for the leader of the church
not to just forsake his entire life for the cause of God
and just, you know, lose his family,
and things like that, right?
That's important, okay?
And I want you to understand this,
the best way for me to explain this is in a sermon,
and I don't want you to worry,
because honestly, if you're here on Sundays,
you won't even notice a difference
if I didn't make this announcement, okay?
And I'll just say what it is, and then I'll explain.
But my wife and I, and this has always been our plans,
we're actually moving to Pampanga.
Now, our family's gonna be here every single Sunday,
my entire family, I'm gonna still preach the sermons,
I'm gonna still run the church,
but the reality is we always have planned
to move to Pampanga.
Now, I wanna give you a bit of a background,
because I want you to realize if you're here on Sundays
and you're not here for the midweek service,
you wouldn't even realize there's a difference.
You don't have to worry.
You wouldn't realize there's a difference
if I didn't make this announcement, okay?
Now, my wife is from Pampanga, okay?
And when I visited the Philippines in 2014,
I visited Pampanga, I also visited up here,
but I developed a desire to start a church.
The desire was to start a church in Pampanga.
I assumed I was gonna be starting a church with nobody.
That was my assumption.
I had no idea anybody was listening to sermons online
in the Philippines.
And I've discovered, obviously, that's not true,
and there was a work being built up here in the Philippines
of people that are like-minded,
but our desire was to start a church in Pampanga.
And when I moved to Verity Baptist Church,
I told Pastor Jimenez that.
Now, one of his requirements is that
if you're gonna start a church,
it has to have a lot of people.
It's not just some small area where nobody is,
but it's in an area where you can reach a lot of people.
And I told him, there's over two million people in Pampanga,
plenty of people to reach.
Now, I'm sure he would have loved me to stay in California
and help starting churches there,
but he was okay with the fact.
It's an area, and there's people ready, right?
Now, along the way, though,
we changed our plans temporarily.
We never changed our plans permanently.
The reason why my wife and I changed our plans temporarily
is because there was already people ready
for church in Metro Manila.
And so my wife and I discussed it,
and I talked to Pastor Jimenez about it,
and we decided we could put our plans on hold temporarily
in order to start the church.
Now, look, we're gonna be here every single Sunday,
so nothing's changing.
Now, when it comes to midweek service,
it's probably gonna be more of a rotating schedule
because with traffic, it probably doesn't make
the most sense for my family to come up every Wednesday.
We're obviously gonna start more soul winning in Pampanga
and a midweek service and stuff like that with time.
But you know what?
We always plan to move to Pampanga,
and there's many reasons why.
One thing you have to realize is this.
My salary's independent of where I live.
Financially, it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Now, I'm okay with that
because I wanted to start this church,
but I'm just saying for a lot of you,
you're in Metro Manila for the purposes of work.
If you could make the same money in another location,
you would live in that other location.
So my wife and I, we do make a financial sacrifice
just for the purposes of building this church up,
and that's okay with us, right?
I mean, I have my job.
I do find financially.
But in terms of our long-term future,
it doesn't necessarily help us financially, right?
And so this is something we've always planned,
and our lease is up at the end of April,
so basically two months.
And the reality is with two kids that are moving around
and with the cost, it's like, you know what?
It's very hard, especially when I work from home,
especially when I want to homeschool Zeph,
kind of start when he's four years old.
We really had to make a choice
because we were planning to find a lot in Pampanga,
and it would take a while to build it
or something like that.
But honestly, it's pretty hard to look for a place
to live permanently, and it's a big choice to make
when you're not able to actually see in person, right?
And so basically we had to make a choice.
We're either gonna get a bigger place,
which is gonna cost us more money,
or we're gonna move,
and instead of going to Pampanga every Saturday,
we're gonna come up here on Sundays.
And we decided we're gonna move at the end of April, okay?
Now here's the thing.
Our new place is half as expensive and three times as big.
Two floors, three times as big.
It's like, you know, honestly,
because here's the thing, a lot of my sermons,
it's like I write them in the corner of my house
at like 4.30 in the morning,
and then there might be babies crying,
or sometimes I have to print something.
Like literally like a month ago,
I had to go to the bathroom
because I didn't want to wake up my kids to print something,
and I brought the printer in,
and you know what, it's really hard,
especially when you work from home to try to do that.
It's very difficult, and I'm not upset about it.
I'm just saying it makes life a lot more stressful
and difficult, but you know, it was always our plan,
and it's like the new place is half as expensive
and three times as big, right?
It's gonna be a whole lot easier for us,
and you know, our plan was always, you know,
to eventually move to Pampanga.
And look, I'm sure many of you understand that
because many of you probably have the same thing.
You're like, I love this church,
but in the back of my mind,
I've never told Brother Stuckey,
but one day, I'm gonna move to the province.
You know, you have a couple kids.
It's nice when all my wife's family is in Pampanga,
and you that have young kids, you know, you understand that.
Having kids is like a game changer, right?
There's just many reasons why,
and look, you're welcome to talk to me
about it individually and privately,
but I want you to realize this has always been our plans.
Now, of course, when I started the church,
it's not like I announced, hey, you know what,
we're eventually gonna move to Pampanga
because you know what, obviously,
we didn't know for sure when things were gonna happen,
and you know, I didn't know how things were gonna happen,
and here's the reality.
One thing that we have changed is this.
Instead of my plan to basically, you know,
just ordain someone and then move and start a new church,
I plan to run both churches.
Honestly, our original plans
was after a certain amount of time,
someone would take over, you know,
and then we would go to Pampanga
to start a different church.
But you know what, I'm surprised that I'm able to go
and preach on Saturdays and Sundays,
and I haven't found it to be overwhelming.
But for our family, it just makes the most sense.
And you know, when it comes to serving God,
everybody's gonna make some sort of sacrifice,
but you also have to individually decide
how big of a sacrifice you're gonna make.
And so, for me, this was always our plans
that, you know what, it's just a whole lot cheaper
in Pampanga, and it's just, it'll be a whole lot easier
to build our future and eventually have a house
and a family, and my wife's family's from there.
It's always been in our plans.
But here's the thing, you know,
if you forget what I said and you only show up on Sunday,
you're not even gonna realize.
Brother Stuckey lives in Pampanga,
I had no idea about that, right?
And look, you know, I'm sure many people are in the same way
it's like, you know, you saved the money,
you bought a house in the province and everything,
and it's just like, you know, my wife and I
just aren't any different
than probably almost everybody in this room.
But we will be here, because here's the thing,
you could ask anybody at the church in Pampanga,
I've been committed to that church from day one,
and I already decided, it wasn't something where I was like,
hey, you know what, if things don't work out, it's okay.
No, no, I said, they're going to work out.
And I'll be honest, once the pandemic happened,
it was very difficult.
And there were times when, you know,
when you're starting a church and it's kind of smaller,
if one or two of the families is gone, it's like,
you're preaching to like six people.
But it's like, I was there every single week anyway.
And it's like in the back of my head,
of course you're thinking, man, am I crazy?
And maybe I am a little bit crazy, right?
I don't know.
It's just like, you know what,
I said, it's going to last no matter what.
And you know what, now it's thriving, right?
The attendance is up, we're reaching new people,
but it's like, this has always been in our plans,
but you know what, in 2021 at our church,
we plan to have a lot more activities than we've ever had.
We plan to do lots of soul winning,
and you know what, things are just pushing up and up.
It's not just that these last couple months
are like a last hurrah,
we're going to keep doing that for the entire year, okay?
Even when my wife and I, we do fully move down, right?
So at the end of April is actually our plan.
And look, if you have any questions about that,
you're welcome to ask me about that.
And I know some people have talked to me before
and they've asked me, you know,
because they know obviously my wife's from Pampanga,
and I've told people eventually we plan to be in Pampanga,
but we never necessarily had a settled time for sure,
but it is going to be at the end of April,
but we'll be up here every single Sunday.
So if you have any questions, you're welcome to ask me.
Let's close in a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father,
thank you for allowing us to be here today,
and just getting to hear your word and everything,
and help us to be a church that's always willing
to invest in other churches, God,
but I ask you to continue to bless this church,
and help us to reach more and more people in 2021,
and do great things for God,
and help this church build and grow,
and help us to get many church plants in the future as well.
God, we pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.
All right, our last song, song number one, zero.
Let's sing, Hear the Cross, song number one, zero.
Hear the Cross, song number one, zero.
Song number 10.
Let's sing, Hear the Cross.
Our last song, sing it on the verse, ready.
Jesus, keep it, hear the cross.
There, a precious mountain,
leads to all the healing streets,
flows from Calvary's mountain,
in the cross, in the cross be my glory ever,
till my rapture soul shall find,
rest beyond the hill.
All right, sing it, hear the cross, a family song.
The members, she found me,
near the bright and morning stars,
shed its wings around me,
with the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever,
till my rapture soul shall find,
rest beyond the hill.
On earth, near the cross, the Lamb of God,
releasing before me, happy one from day to day,
with its shadows on me.
In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever,
till my rapture soul shall find,
rest beyond the hill.
Let's sing on the last now.
Hear the cross, I'll watch and wait,
hoping, trusting ever,
till I reach the oldest friend,
trust beyond the river.
In the cross, be my glory ever,
till my rapture soul shall find,
rest beyond the river.
Thank you.
you