If you look at Acts chapter 19 and verse number 10 there,
I want you to notice the last part of the phrase there,
of the verse.
It says, all they which dwelt in Asia
heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
What you'll find throughout the book of Acts
is that you find this concept that is referred to,
or I like to refer to it, as saturation soul winning.
And this has been the goal of Verity Baptist Church
since we've started.
Our goal is to obviously see people saved and baptized
and all those things.
But our goal has been to really saturate our city
with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I want you to notice that this is
what they did in the book of Acts.
This is what we see the apostle Paul doing
in his missionary journeys.
You're there in Acts 19.
If you flip back to Acts chapter 13
and look at verse number 42, Acts 13 and verse 42,
the Bible says this.
And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue,
the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached
to them the next Sabbath.
Now, when the congregation was broken up,
many of the Jews and religious proselytes
followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them,
persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.
Notice verse 44.
And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together
to hear the word of God.
Go back to Acts chapter number 8.
Look at verse 25.
I want you to notice that when the apostle Paul went out
to preach the gospel, his goal was
to get the gospel to the entire city,
make sure everybody understood and heard the gospel.
Acts chapter 8, verse 25, the Bible says this.
And they went and they, when they had testified
and preached the word of the Lord,
returned to Jerusalem and preached
the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
I want you to notice they were reaching the Samaritans.
And they went out and preached the gospel
in many villages of the Samaritans.
Go back to Acts chapter 5.
Look at verse 28.
And this is, of course, the enemies of the Lord,
the enemies of the Christians speaking these words.
But notice in Acts 5, 28, the Bible
says this, saying, did not we straightly
command you that ye should not teach in this name?
And behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine
and intend to bring this man's blood upon us.
So in the Bible, what we see is that the enemies of the church
there in Jerusalem says, you have filled
Jerusalem with your doctrine.
We see that the Bible says that the whole city came out
to hear you.
We see there that it says that the entire region of Asia
had heard the gospel.
Later on in the book of Acts, we have
the enemies of the apostle Paul saying, not only here
in Athens, but almost all of Asia is persuaded by Paul.
And this is our goal at Verity Baptist Church,
is that everybody in the city of Sacramento
would hear the gospel, have an opportunity
to hear the gospel.
We really want to saturate our city
with the gospel of Christ.
On top of that, we also want to saturate our area here.
Many years ago, when we started the church in Natomas,
we chose out a few zip codes that we really
wanted to focus in on.
And of course, back then, we were in 95833,
and we chose certain areas.
Now we're in 15, and we've expanded those areas.
And what the Lord has done over the last 10 years
has been pretty amazing.
It's been exciting.
Our church has grown to the place where, at this point,
we average around 120 soul owners every week
from our church.
120 people go out and preach the gospel every week.
Last week, we had 121.
And we have a good problem.
We have a problem.
We have a good problem.
And the good problem is this.
When you send 121 soul owners out every week,
we're knocking the doors too fast,
and we're moving too quickly.
And I want to kind of show this to you.
And it's my goal to kind of bring the map
and show it to you every once in a while anyway
to make sure that you get a vision for what we're doing.
I'm going to ask the staff guys if they would help me.
Ask them to get that map.
They would bring it up as quickly as they can.
And of course, in our church office,
we've got our big soul-winning map
where we track our soul-winning.
Every week, you get maps individually or in your groups.
You go out, and you preach the gospel.
And then we track those on this big map.
I've asked the guys to help me with that
and bring it up here.
I want to show you where we're at and what needs to happen.
If you guys could just stand right here.
Thank you very much, guys.
Pull this way a little bit, if you would.
So right there, that's good, perfect.
So this is a map of the city of Sacramento.
This is the soul-winning map that we hold in our office.
And of course, the area in red that you see there
is the things that have already been done.
What I want you to notice is that
our church building is right here.
So that's where we're sitting right now.
And around our church building,
you'll notice that we have these zip codes.
You may not see them, but they're outlined.
We've got 95833, 343538,
which is where we're at right now, and then 15.
These are the areas that we've chosen
to kind of focus in on more than all the other ones.
They're the areas surrounding our church building.
They also are some areas that are pretty receptive.
Now, here's what I want you to understand.
Everything in red has been done at least once.
Those zip codes that I just named off,
33, 34, 35, 38, and 15,
those zip codes have probably been done, I don't know,
eight times, nine times, 10 times,
maybe some of those even more than that.
This is where we're at right now.
And you'll notice that what hasn't been done
is this area down here.
South Sacramento has not been done as much.
We've been knocking out a lot of it.
So this isn't completely updated.
There's actually areas that are pretty much done down here
that we're just waiting on two or three,
few maps to be done.
But the point is this,
our goal is to saturate the entire city,
make sure that the entire city
hears the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, here's a problem that we find ourselves with
at this point, and it is this.
When we first started Verity Baptist Church,
we were in 95833.
We had a goal of knocking 95833, 3435 once a year.
Now, that was when it was like me, my wife,
and maybe two other soul winners,
and that was a big goal for us, to do it once a year.
And as the church has grown, as the church has grown,
we've expanded.
Our goal now is 95833, 3435, 3815.
We'd like to knock those at least once a year
from, aside from everything else we're doing.
Here's a problem we're finding ourselves with.
Lately, when we've been averaging
about 120 soul winners out every week,
what we've been doing is we've been knocking out
one of these zip codes in about six weeks,
which is a good thing, except for the fact that
it means we're gonna knock all of these doors
like four times a year or something like that,
three times a year, and we don't want to do that.
Now, our plan at this point is that
whenever we're pushing a big day,
Easter, family friend day, Christmas, something like that,
we want to come back here because this is where the,
obviously the soul winning is good in these zip codes,
and we draw a lot of visitors, a lot of guests come
as a result of our soul winning every week.
However, at times when we're not pushing big days
like the summer, which we're in right now,
or other times that are a little more
not pushing church growth as much,
what we want to do is focus on these areas
because number one, we want to saturate our city
with the gospel, and number two,
we're knocking these streets out too fast.
So here's the thing, we need you guys
to go soul winning down here.
Now, we tried to slow things down a little bit.
If you remember earlier this year,
we separated our soul winning into local and not locals,
and we were wanting that to kind of slow down
how fast we were doing these areas,
but it hasn't worked, which is good, it's a good problem.
But we're moving too fast, so we need to be able
to knock some of these areas down here.
So for now, our plan is everyone's gonna go down here.
And of course, that means that that requires
a little bit of a drive, that requires a little bit of time,
but the problem is that we're knocking these areas
too quickly, and we want to try to knock out.
Now, with 120 soul winners every week,
hopefully we can start knocking out some of these areas
a little faster than that, but I want you to get an idea
of what we're doing, the vision,
what we've accomplished so far, and where we're going.
I'll let these guys go, so they don't have
to keep holding that.
You guys can go ahead and put it down, thank you.
Let me just say this about a couple of things.
First of all, you'll notice that your maps
are gonna start being a little further for everyone,
not just the local group or the far group or whatever.
Everyone's gonna have to start taking maps
that are a little further,
and there's just no other way about it.
Now, I've been doing this long enough
where I know how this works,
and some of you are gonna have complaints, and I get that,
and you can come talk to me, and I'm happy to hear them,
and I'll nod and smile and say, well, here's your map.
But the thing is this, all right?
No matter what we do, someone's gonna not be happy.
We go far, people complain we go too far.
We stay close, people complain
that we've done this area recently.
It really is sometimes like the children of Israel.
It's why God gave us these passages in Scripture
where people are just complaining and complaining
Let me encourage you not to be a complainer.
How about being a team player and saying,
hey, we've got a vision, we've got a goal,
we've got something to do.
Let's accomplish it.
Now, I realize some of you may have a legitimate reason
why you can't go too far.
I get that.
If that's the case, please talk to me,
and we will try to work something out
and help you with that.
But if half of you say we can't go to Salzack, that's fine.
I don't have a problem with that.
Honestly, if it was up to me, I wouldn't have any problem
with knocking those zip codes once every six weeks,
all of them, because we get visitors every week
from our soul winning, and I love that.
I just don't want you to think,
well, we've already been here.
We're just here not that long ago.
We've been here.
There's only one way to solve that problem,
and it's to go somewhere else.
And our goal is to reach the entire city anyway.
That's something we've been wanting to do anyway.
I hope that kind of makes sense.
Alongside with that, we're also gonna be sprinkling in
some apartment complexes that need to be done
in these areas.
So just know that we do have
some apartment complexes available.
Obviously, that can get a little complicated too.
Some people can't go to apartment complexes
because you got upstairs and downstairs,
and sometimes with babies that could be difficult,
or with health issues that could be difficult.
Also, you can't send a group of 50 people
into an apartment complex either.
It just doesn't really work out very well.
There's all sorts of logistical issues
that we're having to deal with
as the church continues to grow
and we continue to train more soul owners.
And I want you to know as your pastor, I'm for it.
I'm willing to figure out how to do more
and accomplish more.
I'm not negative about this.
I hope one day our church has 200 soul owners.
I hope one day our church has 300 soul owners.
I hope one day we come to the place where we say
we knock every door in Sacramento every two or three years.
That would be an amazing thing.
But we have some problems.
They're good problems.
We need to try to solve them.
And I want you to understand our goal.
Our goal is to saturate the city with the gospel,
knock every door in this city.
And in order to do that, we're just gonna have to focus in
on areas that are a little further.
So we appreciate your patience with that.
We appreciate you guys helping us with that.
And I hope you can kind of understand
what we're doing in regards to that.
And I also hope that our enemies, which we have some,
would say you have filled Sacramento with this doctrine.
You have saturated the city with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let's go ahead and bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, thank you, Lord,
for allowing us to have this time.
Thank you for these soul owners.
Lord, I pray that you'd bless our soul-winning efforts.
I pray you'd keep everybody safe
as they go out knocking doors, Lord.
And I pray that you would help us to see people saved.
Lord, help us to be able to knock every door in this city
and do a great work for you.
And the match at the same price we pray, amen.