(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Corinthians chapter number three, the part that I wanted to focus on is beginning in verse number nine where the Bible reads, for we are laborers together with God, ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building. And the title of my sermon tonight is this, ye are God's building. Now let's keep on reading here, it says in the next verse, according to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, another built thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth there upon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built there upon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved yet so is by fire. Know ye not, watch this, that ye are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. Now it's very clear when we read this passage that the building that's being built here is a spiritual building. We're not talking about a physical building where we have a bunch of trucks out there bringing in cement to lay the foundation and we're going to build a big building. No, it's a spiritual building. Jesus Christ is the foundation and he says that building is people because he says to the people of the church of Corinth ye are God's building in verse number nine and then at the end he says the temple of God is holy which temple ye are. Now if you would go to Ephesians chapter number two. And the reason I point this out is because we live in a day where churches often place great emphasis on building great physical buildings, giant physical structures, beautiful structures. Is that really the main work that God has called us to do? Is that something that the New Testament emphasizes in any way, shape, or form? In all of the letters that the apostle Paul is writing unto these various churches where he talks about the things that he's working on and the things that they're working on and the things that they need to improve or he never one time brings up their great big building program or the great big fundraiser to raise money for the building. Yet in most churches today this has become a great emphasis raising huge amounts of money to buy expensive buildings. Now I want to start out by saying this. My sermon tonight is not to criticize other churches who do things a little different than we do things or just to say that anybody who builds a building is bad or something. You know I don't want you to misunderstand the sermon and take things too far and just use this to insult or criticize other churches. Okay now are there churches out there who are abusive? Of course. That just, you know, it's all about money, money, money and build big palaces. But the main purpose of the sermon tonight is just to explain to you the philosophy that we have here at Faithful Word Baptist Church and why our church will never build a building and just explain the philosophy and the scriptural reasons and I'm not saying that anybody who does this a little different is wrong. Sure it's ridiculous when it's all about the building but I just want you to understand why I have this philosophy that I believe is scriptural and why I think it's smarter for our church to never build a building ever. Okay so look at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19. Bible says, now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God and are built, he's saying you are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto unholy temple in the Lord in whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit. So the building in the New Testament is the church. The Bible says 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. So in the New Testament it is the church that is the house of God. It's not a physical building, a tabernacle or a temple but he says you collectively make up the temple of God. You're God's building, okay? That assembly of people that makes up the church, that's God's building. Now tonight, and if you would just flip a few pages over to Ephesians 4, tonight we are sitting in a building, okay? And that is very scriptural for us to be sitting in a building and having church tonight because of the fact that even in the earliest church they had a building. You see they met in the upper room and we think of the upper room as being just a small little room but if you remember there were 120 people meeting for church in the upper room. So if you have a room big enough for 120 people to meet there and have church, that's a pretty big giant space that they were using. Then of course we know that the Lord kept adding to the church daily such as should be saved. We know that thousands were added to that church. Obviously they grew, obviously they're meeting somewhere. There's some location where they're getting together and assembling. Whether that's in the upper room which had room for at least 120 people, maybe many more. Or whether that's another building, a tent, a tabernacle, whatever anyone can construct. Obviously just due to weather and due to logistics there are times when you need to meet in a building like for example in August in Phoenix, Arizona you want to meet in a building. You don't want to be outside in this weather, it's way too hot. Or if we were in some extremely cold place like if we were having a church in Alaska or something then the winters would be extreme. So don't get me wrong, people who are against meeting in a building, that's just silly. Because in the Bible they met in different buildings, they met in people's houses but they also met in much bigger buildings to accommodate thousands of people. Not the issue here. But the issue here is when we get out of the emphasis of reaching people and building people and carrying out that commission and where the emphasis instead becomes about building a physical building and our success is measured by physical buildings. This comes from a worldly philosophy. This is how the world looks. The world is constantly insulting Faithful Word Baptist Church for meeting in a strip mall, right? Meeting in an office space. You know and they're mocking that because that's how the world thinks. Because the Bible says that there are people in this world who suppose that gain is godliness. You know they look at wealth and money and palaces and stained glass windows and gold and silver and precious stones. That's what impresses them but the love of money is the root of all evil and God doesn't see as man seeth. God is looking at the people. God looks at us and says you're my building. You're God's building. You are his workmanship, the Bible says. Look at Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. And that word edifying means building. That's what it means. And who here speaks Spanish? And we know that to say a building in Spanish is what? Edificio, right? To build something is to edify. That's what an edifice is. It's a building. And so he says here that the work of the ministry done by pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets is the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man. Under the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of man and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth and love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, in Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. It's about building ourselves. It's about building each other. It's about building people's lives. It's not about building a physical building in the New Testament. Now in the Old Testament there are a lot of stories about warfare. People are going to battle and fighting with the sword and spear and shield. We know that in the New Testament the application for those things is a spiritual application. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. We know that God's not calling us to take up sword and spear and go fight a physical enemy. It's a spiritual battle. The weapons of our warfare, the Bible says, are not carnal. They're not fleshly. So all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine but we have to understand that many things in the Old Testament that had a physical application have a spiritual application in the New Testament. So in the Old Testament the physical battle is a spiritual warfare today in the New Testament. And in the Old Testament there are great stories about magnificent buildings being built whether that's the tabernacle or whether that's Solomon's temple or whether it's the rebuilding of the temple in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah or whether it's the building of the wall around the city of Jerusalem. And these stories are profitable unto us today but let me tell you something. They have a spiritual application. It's not about picking up the trowel and the hammer and going out and physically building a building. It's not about building the church which is people, not a building. That's why he says, look, you're the temple of God. You're God's building. He's using illustrations from the Old Testament temple to illustrate the building, quote unquote, of God's people in the New Testament. It's spiritual. It's not literal in the New Testament. That's what the Bible is teaching. Now there are a lot of reasons why I do not believe that it is wise for our church to ever build or purchase a building. And you may or may not agree with these things but I'm just going to lay out to you what my philosophy is which I believe is derived from scripture and just from the wisdom that I've acquired just living on this earth and even though I'm young I grew up and was born and raised an independent fundamental Baptist. I mean from the time I was born I have gone to Baptist churches and I have seen the downfall of many soul winning Baptist churches and a lot of it had to do with buildings and money. Okay, the love of money is the root of all evil. And whenever we get off track where it's not about the souls, it's not about the people where it becomes about the building, there's a danger for us to go down a very wrong path. And it's my job as a pastor I believe to lead us away from danger and to lead us away from carnality. And again this is not saying that my philosophy or the way that we do things at Faithful Word is the only right way to do it. This is just for us as a church to understand. If other people, other pastors would hear this and take it to heart, great. And you know the men in our church that want to pastor someday, I hope that they'll listen to this and think about this and understand this. But we're living in a day where when someone goes out to start a church often they start looking for the building even before they even start knocking the first door with the Gospel of Jesus Christ because that's what it's about. Now part of that comes from the desire to impress other people because of the fact that you know you don't want to be in a strip mall, you don't want to be meeting in an office space. And you know you want to impress people, you want to have a real church building. You know the real free standing, steeple, you know the whole shebang. And that's what people think right? But let me explain to you some of the reasons why it is not efficient or expedient for us to have a church building at this time or at any time. I'm telling you my goal with this church is to meet in a storefront until Jesus comes. We're going to rent space until Jesus, now you say oh well you don't have any vision, you don't, oh I have great vision, oh I want the church to grow but I just don't have visions of great buildings, I have visions of great people. You see it's not about staying small, I don't believe in staying small. There are some people who do and they oh all big churches are bad, I don't believe that. You know God willing our church will continue to grow, we've grown every single year and we will continue to grow with God's help and by his grace and I pray and hope that our church will someday run thousands of people and I believe that it will. You know I don't know, maybe it will, maybe it won't. That's not really what gets me up in the morning of yeah we're going to reach a thousand people. You know that's not really that important to me because I believe it's God's job to build the church. It's our job to preach, to win souls, to be faithful and Jesus said upon this rock I'll build my church. I believe that our church will probably one day run over a thousand people. I don't see why it wouldn't but maybe I'm wrong, who knows, who cares. You know the bottom line is we have a great church. It's about quality not quantity. We're winning people to Christ but honestly God said surely blessing I will bless thee and multiplying I'll multiply thee and if we're going out and knocking doors and winning people to Christ the church should grow. The church should multiply and staying small is not God's will, I don't believe. I think that it's about growth but it's not about growing at any cost. It's about staying right, having integrity, zero compromise and let it grow in its own time naturally, not try to rush the growth by bringing in the rock band, trimming the message and so forth. But we don't want, you got to be careful because there's these people out there who have this attitude of like growth is bad, stay small. No that's not what the Bible teaches. In the book of Acts they're growing dramatically and we should strive to grow as well. But here are some reasons why building a building or buying a great church building is not part of that program in my mind or in my vision and I hope that after this sermon you'll agree with me. You know we've already seen a lot of the scriptures de-emphasizing physical buildings and emphasizing the spiritual building. But let me just compare to you buying a house personally with buying a church building okay just to help you understand where I'm coming from here okay. First of all when you buy a house for your family here are some benefits to buying a house for your family. Number one you get a huge tax write off when you buy a house because if you buy a house you pay interest right because you usually have to borrow the money. I mean most people because we live in a debt based economy, a debt based system, I mean even if you pull the money out of your wallet and look at it, it says it's for paying debts right on the dollar bill. So we live in a debt based system. There's not even enough money in circulation to pay off all the debt because of the fractional reserve lending and the scam of the Federal Reserve et cetera et cetera. So pretty much every single person, I'm not going to ask for a razor band, every pretty much almost every single person who buys a house they borrow money to buy a house you know you have to get a mortgage. But the benefit to doing that is that you usually end up paying about the same amount per month as you'd pay for rent anyway but you get to write off all that interest. All the interest is a write off. So all those hundreds and hundreds of dollars of interest, that's a tax benefit okay. Not only that but when you buy a house personally usually you can get in with no money down or very little money down. You don't have to put up huge amounts of money to get into a house. Number three when you own a house you know if somebody sues you or you know the IRS comes after you usually they can't take away your house that you live in because they understand okay you have to have a dwelling place you know you have to live here. Not only that but usually when you go to buy a house if you have reasonably good credit you don't need a bunch of co-signers you just kind of sign for it yourself and you're in right. You have decent credit, you have a job, make enough money, you sign for it yourself. And not only that when you buy a house for yourself you have a reasonable idea of how many people are going to live in that house in the long run right. Now I always say that you should never buy a house with the attitude of oh I'm going to move in two or three years or I'm going to move in five years. No you're not because you don't know because what if the housing value drops and then you can't sell it. You could be upside down. So whenever you buy a house it's always wise to think about it in the sense that you might be stuck in that house for a very long time. So that's why when I bought my house here to start the church in I didn't buy a big house but I bought a house. It's a small old house but when I bought it I thought about the fact you know I might be in this house for the next 30 years. So I need to think about the fact that I'm going to have kids and everything so I need to get it at least you know three bedroom two bath or whatever you know you got to have at least some room to grow. And the thing about it is that even though yeah you're going to have a lot of kids there's only so many kids you can have and then eventually they start leaving you know at least that's what I'm hoping you know eventually you know they get married get out of here all right you know and eventually you're going to reach critical mass where they start leaving at the same rate that they're being born and then it kind of you know you reach a certain maximum. I'm saying there's not going to be 100 people living in my house right it's not going to be 200 people I mean you know okay at the most there's going to be 10 or 12 people you know if I end up having a bunch of kids in that time that's possible. Now let's compare these points with buying a church building okay. Well when you buy a church building there's no tax benefit because churches aren't paying taxes anyway so you know you're not getting that right off so there's no tax incentive to owning a church. Not only that but a church building is very expensive so we're not dealing with the relatively small amount of money of buying a personal home for yourself you know 150,000 250,000. Back in 2012 before I had come to this realization that I'm preaching to you tonight about why we should never own a building and why we should never buy a church building back in 2012 I contemplated moving our church into a building owning a building and the reason why this thought came to my mind is because I opened the mailbox one day and there was a check for $75,000 in the mail made out to our church. So I got the check and I was thinking like man is this real I mean that's a lot of money. So I took it down to the bank and they said yep the money's there I'm like well deposit this thing. So we had you know 75 grand so I thought to myself oh wow maybe God's providing us money so that we could get into a church building because you know how often do you have these big chunks of money to be able to put down on a church building. So I looked into it I did some research and you know but right away something didn't sit well with me right away with that because I'm thinking to myself wait a minute so somebody gives me $75,000 and I'm going to go out and spend like 10 times that much you know it's like wait a minute if somebody gives me $75,000 and I go out and spend $750,000 or more something didn't seem right about that just seemed weird okay. So I you know I started looking into it though just to kind of see what was out there and here are some of the things that I found. First of all I found that for $750,000 you could not even begin to get a building that's big enough for our church not even close. A church building for $750,000 would be way too small for the size of our church even back in 2012 with no growth let alone growing room I mean if you're getting a 30 year loan you got to have growing room right well the type of building that would have been purchased for $750,000 even in 2012 which was like the bottom of the market the commercial real estate market was pretty close to the bottom in 2012 wasn't even close the building that we would have needed that would have had some growing room would have been about one and a half million dollars 1.5 million dollars okay and not only that but it would have had growing room but not necessarily 30 years of growing room because our church is growing at a pretty good rate it's growing pretty fast so it would have had maybe 5, 10 years maybe probably not even that for oh but you sold and get another yeah but you don't know what the market's going to do it's not always that easy to buy the next building and you know what I've known a lot of churches that got into trouble doing stuff like that I was I can remember talking to a pastor who was bragging about his financial wheeling and dealing how he'd sold this property bought this one sold this one and he's wielding millions of dollars and he said you know there are a lot of pastors who can out preach me but he said no one can out finance me that's what this pastor and you know what within two years he's no longer pastoring because he messed up the finances because he just knew he's going to sell this property and that's going to fix everything and then the market dropped and nobody wanted to buy it and he was sunk and because of the financial problems it led to all kinds of problems look how many divorces are caused by financial problems okay well let me explain some to you spiritual church divorces take place over financial problems too when the church is all financially jacked up church splits happen people get angry there's fighting there's bitterness and so forth so we're talking about a lot more money than just buying a house for your family think about this you know how big is your house how many square feet is your house you know my house is like after I you know well my house like 1,500 square feet okay but you know let's say you have a big house that's like 3,000 square feet right that'd be considered a pretty big house right if you have a 3,000 square foot that's huge okay well the thing is though you're sitting in a building that's 3,600 square feet and we also have office space that we rent around the corner to store stuff so we actually have like 4,300 4,400 square feet here okay and then my friend pastor Jimenez in Sacramento California Verity Baptist their building is like 4,400 square feet also okay and this is a church that runs a hundred and some people over there okay so we're talking about bigger buildings big parking lots how many vehicles do you have one two okay how many vehicles is a church parking lot need hundreds okay so we're talking about a building that would be at least a million and a half dollars and it wouldn't even still be necessarily what you need okay then you talk to the banks and you know what they want 20% down there's no no money down it's not buying a personal home no they want 20% down and it's not negotiable and they say that's low we really want 40% down but they say the least we'll do is 20% and then they'll give you a bad deal because you're only putting 20% down everything with business is more expensive than personal like for example you want to bring internet into your home versus bringing it into the office it's going to cost two or three times as much to bring to the office you want water bottles delivered to your home twice as much to have water bottles delivered to a business that's just the way things work business to business costs more than business to personal so we're talking about having to raise money for 300,000 bucks and I'm just giving an example here it probably costs more than this to get the building we need but raise money for 300,000 bucks where I get up and preach all these sermons about how you can't out give God and put your hand on the screen and you need to mortgage your house and borrow so then you have everybody digging deep putting all their money in the plate right mortgaging their home to put I've been in churches where people are told you need to mortgage your house and or the church will sell bonds to people you know to raise money and borrow money from the church members and everything and they get into everybody for all this money then not only that guess what Pastor Anderson's signature is not going to be enough oh no they want a whole bunch of people to sign whole bunch of people to cosign that loan and now they're on and guess guess which kind of people they want to cosign people who have money people who have stuff not just oh I'll do it you know I'm an 18 year old guy living in an apartment you know yeah I'll cosign Pastor Anderson I got your back no no they want people who have something to lose who have good credit who have money who own things as collateral so basically you're getting into debt first of all and let me say this our church has existed for the last 10 years and we've never borrowed any money in 10 years and we've always been able to pay every bill on time you know I think that's a pretty good financial record to pastor a church of a couple hundred people and to never borrow any money and to pay every bill on time and to always have money and to never run out of money okay that's the best way to do it and that's why our church will just continue to operate in cash because you know what if we don't have the money for it then we don't need it I think that's a great philosophy to operate our church under why not why not rent a building until Jesus comes there's no point in owning there's no benefit plus we have no idea how big the church is going to get so we might shell out that 1.5 mil we might raise that $300,000 have the thermometer spin the wheel you know raise the money have the bake sale and do it we might raise all the money everybody gets all strapped for cash and pours every last cent into that down payment then you still have to pay the payments every month on the thing okay what's a mortgage on 1.5 million dollars to a church like faithful word you know this is a volatile institution folks and in the world's mind right they're not gonna look at this as like oh yeah this is a because why because we're independent we don't have the Presbyterian denomination or the United Methodist denomination I mean the banks like well who's bet who's your denomination who's your district leader you know you're not in the Southern Baptist Convention you're not in the North American Baptist Association no they don't that you're independent what what you have no credit what you know okay well let's get all these people with money in your church and here's the thing about people with a lot of money you know what thank God there are some people who have a lot of money that are spiritual people but let's face it the majority of spiritual people are not wealthy now look don't get me wrong the exception proves the rule there are people who have a lot of money that are spiritual giants I believe that there are people like that in the Bible people like Philemon seem to have had money but here's the thing though you know and I know that God has chosen the poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of the kingdoms which he had promised to them that loved him but you've despised the poor do not rich men oppress you and draw you before the judgment seats do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the witcher called you know just to quote a little scripture but there's more than that okay so do we really want our destiny to be controlled by a bunch of money bagged people who are controlling the credit and they've got their name signed we better do it the way that they want because they don't want to lose that investment and blah blah blah you know now you've got all these financial ties you're financially married to all these church members see when I get up and preach some face-ripping sermon that old mr. moneybags doesn't like he can just kind of slink out of here and not let the door hit him on his way out when he doesn't like the sermon that tells how Bruce Jenner really is or whatever you know it's like hey don't let the door and he'll just go huff and puff and blow the house down and go somewhere else but not when he's got all his bonds and he's all cosigned and put money into you know he's gonna feel invested and want to stay and screw things up this is reality friend this I've seen I'm not just speaking in theory I'm not just laying at home paranoid like what would people do this is stuff that has really happened I've seen it I've been in churches that were big growing thriving soul-winning churches oh we're gonna build this great building for the glory of God and then you know what ended up happening it all went downhill and a lot of it had to do with the buildings now there's a lot of reasons for that so I'm just kind of showing you why it doesn't even make sense financially now you say okay pastor Anderson well what if God just works some great miracle where you know somebody just gives you millions of dollars and then you can go buy a building with it or you know what if there's just some killer deal where some church buildings on the market way below market value and you can just steal it away it's still gonna cost a fortune even a good deal even at half price even at a quarter price it's still gonna cost way too much it would still cost a huge amount of money money that we don't have but let's just say that you know the heavens open up and a church building just falls out of the sky you know even then I'm and listen you don't believe me but honestly I can say right now from the bottom of my heart I don't want it take it back where it came from beam it right back up if it can come right you know take it back up in the sky where it came from and I never want to see it again what and let me tell you why let me explain to you why because the fact is that where you're treasure is there will your heart be also go to go to Matthew chapter 6 Matthew chapter 6 the Bible says in Matthew 6 verse 19 lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal for where your treasure is there will your heart be also now listen very carefully to this when you've got nothing you've got nothing to lose no thieves break through and steal nothing rust does not corrupt nothingness there's if there's nothing then you have nothing to lose and true freedom comes from possessing nothing okay in many way I mean you're free now because nobody can take anything away from you anymore you know the great author of the 20th century Alexander Solzhenitsyn who wrote the Gulag archipelago and he wrote this book exposing how evil the Soviet Union was and the concentration camp he spent 11 years in the Gulag system he went through some of the torture and he went through the deprivations of working in a forced labor camp and where everything is taken from you and his he had a really good quote he said people only have power over you as long as they leave you with something but he said once they take everything away from you you're free again because he said you know when you don't have anything then people can't really control you they can't really intimidate you they can't threaten you because you have nothing to lose and that's basically what the Bible is saying here look put your treasure somewhere where you've got nothing to lose on this earth these can't break through or steal moth and rust can't corrupt it because it isn't there because you don't have treasures laid up on the earth now here's the thing where our treasure is there will our heart be also where do we want our heart to be in the people in the souls or do we want it to be in buildings and facilities and fancy structures I mean think about that now let me say this I am NOT a person who's into money I'm not a person who has spent his life seeking money or I just really desire to lay up money and treasures and have all these things but let me tell you something though I am a human being and here's the thing the Bible says let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall and even though that is not something that I could ever see myself being tempted by you know laying up a bunch of wealth and doing but here's the thing though there are a lot of people in the Bible and also just a lot of people who we could see in our lives who basically get their hands on a whole bunch of money and it corrupts them they get their hands on a whole bunch of money and they go crazy and they start making weird decisions doing weird things it changes them look at all the people win the lottery and it ruins their life and they do a bunch of stupid things look it's reality so you know and I remember my dad would always tell me about his dad his dad had a whole bunch of money but he wasn't saved and his mother prayed that if it would take him losing all the money for him to get saved then then that that would happen and he did he lost all the money and he got saved and he just never really made it financially after that you know he's had enough to live and and he did well but he never had that wealth that he had in the early days ever again and my dad always said that God just knew probably that he couldn't handle it so he just kind of kept him lean to a certain point and then my dad always told me he said you know God's never really allowed me to ever just really turn that corner financially you know maybe God just knows I couldn't handle and you know what honestly that those are wise words when we stop and think you know what maybe it wouldn't be good to have millions of dollars at my disposal because maybe I just wouldn't know how to handle it or maybe I would just you know get a crazy thought or a covetous thought or start making stupid decisions or start how about this getting prideful like Nebuchadnezzar where he looks out the window at all the buildings and what does he say oh it's not this great Babylon that I've built nobody cannot finance me you know like that pastor told me a few years ago it can go to people's head or not only that let's say okay let's say the pastor is incorruptible you know God willing he is let's say the pastor is totally incorruptible but what about this what about the fact that it's just a big target when there's all this money whether it's money in the bank or money tied up in a giant building you know what about just the target of somebody who wants to get in there and get control of that money and get control of those those properties and so forth now sometimes that person's name is the IRS and here's the thing with the IRS I mean there's so many complicated rules that even if you do everything by the book they'll still come in and mess with you and and try to figure out where you didn't cross the T or dot the I and they'll come in sometimes and just targeted Lee harass certain people that don't fit in with their agenda of our United States government and so the IRS can come in and give you fits and come in and and move in with you they'll literally do these type of audits where they move in with you where they basically every day they're here watching you following you where they move in and do everything with you and see how you do everything and look at everything you do and analyze it and you say well if you're not doing anything wrong you're not not there's that you don't really want them moving in with you and sometimes they just make stuff up that's not even legit and just say I'm God this is the rule we don't care what the law says this is what we're gonna do and then comes the dreaded padlock on the front door right they padlock they literally padlock the facility he's seen it and he's an accountant so they'll padlock the facility well here's the thing go ahead and padlock our rented facility oh you want to seize all our assets there's not much here's our church here's the keys to the church van enjoy buddy because you know what when you got nothing you got nothing to lose somebody wants to come in here and shut us down or sue us they're gonna sue the pants off of us well you know what I'll go buy another pair of pants you know at the thrift store because honestly my pants aren't that expensive buddy yeah oh man we're gonna sue you I listen I've been accused I've been I'm sorry not accused I've been threatened with lawsuits so many times I can't even count but it's funny that our church has never been sued you want to know why because any lawyer is gonna look at the pie and realize there's no pie so how can I get a piece of it when there isn't one okay and then well but we'll come after you personally pastor Anderson I don't own anything I don't have any money I have eight kids come sue me for what nothing I don't own anything well we'll sue faithful word faithful word doesn't own anything what now huh see what I'm saying so you don't have this target on you of people wanting to sue you or audit you or steal from you or infiltrate the church take over and get control of the assets and split the church and this you know all this stuff it just it all just becomes a non-issue okay because of the fact that there's no money to fight over it just isn't there okay but that's if everything goes well and you own a bunch of buildings and have a bunch of money in the bank how about the flip side of that where it all goes downhill and the church gets into debt up to their eyeballs because I could tell you about all the churches where the finances went great and where all the buildings are paid off and they're sitting on millions of dollars and then the pastor is corrupted and then there's a church split there's fighting everybody wants a piece of the pie the trustees are mad and the co-signers are mad and the lender you know okay I could tell you that side but then there's the other side of the coin where the churches just get in over their head up to their eyeballs in debt you know god forbid what if the church got smaller and you're into some giant building with a huge debt I've been there done that I've seen that okay or what about the churches that are just up to their eyeballs in debt can't pay the bills then all the fighting and bickering look you you you alleviate all this by just renting a building here's why renting a building makes sense because when you rent a building you can get it for the size church you are right now not the size you used to be not the size you're going to be but the size you are right now why because there's no long-term commitment in a year or two the church is bigger you walk away you get into hey god forbid the church gets smaller so what get a smaller building no sweat doesn't matter whereas with the building you're locked into a certain size where it's either too big or too small renting gives you the flexibility to just move on whenever it's time to move on and there's no putting people at financial risk there's no fundraisers there's no thermometers there's no sitting there and getting people to mortgage their houses and getting mr. money back to cosign the the lease and everything you know it's just so much simpler and easier you just pay as you go you're flexible and when stuff breaks the landlord fixes it you don't have to fix it whereas when you buy the building and you scrape together that last penny and then stuff starts breaking I mean remember when you bought your first house for your family oh this is great we own and then something breaks like the next month and then you have to fix it you're used to just calling the landlord hey the air conditioner not working now it's like hey you need a new air conditioner it's $5,000 oh man so there are a lot of benefits to just renting okay and that's the way we're gonna do it and you say well pastor Harrison you're limiting our church you're limiting the growth no we're not because there's always a bigger building to rent think about the buildings you great you could if the building if the church got huge where you're running thousands you could rent like a grocery store seriously like the building think I've worked in construction and I've worked in retail in the fire alarm business and I've done all kinds of maintenance and inspections on vacant properties all the time and buildings where there used to be a Kmart or a Mervyn's Bed Bath and Beyond linens and things grocery stores Walmart for crying out loud huge gigantic buildings that are just empty just a big empty rectangle I mean what do we need if it's not just a big empty rectangle I mean isn't that good enough and then you can come in and you can make it nice and you can do I mean look at our space right here I mean look at all this artwork it's like an art gallery in here for crying out loud you know I mean you can make it nice but you just keep getting a bigger storefront you keep getting a bigger office space and you just stay in the office space until doomsday and when the Sun and moon are darkened and the stars begin to fall faithful word is still in a strip mall running thousands albeit but in a strip mall why not why not it just makes sense people and then you don't get corrupted you don't get tempted and again I'm not saying hey it's bad to buy a building for other people it's bad I'm just telling you that as long as I'm running things here we're not buying a building we're not having a building fund we're not raising a bunch of money but I'll take it a step further than that we're not even gonna fill a giant bank account full of money ever the money that comes in every month we spend it we spend all of it why you say well why spend it all because why sit on it now go if you would to Matthew chapter 25 you were there in Matthew 6 I'll finish reading in Matthew 6 while you're turning he said where your treasure is there where your heart be also the light of the body is the eye if therefore thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light but if thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness the I referring to looking at and lusting after possessions the love of money covetousness and then he says no man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other you cannot serve God and Mammon Mammon being money the God of money but look at Matthew 25 the Bible reads in verse 13 watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh for the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered unto them as goods and unto one he gave five talents to another two into another one to every man according to his several ability and straightway took his journey then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents and likewise he that had received two he also gained other two Matthew 25 verse 18 but he that had received one went and digged in the earth and hid his Lord's money after a long time the Lord of those servants cometh and reckoned with them and so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents saying Lord thou deliver it's done to me five talents build I've gained beside them five talents more his Lord said him well done thou good and faithful servant thou has been faithful over a few things I will make thee rule over many things enter thou into the joy of thy Lord he also that it received two talents came and said Lord thou deliver it's done to me two talents based on I gained two other talents beside them his Lord said on him well done good and faithful servant thou has been faithful over a few things I will make the ruler over many things enter thou into the joy of thy lord then he which had received the one talent came and said Lord I knew thee that thou art a hard man reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed and I was afraid and went and hid my talent in the earth lo there thou hast that is thine is Lord answered and sent him that wicked and slothful servant thou knewest that I reap where I sow not and gather where I have not strawed thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers and then am I coming I should have received my own with usury look he's saying don't bury what God gives you in the earth use it put it out there let it grow let it multiply if God gives you five talents he wants to receive ten when he gets back he gives you two he wants four he doesn't want to give you one and get one and he doesn't want you to fearfully go bury it in the earth he wants you to do something with it and look when it comes to the money that is given to faithful word Baptist church when it comes to not only the tides and offerings but there are a lot of people who send us money from all over the world and from all over the country literally probably half not probably half the money that comes into this church comes from outside of this room at least if not much more than that I mean I haven't looked at it lately but in the past it's more that people send here than what is actually given in the plate okay why because our church has internet presence of thousands and thousands of sermons YouTube videos audio recordings all kinds of stuff that's all over the internet that gets millions and millions of listens every year I mean our church has just tens of thousands of sermons being downloaded from the website every month and from YouTube I mean it's off the charts people I mean the numbers are mind-boggling how many people listen in why because they're hungry for this kind of preaching you know they're it's not because I'm a great preacher it's because I'm the only game in town that's actually saying this stuff because there are so many preachers who've compromised it's hard to even find sound biblical preaching that's gonna rip some face and that's what people want to hear and so that's why millions of sermons are downloaded constantly okay well that caused a lot of people donate you know and there's send money semi so you know our church has plenty of money even before that our church had enough money because the philosophy is we don't spend what we don't have okay if we have it we spend it if we don't have it we don't spend so there are certain things that obviously have to be paid every month okay whether or not we want to because obviously the rent we got to pay the rent obviously my salary gets paid because I have to live and feed my eight children okay then also obviously you know our ad in the yellow pages or the internet bill you know for live streaming the service I mean there's certain things that are bills that come every month certain expenses you know putting some gas in the church van for the soul winning and whatever but there's a lot of other money that we spend above that on things that are optional that we don't really have to do but we do them because we have the money so for example notice how we give out tens of thousands of audio preaching CDs they're all free tens of thousands of DVDs we have all the movies back there on the shelf all free now we never sell anything when have you ever gone to a church that gave you so much free stuff never they charge you money for everything at most churches I've been to churches where they charge you money for the tracks that you use out so when you buy them and then go out and go soul winning with them seriously you go you can show up at soul winning and you buy packs of these for a buck each literally you know if there's any kind of a dinner any kind of a lunch any kind it's hey it's ten dollars five dollars if there's a youth activity it's ten dollars it's five dollars if there's a banquet it's thirty dollars if it's you know we just do everything for free we have activities we give you the preaching CDs you know people would always try to buy the preaching CDs for me and I always tell them I'll pay you to listen to them buy you know why would I sell it to you I want you to hear it you know we want as many people to hear this stuff as possible it's the word of God so basically it makes more sense to me if God gives us money because honestly I believe that God is the source of all blessing every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the father of lights with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning if money comes in it's money that God has provided and it's actually the Lord's money it actually belongs to God it belongs to the church but the church is the house of God and so it's really the Lord's money so that money is spent on the Lord's work doing God's work okay well what does God want us to do with his money I mean does he really want us to go bury it I mean what does it say in the Bible does he really want us to go just fill up some giant bank account for a rainy day we live in the desert okay but here's the thing you know oh man we got to save it up for a rainy day but here's the thing you know what says let's save it up for a rainy day fear fear oh what if somehow what if we need that shut up with the what if just spend it because use it for God's work people are dying going to hell every day let's go full speed ahead let's work as hard as we can now look you know what type of things do we spend money on you know part of it is part of it gets reinvested into the internet thing because first of all that's where half the money is coming from or more than half the money so yeah a lot of it gets reinvested back into that machine because of the fact that if people all over the world are being blessed by the sermons and they're putting money in as a token of their appreciation you know it's good to take that money and put it toward giving back to them that they can be blessed by the money that they put into this ministry and that's why we spent all the money to upgrade the thing where now we have crystal clear sound and the videos are live streamed and we have you know high quality video and everything like that why because we want to reach more people with the gospel with the truth with the word of God and then those people are some of the people who have even funded this ministry in many ways not only that but you know getting the movies translated into other languages and getting the subtitles put on and getting them transcribed and getting it out in the search engines where people are finding the sermons to the tune of thousands per day are finding out about our church finding out about this preaching you know what that's great because that's just people that are hearing the word of God and God's work goes forward that's a lot better than having a hundred thousand dollars sitting in the bank okay hundred thousand bucks sitting in the bank so that if we can get to three hundred thousand when that red and the thermometer hits the top we can then go out and spend five times that much we can just struggle and strive to raise three hundred thousand so that we can spend one point five million so that we can finally stop having gay theists and fag Gnostics tell us that we're meeting in a strip mall who cares they hate us anyway nuts to them and you know what I found out by the way our church started in a house okay who was there we were meeting in the house only a few people everybody's in this side of the building okay people that were there were meeting in the house okay but here's what I noticed when we moved into our first building all the same people who didn't like it in the house didn't like it in the building because it turned out it wasn't the house that was the problem it was the preaching that was the problem in their mind because I remember when we first moved into our first building I had a visitor card back when we did visitor cards but I had a visitor card from every visitor who'd ever visited our church while we were in the house and I wrote them all a letter talking about how we're in this building now we're in a real building now so and it sent out this letter to all of them and we had like three different households show up it was like a family a couple a single whatever it was three different entities show up okay that had come in the past but now they're coming back now that we're in a building and they all came that one time and never came back so it turned out it wasn't they're like no we still don't like this preaching even now that it's in a building you know I do not like it in a house I do not like it in the building I don't want it with a fox I don't want it in a box you know if you don't like it you don't like it you know because guess what the people who want this kind of preaching they don't care whether they're sitting in a living room or a tent or a church building or an office space or a symbol they're hungry for the word of God that's what they care about they don't care about chandeliers and who you know that's not what it's about to them and so they don't care so who cares about them you know don't sit there and try to reach people that don't even care because the people you're trying to reach with fancy buildings don't want the word of God and the people who do want the word of God they don't care if we're meeting in a mud hut they'll be there I remember the first time that I went to a real fired up soul winning because I grew up independent fundamental Baptist but you know when I got in a real red hot soul winning you know independent fundamental Baptist church as a teenager I remember when I showed up their air conditioner was broken and it was the height of summer and it was like a hundred and ten degrees outside or whatever in Sacramento California has a few weeks like that every year which really just as hot as it is here few just a few weeks though we have it for half the year but they have you know for a few weeks and I remember we're sitting there and and the church didn't even have padded chairs like we have metal folding chairs and on the back they had stenciled on the back nuestra casa because they got them from some you know Spanish restaurant or something so it's just all these metal folding chairs stenciled on the back nuestra casa okay big giant fans that just did nothing but blow hot air around that was already there no air conditioning and I remember sitting in there as a seventeen year old boy I'd spent the last five years and just watered down dead Baptist churches and I remember sitting in that church with it just hot all the doors and windows are open it's a hundred and ten degrees outside I'm sitting in a metal folding chair and the pastors up there yelling about soul winning and I remember thinking I love this place it's great I love it where's this church been all my life why because who cares about all that other stuff it's about the word it's about souls being saved so look if I can if I can sit there and take the money and spend it on getting preaching CDs into the hands of thousands of people getting these videos in the hands of thousands of people getting thousands and thousands of people to find our church website every single day then why would I sit there and just pile it up somewhere so I can count it like King Croesus or something and sit there like you know that Donald Duck or whatever Scrooge McQuack or whatever swimming around in his money who cares you know I'd rather spend every last dime put it all out there get it all out spend it all you know what because then nobody's gonna be tempted to steal it nobody's gonna come on to it you know it's all going to the Lord's work it's all legit but it's all gone and when they you know when somebody wants to sue us and padlock the front door of our church you know what we'll do we'll shut this church down and start another one across the street right all in favor say aye who cares oh yeah come sue us come shut us down come padlock the front door all right hey Mr IRS man here's the keys to the building and the keys to the van see you later and if you know I'll give you my forwarding address over at living word Baptist you know across the street you're gonna do about it because if you got nothing you got nothing to lose but you know what when you got the big multi-million dollar building and all the debt then you got to be careful what you preach too you don't want to run off your trustees and your co-signers mr I mean you could screw up your loan or whatever you know you don't want to mess with mr moneybags you don't want to confuse him now go I have one last point I wanted to make tonight go to second Timothy chapter number two I'm out of time but I just want to make one last point I mean is this making sense tonight I think it makes great sense you know I think that just when the church becomes money-oriented it's about buildings and this fund and that fun and saving up a bunch of money you know I'd rather look I just want to figure out ways to spend the money to reach the most souls you know and if there's enough extra money then I'll hire an assistant right and then we can do work for the Lord we can go out and talk to people and win them to Christ and reach people and preach sermons and get people saved and go soul winning and do something with our lives instead of just financing buildings and sit back and say oh look at all these buildings you know what no one can ever take away from us as a church no one can ever take away from us the souls that we won to the Lord they'll be there in heaven and nothing can change that they'll be there they we're not going to be gone now here's the thing I remember my dad is an electrician and my dad put a lot of hard electrical work volunteering on these building programs because a lot of times they'd use labor from the church and he would slave away on some building only for the church to go liberal and look I could tell you about multiple churches the same story where basically the church is fundamental the church is big the church is thriving and look I'm going to tell you this and it sounds unbelievable it might even sound hard to believe but I can literally tell you multiple scenarios that happen like this in my life churches that I went to as a kid churches big thriving soul winning King James rah rah rah preaching good and then they get the big buildings and then they build a big church building and then that's not enough they have to build a big gymnasium you know for the Christian school and for the banquets and whatever so they build the big church building they build the big Sunday school facility they build the big gymnasium and they're on millions of dollars of property then they start you know changing the doctrine going liberal praising Billy Graham and whatever and just you know getting all weirded out and bringing in other versions whatever and then they start running people off and alienating people and people start quitting the church quitting the church quitting the church okay and I've literally known of two churches where they literally just ran everybody off basically people would call the pastor on the carpet for some of the stuff he's doing where he's going liberal where or how about this hiring his kids on the payroll and paying them too much money you know paying them more than everybody else getting paid doing the same jobs okay he puts his kids on the payroll and yada yada yada and then pretty soon they've run off everybody to where the church keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller and then the church is too small for the big building and then you know what they did they sell the big giant building for millions of dollars and then you know what they do they put that in a bank account and then they go rent a building in a strip mall like we're doing and they have millions of dollars in the bank and then they just live off that for the rest of their lives I can tell you two churches that I went to as a kid where that's what happened the church ended up going liberal shrinking down to nothing selling the facilities to some apostate church and then putting millions of dollars into a bank account and then they just operate a tiny church out of a strip mall no desire to grow no desire to win souls meet up with their tiny little group in the strip mall and they know that their salary set for the rest of their life because they got millions of dollars sitting in the bank to pay their salary for the rest of their life two scenarios like that that I literally witnessed but here's the thing then the people who've sat there and slaved on the building and took out the mortgage and borrowed money and put into the building fund and ran all the electrical for free and they're off time on the evenings and the weekends they're like oh man what a waste of my time I mean my dad has literally said to me so many times you know I ran all those electrical wires and now it's some heathen church it's some church that doesn't even believe the Bible and I have a Baptist some phony church is in there using the building I remember one time I clicked on the cable access TV as a kid and I saw my old church building the church that I grew up in and basically it had become a charismatic church so you know that remember cable access TV so I'm at home and I'm flipping through the channels as a teenager and I see the church I grew up in and there's this charismatic preacher and somebody's playing the organ while he preached and he's like you know you know well I come to tell you this one thing this morning yell to two you know and it was just this wild circus and I'm thinking to myself that is so weird I mean it'd be like if you saw like this you know this background and there's just some charismatic service going on so you know how do you think my dad felt and not just my dad I mean there's other people who volunteered and worked but here's the cool thing about our church all the work that you put in all the money that's put in the plate you know what it goes right out to something that you can see right then and there it just translates right away into millions of people hearing the word of God it translates into hundreds of thousands of doors being knocked it translates into the work of the Lord right here right now not some building of hey this building great we're gonna grow old in this thing for the next 30 years psych two years later you know I'm screwing the whole thing up that's reality my friend and by the way I'm not hiring my kids to work for this church either let me say that right now because you know what and listen kids if you think I'm gonna hire you you're wrong Solomon Isaac John the you know what I want my kids to do I want my kids to go out and get a job somewhere else so that their boss can yell and cuss at them so that they can figure out what it's like in the real world not where everything's being handed to them all the time not some dynasty where they grow up little Lord Fauntleroy and basically they're just handed the keys to the kingdom when they're 18 years old and they have their own office and their own company vehicle and they're working for dad and it's the family dynasty wrong you go out and make it in the ugly world yourself and figure out what it's like for everybody else who has to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps but that's another story but anyway the last thing I want to point out tonight is in 2 Timothy chapter 2 because I want to tell you something when it comes to growing the church like I said I believe in church growth I think church growth is great I want the church to grow that's not the most important thing though but look what the Bible says in verse 1 thou therefore my son be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and the things that thou has heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also let me tell you something more important than growing in the sense of just our congregation here getting bigger the better growth would be that we can send out other men to go start churches somewhere else somewhere else than to just see how big we can build this crowd we want this crowd to be I think it'll be over a thousand someday God willing but you know what I'd rather send as many men out of here as I can that are trained faithful men who shall be able to teach others also to start and pastor churches elsewhere in this nation because then all the eggs aren't in one basket then if faithful word goes down there could still be other great churches all across America still holding forth the word of life and still serving God so what's the vision for our church you say pastor Anderson you know where do you see yourself in five years you know like these job interview questions where do you see yourself in ten years you know what's the vision for faithful you know what the vision for faith forward Baptist is oh it's not a it's not a building it's not a a freestanding building it's a you know just look just never ask me again hey are we still in the strip hall the answer is always yes until Jesus comes okay just get a bigger strip mall a bigger office space but here's the thing not only that but it's not about amassing a bunch of money because I don't want to have millions of dollars at my disposal I don't need that I need that like I need a hole in my head what's good is that gonna do me you know what I want I just want to have enough money every month not laid up and treasured up and put in a barn somewhere no I just want enough money coming in every month where I can provide for my family and where I get paid for the work that I do that's all I want I don't need to amass a bunch of wealth and I don't need to control millions of dollars of church assets I don't need a big ego a big pride thing of controlling some empire of buildings and ministries the camp you know our Tempe campus when it starts being a campus you know something went wrong but anyway I'm just saying the goal my vision is yes to reach as many people as we can but it's more about winning souls it's about knocking every single door in this greater Phoenix area five times you know and just giving everybody the gospel to where people are sick of hearing the gospel you know I heard a great story this morning where my wife was telling me that what was it Shelley Russell was saying how she knocked somebody's door and they had their Bible was just filled with invitations from our church over the years they had like seven invitations to our church they'd been collecting them you know all the all the different colors and styles you know and by the way if you're listening out there if you collect them all there's a prize if you come and bring you know one of each one of each color you know you get a special prize so it's like it's like those little McDonald's Monopoly or something like oh man yellow again I need green what's going on you know what's going on faithful word but the point is you know it's about winning souls but you know what my desire is more than just this church growing I what what do I want this I mean from a human perspective what why in the world would I want this church to grow I don't need an ego trip you know if the church grows it's just it's just harder work for me to go find another building and to deal with more people it's just a headache but you know what's even better though is if we can sit people out to start churches all over America my vision is to send 20 guys out to start your soul race and a hundred guys out start churches all over America look I walked over we walked into Panera Bread in Dearborn a few months ago and we walked in and we'd never even we never even been there and there were just 60 people ready and raring to go soul winning with us why there are people all over America that want to go soul winning they want to hear the Bible preach but a lot of them they don't really have a leader that they can get behind they don't really have a local church that's really you know bringing them to their full potential and of those 60 people or so that came so winning like half of them had never gone you know and and and if they had a church though in their area they'd be out so winning case and point they came all the way out to our thing in in Dearborn so you know what we really need is we need to train other leaders okay so that it's diversified where it's not just all about one person we're all following Pastor Anderson no we need like a hundred leaders for people to look to that way it's not about Pastor Anderson it's about the word and it's about a whole bunch of different people that are all doing their own thing independent soul winning fundamental Baptist and then when one of them gets a little squirrely it doesn't affect the rest because they're all independent and so I pray to God that we would have more men in this church that would have the desire to someday go out and start a church and pastor you know and that and that we could get them trained and that they would get serious and and get you know not play games with it but to do the work study their Bibles read the Bible memorize it learn how to be a soul winner learn how to be a leader learn how to lead their family and go out there and start a great church that's a lot better than hey we ran X number and you know here in Tempe we're the biggest fundamental church in Arizona who cares I'd rather send out a hundred people to go start churches all America and you know what we should be sending out a hundred people to go start churches you know there's no reason not to because honestly as we grow as we reach people you know I I think that eventually plus hopefully the guys that we send out then they'll train other guys too and and we'll have the spiritual grandchildren of faith forward so honestly I just wanted to give you that vision tonight of just getting getting our view off of the physical the temporal and getting it on the spiritual where it belongs getting it on souls getting it on people and and not having this idea of well we got to be financially responsible by you know putting aside money for a rainy day look in your personal finances you know you run that how you want okay and yeah obviously in our personal finances we need a house we need food we whatever you know but honestly you know there's dangers there too with the love of money that's another sermon though but I just want you to know that my philosophy for pastoring this church is to just you know do it by the seat of our pants spend all the money because you know what what do we need to lay up a bunch of money for oh well what if something happens there's money coming in every week as long as we keep preaching and keep soul winning the money's gonna keep coming and if the money stops coming we'll figure something out but I want to invest I want to reinvest every penny into the work of God and I'm not building any buildings ever and if you say well I was hoping to stick around until you get out of that strip mall well you know what just you might as well leave now because we're never leaving let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer father we thank you so much for your word Lord and we thank you for your son Lord and the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sin help us to have spiritual things on the mind help our affections to be above not on the things on the earth help us to realize that we are God's building we are the building yeah we have a real church building it's people help us never to get sucked into this weird emphasis on physical buildings and steeples and stained glass Lord help us to keep it on souls and to be smart and wise and not to put any one person in control of just millions of dollars that's just sitting in a bank account some somewhere that's just a temptation to every thief and robber out there in Jesus name we pray amen