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Good evening and welcome to Verity Baptist Church. Let's go ahead and find our seats this evening. Find the seats and find a hymnal close to you and turn to page number 194. Song number 194 and we will open the service with Since Jesus came into my heart, song number 194. Let's go ahead and sing it out on the first. What a wonderful change that my life has brought. Since Jesus came into my heart, I have lied in my soul. But sure, well, let's start. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Song number 194 on the second. I have seized what my one and only restraint. Since Jesus came into my heart. In my sin's merciful light. Since Jesus came into my heart. But to drool on my soul like the sea billows roll. Since Jesus came into my heart. Song number 194, let's sing it out with some passion. The last two verses, sing it out on the fourth. There's a light in the valley of death now for me. Since Jesus came into my heart. In the gates of a city beyond I can see. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. But to drool on my soul like the sea billows roll. Since Jesus came into my heart. Let's finish off on the last. I shall promise to dwell in that city I know. Since Jesus came into my heart. And I can't be so happy as I could I go. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. But to drool on my soul like the sea billows roll. Since Jesus came into my heart. Amen, great team. Welcome to the last service here of the year here at Verity Baptist Church. We are glad to see everyone here this evening. Let's open the service with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you again just for the opportunity to be in your house this evening. Lord, the last service of the year, Lord, and we thank you for everything that you do for us. You did for us for the last year, Lord, and thank you for everything. We pray that you bless the service, bless the singing, the preaching, and the fellowship, Lord, everything. We pray, Lord, that everything that be said and done this evening with great glory and honor to your name. We love you. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. All right, it's now time for favorites where if you're selected we will sing a stanza from the song that you picked. Go ahead, Ms. Ajana. Song number 112. Song number 112. Be still, my soul. Song number 112. Song number 112. Sing it out on the first. Be still, my soul. The Lord is on thy side. There patient be the cross of heaven and earth. Lead to thy God through order and provide. In every change we paint the world today. Be still, my soul. Like us, I have a love for thee. Truthful in grace, lead still, my soul to thee. Go ahead, man. Song number 36. Song number 36. Christ arose. Song number 36. These are fun songs. Let's sing it out. Low in the grave. Sing it out on the first. Low in the grave. In Jesus, my Savior. Waiting, the coming day. Jesus, my Lord. Up from the grave he rose. With a mighty shy voice call. He rose again to come to talk. He made and he did. He will never cease to reign. He arose. He arose. Hallelujah. Christ arose. Isabel. 145. Song number 145. It is well. With my soul, song number 145. You know the rules. Let's sing it out on the first. When things like our river are tempted by me. When sorrows and tears never dry. Whatever my heart, God has taught me to say. It is well. It is well. With my soul. Sing it out, ladies. Amen. Amen. Amen. With my soul. It is well. It is well with my soul. Let it grab. 202. Song number 202. My Redeemer, song number 202. Let's go ahead and sing it out on the first. I will sing of my Redeemer. And his wondrous love to me. On that blue cross who suffered from the cross who sadly cried. Sing of sin on my Redeemer. With his blood he pushes me. On that cross he sealed my barber. He paid the debt and made me free. Let's give him one. 121. On the third, like a river glorious. Song number 121. We're going to sing it out on the third. Every joy or trial. Song number 121. Every joy or trial. Falling from above. Trace upon a diode by the Son of God. We may trust in holy love for us to prove. We may trust in holy finding holy truth. Sing it out. Set upon Jehovah's cross of heaven. Fighting at all moments where heaven is the best. Brother Salvador, go ahead. 296. Song number 296. And we're going to sing it out on the last. Follow on. It's a fun song again. So we'll sing it out on the last. Down in the valley or upon a mountain sea. Close beside my Savior with my celebrity. He will lead me safely in the path that he has trod. Where they gather on the hills of God. Follow, follow and follow Jesus. Anywhere, anywhere and wherever you go. Follow, follow and follow Jesus. Everywhere he leads me and follow on. We'll sing one more song. Madison. Song number 86. This will be the last song for favorites. We're going to finish it off with In the Garden. Song number 86. Sing it out on the first. I come to the garden of God. While the dew is still under roses and the noise at you walks on the hill upon his shoulders and he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his heart and the joy he shared has never been there. None of it has ever gone away. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take our bulletins tonight. We'll look at some announcements real quickly. If you do not have a bulletin, you can raise your hand and one of our ushers can get one for you. If you need a bulletin, just put your hand up and we'll get one for you. The verse this week, 2nd Corinthians 5, 17. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. That's a good verse there. We like that. If you open up your bulletin, you'll see our service time Sunday morning service, 10.30 a.m. We had a wonderful service this morning. We're glad you're back out tonight for the evening service. Of course, normally, our Sunday evening service is at 6 p.m. Tonight, we started an hour later, so we appreciate you accommodating us with that and we will be back to our regular schedule next week, so make sure you know that. Wednesday evening Bible study, 7 p.m. I'm going to be preaching out of Hebrews chapter 6. I'm going to be preaching out of a controversial section that's highly debated and I'm going to be teaching you what I believe about it, what I think the Bible is teaching there. I've gotten a lot of questions about that and I'm purposely holding it to the first service of the year to get you in church, all right? So make sure you are here on Wednesday, be in church, the first service. You ought to just make a New Year's resolution to be in every church service in 2024 and that would be a great and that would be a good one if you could do that. Sowing time, Saturday morning church-wide sowing at 10 a.m. and then we have additional sowing times on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays at 2 p.m. Of course, on Thursday and Friday, sowing times are postponed for now and then of course if you're a first-time guest, if it's your first time here at Ready Baptist Church, we're glad you're with us. We have a gift we'd like to give you as you walk out of the church building tonight if you go out the main foyer, if you go out our secondary foyer, you'll see a little table set up and on that table you will see these little gift bags. Please grab one on your way out from us to you for being our guest tonight and we also ask if you are a guest that you please take a moment to fill out the communication card which is inserted in your bulletin and you can drop it in the offering plate as it goes by here in a few minutes. If you notice there in the bulletin, we are a family integrated church. Children and infants are always welcome in the service. However, let's not allow the children to just cry and be a distraction during the service. If you have a child that's being a distraction, you can head to one of the mother-baby rooms, the daddy rooms. All rooms have a little table set up and you can drop it in the offering plate as it goes by here in a few minutes. If you have a child that's being a distraction, you can take a moment to fill out the communication card which is inserted in your bulletin and you can drop it in the offering plate as it goes by here in a few minutes. So make sure that you are using those as needed. Of course, if you need to be baptized, you can let us know on your communication card as well. If you look at the announcements and upcoming events, we've got of course several things coming up. First of all, we just want to let you know that we have a couple of different shifts that you could help with and we're looking for guys this weekend to help with electrical, drywall mudding, sanding, paint prep. If you can do carpentry for the lights, there's a cove light that needs to be prepped. Also, if you can help with setting up or figuring out a projector, mechanical mount design, if any of that sounds like something you can do, just please help us. Please go by and sign up and really use your help with that. And then of course, we've got the New Year's Eve service tonight. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. Let me just talk about these other things, get these out of the way real quick. Of course, tomorrow begins nine chapters a day, so make sure you don't leave here without one of these charts on your way out. And we, January is Bible month here at Ready Baptist Church and we read nine chapters a day. We encourage you to read nine chapters a day. We challenge you to read nine chapters a day in the New Testament every day in the month of January. You have two grace period days. There's two ways you can go about it. You can do the straight through or the split up way and if you accomplish the goal, we'll put your name on a nice plaque. If you go over to the main foyer, you'll see all the plaques for all the years and you want to make sure you have your name on there, all right? So you'll be glad you did. It'll be good for you. Make sure that you make this a goal for this year and start reading nine chapters a day in the month of January. And then of course, we have the Christmas gifts for Jesus and you can do that up to tonight, all right? So if you can help us with that, that would be a great help. If you are here tonight and you're like, oh no, I meant to pick something up and I never did and whatever, then you can give a Christmas gift for Jesus cash or check donation, all right? So and you say, I don't have a check. You can give online, all right? Well look, we got you covered, however you want to do it. We will help you with that, all right? We will drive you to an ATM, whatever you need and that'll be good, all right? There's other things there for you to look at. Please don't forget to turn your cell phones off or place them on silent during the service. Not a distraction to anybody. Of course, tonight is our New Year's Eve service and we are glad that you are here. This is the greatest New Year's Eve service of any church ever and that's what I believe and we do a good job. When I was a kid growing up and the New Year's Eve services were boring but our churches' New Year's Eve services are great. So let me just give you a couple of things. Just if you're new to our church and you kind of don't know what to expect, of course, we're having church. We're glad you're here. As soon as the service is over, you don't have to stay. You're welcome to leave if you need to. That's not a problem. Afterwards, though, we have a potluck and I know we've got several ladies out there right now situating that and I was told that it was a good turnout. So good for you and praise the Lord for that because otherwise, you know, what I always want to do with the potlucks is I want to just turn it around at the very end, just kind of flip it and just say, you're only allowed to eat the food you brought and then some of you would be sitting there like this and we'd be like, oh, yeah, uh-huh. We've got popcorn. You want some popcorn? No, so anyway, I think there's enough food. I think we'll have a good time with that. So as soon as the service is over, we'll be done probably around 8. From 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., we'll be the potluck in the fellowship hall and then around 9 p.m., and this is all tentative. It's not exactly, but around 9 p.m., we're going to start the movie. So we have a Christian film and we have a popcorn machine. We've got ladies. My wife is leading a group of ladies to have the popcorn ready when the movie starts. So the ladies will go through and pass out popcorn for anybody who wants and we'll have the movie in here. If you don't want to watch the movie, that's fine. In the fellowship hall, there's going to be board games. So if you want to play board games, the church has a basket full of board games and you can, of course, use any board games we have there. We just ask that you make sure you put it all back when you're done and maybe you brought your own board games. That's fine, too. So you can be in here at 9 p.m. watching the movie with popcorn. You can be in the fellowship hall and you can have popcorn there, too, as well, obviously, and you can play board games there. And then we started this tradition several years ago and we're going to continue it at around 11 p.m. So the movie will be done around 10.40. From 10.40 to about 11, there'll be a little bit of a break, but then we have a comedy video that we're going to show at 11 p.m. and we've always had a good time with that. That's actually my favorite part of the night. And then after that, we'll have a little break and around 11.45, we'll take some favorites, we'll sing, and then we'll pray in the new year together for anyone who is still here. Who's planning on staying all the way till midnight? All right. Well, that's unfortunate, but that's okay. No, I'm just kidding. If nobody raised their hand, I was going to go home, but no, that's okay. No, I'm glad. I'm joking. I'm glad you're here. It'll be a good, good night. Okay. Back of the Bulletin, birthdays and anniversaries for the month of December. Today is whether Aiden and Miss Ruby Roldan's anniversary, also brother John and Miss Irene Reed's anniversary. Brother Ron has a birthday tomorrow, January 1st, and Amaira Holland has a birthday January 2nd, and Yeseli de Dios has a birthday January 6th. Praise Report, Money Matters, all those things are there for you to look at, and I think that's it for all of the announcements. So we're going to go ahead and sing the chorus of the week, which is the insert in your bulletin, and we're going to sing I Know Who Holds Tomorrow as we prepare to receive the offering tonight. We'll sing I Know Who Holds Tomorrow on the first I don't know about tomorrow I just live from day to day I don't borrow from its sunshine Or in skies we turn to gray I don't care for the future I know who holds tomorrow I want this idea I know who holds tomorrow Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand But I know who holds tomorrow And I know who holds my hand Cause singing out on the second I don't know about tomorrow You bring me poverty But the one who keeps the sparrow Is the one who stands my face And the path that leads my portion Through the flame of dawn But it's less than close before I know who holds tomorrow Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand But I know who holds tomorrow And I know who holds my hand After the service, the potluck, the movie, the fellowship, the popcorn, the games, all those things, Lord, we ask that you would help everybody to have a good time. And Lord, we pray that you would bless this evening and bless this year to come. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. We pray to God that You'll receive the blessing of His healing as the wherever we have been our founders and that we may Pur stage our 70 0 hear as well with everydoor. Amen? Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. as putting you in mind because of the grace that is given to me of God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and right about unto Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. Yes, yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel. Now where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation. But as it is written, to whom he was not spoken of they shall see, and they that have not heard shall understand. For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you, but now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you, whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you. For I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you. If first I be somewhat filled with your company, but now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. For it hath pleased them of Macedonia, and IKEA to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily, and their dead as they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain. And I am sure that when I come unto you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. Now I beseech you brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea, and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints. That I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed. That the God of peace be with you all. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this evening. God, I thank you for our church, for everyone that's here. I ask you please give us all 10 of hearts to the message tonight. I ask that you be their pastor to strengthen him, and to fill in the spirit. Lord, we love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, we're there in the book of Romans, Romans chapter number 15. And tonight, of course, is the last Sunday of the year, it's the last day of the year, and it's the last service of the year. And tonight I'm preaching a little bit of a special sermon, a unique sermon. And to be honest with you, to even call it a sermon, I'm not even sure that I should call it a sermon, but I'm gonna be speaking about the subject, and I'll just give you the title, I guess, of the sermon. The sermon's entitled Where We Go From Here, and the subtitle is Things We Would Like to Accomplish in 2024. And I wanna give you some thoughts, and give you some instructions regarding this coming year. And like I said, it won't be, we'll look at some scripture, it won't be much of a sermon, and I apologize for that. I did that tonight because I figured there would be very few guests with us, maybe on New Year's Eve, but if you are a guest tonight, I just want you to know that this is not the normal type of sermon that we have here on a Sunday night, or any service. But I wanna speak to our church family tonight regarding some things that we have done, and some things that we are going to do. And I guess this would be more, a little bit of like a State of the Union address, or State of the Congregation address. And hopefully that helps. I do want you to notice there in Romans chapter 15, if you look down at verse number 22, the Apostle Paul says this, For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you. This is of course Paul writing to the church at Rome. I want you to notice that Paul was always trying to accomplish something for God. He always had something on his to-do list that he was trying to do, notice verse 23. But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you, wheresoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you. So he's telling them that he wants to come to see them in Rome, and he says, Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you. For I trust to see you in my journeys, and be brought on my way hitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company, notice verse 25. But now I go unto Jerusalem. Of course, his plan was to go to Jerusalem, but I want you to notice in verse 24 we see that he had a plan to take his journey into Spain. He wanted to go into Spain. In verse 25 he says, But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. Look down at verse 28. When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain. And I am sure that when I come unto you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. I want you to notice that here, Paul is giving us his desires for things that he wants to do in the future. He says, I want to take my journey into Spain. He says, But now I go unto Jerusalem. Now we know that when he went to Jerusalem, he was arrested, and he ended up in Rome. And as far as the Apostle Paul going to Spain, the Bible does not document for us that Paul ever made it to Spain. We know that he went to Jerusalem, he was arrested, and then there was a whole thing there where he ended up in Rome and went through a series of different trials. The Bible never tells us that Paul made it to Spain. Traditional church history tells us that Paul died in Rome, but that's not scripture, and we have to take that with a grain of salt. There is some traditions out there and some folklore that says that Paul did make it to Spain, and the truth is we don't know. We don't know if he made it to Spain or not. The point that I want you to see is that whether he made it to Spain or not, Paul always had things he was trying to do, he was trying to accomplish. He said, look, I've done everything I can here. Look at verse 23. He says, but now having no more place in these parts. He said, I've done everything I can do in these parts. He said, I'm gonna go to Jerusalem. He said, I want to see you guys in Rome. He said, I want to take my journey into Spain. There was always things that he was trying to accomplish. And what I want to explain tonight is give you a little bit of a review of this last year and things that we've accomplished and done here at Verity Baptist Church, and then I want to explain some things that I'd like for us to accomplish in 2024. And that's why I've entitled a sermon, Where We Go From Here, Things That We Would Like to Accomplish in 2024. Now let me just, by way of introduction, kind of give this disclaimer. The problem with a sermon like this, and this is not my first time preaching a sermon like this, and this is why I know it. The problem with a sermon like this is that it may scare some of you. And I tend to be a little bit of a visionary leader. And as a visionary leader, I'm always envisioning what we can do and more that can be accomplished. And I've learned over the years that I have to be careful how much of that vision I share, because not everybody has the same type of vision. And some of you get scared when you hear me talk, and we've even had people quit the church after I preached a sermon like this, because they're just like, I can't handle that, which to me is really interesting. So anyway, don't get scared, okay? We'll be fine, and the Lord will help us. Don't quit the church as a result of this sermon. I mean, out of all the sermons to quit the church over, this is not the one you want to do that with. The other kind of issue with preaching a sermon like this is that when I outline for you the things that I'd like for us to accomplish in the next 12 months, I might, I'll outline 15 things for you, and this is just kind of the way it is. I might stand up here tonight and say, here's 15 things I'd like for us to do in 2024. And at the end of next year, we might do 14 of those things successfully, and one of you is gonna come up to me and throw it in my face the one thing we didn't do, and that's just human nature. That's just, it's always interesting to me. People who do nothing want to complain about those of us that are attempting to do something. Well, as far as we know, Paul never made it to Spain either, but I think he accomplished a lot just trying to, I'd rather attempt to accomplish great things for God. I think I preached about it at the Red Hawk Preaching Conference, but my attitude is this, let's just try. Let's try to do something good for God, great for God. So anyway, these are things I'd like to see us do. Obviously, I don't know what a day it'll bring forth. I don't know what will happen next week, but if the Lord allows and the Lord permits, then these are things that I'd like for us to do. Now, let me just begin with a little bit of a review, and like I said, this is not gonna be much of a sermon, all right, and I apologize for that. Usually, we get really heavy into Scripture, and this might be just a little bit of a different type of sermon. I would like you to go with me to the book of James if you would, James chapter number four. If you start at the book of Revelation and go backwards, you'll go past the book of Jude, 3rd, 2nd, 1st John, 2nd, and 1st Peter, and then into the book of James, and do me a favor, when you get there, put a ribbon or a bookmark or something there, James going backwards, Revelation, Jude, 3rd, 2nd, 1st John, 2nd, and 1st Peter, and then the book of James. While you go there, let me just give you a little bit of a review for this last year. Let me just give you some average attendances. Of course, we track the attendances here, and let me give you the attendances that we finish with. Now, these are according to last week, so the numbers for this week have not been inputted into this, but I don't think it'll make too much of a difference, but we just want you to be aware of this, and I do want you to know that this is an average for the year. Obviously, the church always begins. We grow every year, so the numbers begin smaller at the beginning of the year, and they end larger, but this is an average of the whole year, but for this year, 2023, we averaged a weekly soul-winning attendance of 118 soul-winners a week, so praise the Lord for that, and we had an average attendance of 227 in church on Sunday morning. We had an average Sunday night attendance of 175, and we had an average Wednesday evening attendance of 200. Just to give you some days to kind of compare that with, and obviously, the average goes up and down based off the days, but this last Easter of 2023, we had 270 in church for Easter. For Red Hawk Preaching Conference, which is, of course, our big day for kind of the new IFB, we had a high attendance of 433. For our Family and Friend Day, which is our church's anniversary in September, we had a high attendance of 278, and just last week, I think it was, for Christmas Eve, we had a high attendance of 272, so just to kind of give you an idea of, and like I said, this is the average. We start in January, and as the church grows, we average all those numbers out, just to get an idea today, and today, we had families that were sick and whatever, but this morning, we had 236 in church on Sunday morning. We have 187 in church tonight, so that maybe gives you an idea. The high for 2023 for a non-holiday Sunday, so just a normal Sunday where nothing special was going on, not Easter, not whatever, we had 262, and 260 were the two just regular, normal Sunday, nothing special going on, so praise the Lord for that. Those are all good numbers there, and we're happy with that, and then just some highlights for this year, and I'm just highlighting some things that are unique to our church to this year. I'm not gonna talk about all the things we normally do, but here are some things that just were kind of unique to this year. This year, we held our first annual Next Generation Youth Rally, so praise the Lord for that. That was a huge success. This year, we won a lawsuit, so we got sued. We fought it, won it, and got a $10,000 check, so that worked out well, and praise the Lord for that. I think that was worth a round of applause. Praise the Lord. And let's see, what else happened this year? Oh yeah, we bought a building, that's a good one. Praise the Lord for that, I deserve a round of applause. Praise God. We had a group of our church family that went out to a mission strip in the UK. Praise the Lord for that, and then of course, we ordained Pastor Stuckey, Evangelist Stuckey, as pastor of the churches there in the Philippines, so those were all successful things that happened this year, and praise the Lord for that. So that's last year, that's the last 12 months, and now let's talk about the next 12 months. And like I said, this is a little bit of a different type of sermon, maybe unique, but there's a lot of questions that my wife and I have been getting, and a lot of dates that people have been asking for, and it's been difficult to mark some of these things down, because we've been a little bit in limbo, trying to figure out where we are, and what it is that we're trying to do, and when we can do it. But let me just give you some of these dates, and maybe you can jot these down. Regarding the new building, of course, one of the big accomplishments, one of the biggest things that we've been dealing with this year is that our church purchased a 400-seat auditorium sitting on four acres, beautiful property over there that requires a lot of work, and we've been working at it. But regarding the new building, well, let me talk about this building. The last service here at this current building, 320 Harris Avenue, is going to be Wednesday, January 24th. Wednesday, January 24th will be the last service here, and the first service at the new building, the 4191 Norwood Avenue property, is going to be Sunday, January 28th. So just go ahead and make a note of that. Last service here is January 24th, first service there, January 28th. We have to be, we're done, our lease is up here on the 31st, we have to be out of here on February 1st. So the first service over there will be Sunday, January 28th, and that's gonna be whether that building is ready or not. So whatever, if there's no carpet or whatever, we're just gonna move in and deal with it because we don't know that we have the option to stay here longer, and even if we do, we don't have the money to be making a payment there and making a payment here. So January 28th, many of you have been asking, that's the day. Now, on that day, that's gonna be what I'm calling a soft opening. That'll just be for our church family. We'll let our church family know. Of course, I'm letting you know now. We'll send a text out, emails and whatever, and let people know that we're starting to hold services over there on January 28th. However, that won't be our grand opening service, okay? Our grand opening service will be Easter of 2024, which this year is Sunday, March 31st, and that'll be when we really push it to the community and all of that. That'll be our big grand opening. We'll have a soft opening January 28th, and maybe that'll give us several weeks to kind of fix all the different things that are lacking, and then we'll plan on having a big grand opening service, Easter, March 31st, 2024. Now, there are some other things that I'm gonna talk about tonight that I want you to be aware of for this coming year, but just know this, that anything that I say after this, all of this is hinging on the fact that we are moving into that building, all right? So anything else that I announce from here forward for 2024, none of that is going, we're not even gonna begin to work on any of that or do anything towards that until we are fully situated in that building. So I just kind of hope you understand that and have that disclaimer. I do want to say this, because like I said, people have been asking a lot about, we have a lot of activities and things that we put on here at our church, and over the last several weeks, we postponed a lot of those things, just things that we normally do, we haven't been doing because of the work days and all of that. When we move into that building in February, our goal is to try to get back to our normal regularly scheduled program as quickly as possible, all right? Now, I'm not making any promises, but we're gonna try to get back to some normal things. So I'm hoping in February, we'll be able to have our Married Couple Sweetheart Banquet like we normally do for the couples. We'll have our homeschool Valentine's Day party, of course, for the homeschool kids. But I'll tell you right now, we are not, in February, we're not going to have I Love My Church Sunday, not this year. And it's just not gonna work. We'll bring it back the year after. But as far as big Sundays or whatever, none of that's gonna happen until Easter this year. So we just want you to be aware of that. That's regarding the new building. Now let's talk about the conferences, because again, people are asking about conferences and I understand that you need to take time off of work and figure out your schedule. So let me just give you some thoughts regarding conferences. We're moving forward with the Next Generation Youth Rally, the second annual Next Generation Youth Rally. It is scheduled for April 9th and 10th of this year. So just make a note of that. If you've got a teenager 13 to 19 years old, they're welcome to be part of the youth rally. We had a great time last year. I think it's gonna be great. Again, I will say this, we need help and we're gonna use your help. And if you're able to help with the youth rally, if you were part of it last year and you can help this year, please talk to me, please talk to my wife, because this is coming upon us and we want to do this and we wanna have this for the young people. We already have a lot of people that have signed up from around the country to come. So we're moving forward with the Next Generation Youth Rally April 9th and 10th. Now let me talk about the Red Hot Preaching Conference. So this last year was the eighth annual Red Hot Preaching Conference. And I mean, the Red Hot Preaching Conference, I don't even know what happened with the Red Hot Preaching Conference, but it's like the biggest event of the year for the new IFB and I'm thankful for that. But this coming year will be the ninth annual Red Hot Preaching Conference. So let me just give you a couple of things. First of all, we're moving the conference to June. We have historically held it in July. We're moving the conference to June. We want you to be aware of that. Let me give you the dates, June 20th through the 23rd. June 20th through the 23rd of 2024 will be the dates for the Red Hot Preaching Conference this year. The reason for that, there's lots of reasons for that, but I'll just give you kind of the main reason for that is because though that property is beautiful over there, one thing that is not the greatest about that property is that the fellowship hall is a lot smaller than the fellowship hall that we currently have here. And we use our fellowship hall a lot. We have a lot of events and things. So we're thinking that a lot of the things that we usually do in the fellowship hall on that property are going to have to be done outside, which is not a problem because we have four acres of land, but we think that having some of these things outside in June is gonna be more pleasant than July. So we're moving it to June. So we want you to be aware of that. June 20th through the 23rd is 9th Annual Red Hot Preaching Conference. So up to this point, these are things that are pretty much probably gonna happen. Obviously, I don't wanna, I'm not God. I don't wanna speak and say these things are all for sure gonna happen, but these are already in play. We're already preparing and getting some of these things ready. The things that I'm gonna talk about going forward, some of these things we've already started working on, but these are less of, if just things don't go well with us moving into that property or whatever, these are things that I'd like to see us do, but let's pray about it and let's work towards that goal. Before we go there, let's look at James chapter four. We're just real quickly, James chapter four and verse 13. This wants us to get a biblical context for kind of planning for the future. James chapter four and verse 13 says this, Go to now ye that say today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. And here James is teaching us that we need to be careful about being these individuals who say, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that because the truth of the matter is we don't know what shall be on the morrow for what is your life. It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away for that ye ought to say, and this is what I love, I love this verse. He says, here's what you ought to say. And sometimes people will take these verses and say, this says that you shouldn't plan. That's not what it's saying. It's not saying that you shouldn't plan. It's saying you shouldn't be arrogant in your planning and saying, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. What he says in verse 15 is this, for what ye ought to say, what you and I should say is this, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. The problem is not with planning to do things. The problem is understanding that God is in control and if God wants to change it, then God can change it. And I just want you to understand that. I want to explain some things that I'd like for us to see us do in the next 12 months, but it is with the attitude, if the Lord will. If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now ye rejoice and ye are boasting such rejoicing as evil, look at verse 17, therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him in his sin. So there's some things we want to accomplish. I hope there's some things you want to accomplish this coming year, and it should be with the attitude, if the Lord will, if the Lord will. So let me give you some thoughts regarding some things coming this year. Number three, and you don't have to take notes on this. This is just for me. First, we talked about regarding the new building. Second, we talked about regarding conferences. Third, something that I'd like to see us do in 2024 is to launch a biblical leadership institute. And now this is not gonna matter to probably 95% of you. There's probably a handful of guys that actually would care about this, and that's okay. I care about this, and I want you to be aware of this. In the past, we've had a spiritual leadership class, and it was a class that we held every month to train men, not only in leadership, but for the ministry. And of course, with all the busyness of this last year and the work days and all that, we've put a pause to that. But that pause has been good, because there's some things about that class that I didn't like, mainly the people. No, I'm just kidding, not the people. There's some things, I just wanted to reformat the class. So I've taken the last several weeks to work on that, and we are reformatting it, updating it, and I'd like to relaunch it in kind of a new format. Instead of a monthly class, we're going to be doing some courses that'll take you through several weeks and then have a break, so that it's not a year-long commitment. And I know most of you aren't gonna care about that, and that's okay. Some of you men have been looking forward to that and asking about that, and we will have more details for you. I'll have more details for you as we go closer, but that is something that I definitely want to work on this year and see if we could launch the Biblical Leadership Institute. And Brother Oliver has been working closely with me regarding that already, so we've got things underway. Another thing I want to talk about is the missions emphasis, missions emphasis for 2024. So just so you kind of understand the new IFB philosophy of missions, there are two ways in which a church can be involved in missions. One way is what we sometimes refer to as the do-it-yourself missions, the DIY missions, which is where we try to push missions within the local congregations and get our church people to physically get up and get on the plane and go and be involved in missions work, and I'm thankful for that, because in most churches, missions is just people giving money for other people to go, and I think it's good for us to get involved in the Great Commission as well. However, there's another way in which missions work can be done, and that is through the support of full-time missionaries, and that is what our church has done. Of course, we had Pastor Stuckey, who we trained here, and sent, and we support him as a full-time missionary. So instead of him spending five years of his life running around begging for $50 a month or something from churches, we just support him as a full-time missionary and send him off, and he, in the last several years, has started three churches there in the Philippines, and let me say this. Supporting both types of missions work are both good, and both are biblical, and both have their place, but I will be clear about this. The full-time missions support is more important, because that's actually getting a man out there to start a church, to not only get people saved, but get them baptized, get them discipled, get them connected to a church. I'm excited about the do-it-yourself missions. I think that's good, but if we're going to focus our attention or be imbalanced in one way or another, it will be to start churches in locations, and so there's these two ways of doing it. Because we have our full-time missionary that we support, we've gone, I feel like our church has gone a little away from the do-it-yourself missions trips, which is fine. Obviously, when we first started in the Philippines, we had a lot of those things going on and things like that, kind of backed off from that. So I'd like for us in this coming year, I'd like to see us get back to some of that do-it-yourself missions trips, and along with that, I want us to continue to train and send out full-time missionaries. I would love for our church one day to have two, three, four, 10 full-time missionaries that we just support that we've sent out into the world. So something that I would love for us to do as a church, and at some point next year, I'd like to see if we can launch this, is to have a missions emphasis night here at our church, where we focus on missions, and of course, we'll focus on what our missionary is actually doing over in the Philippines, but also to let you know about our upcoming missions trips and ways that you can get involved. By the way, let me just say this, since we're talking about it, Verity Philippines is hosting a missions trip in February of 2024. Monday, February 19th through Sunday, February 25th, so if you'd like to be a part of that, please do so. It's a super receptive, English-speaking, it's part of the Verity family, and we'd love for you to be a part of that. But we want to do more to promote upcoming missions trips within the new IFB, especially for English-speaking countries so that you can be a part of that, and that's gonna require some work. There's so much missions going on, and there's so many new IFB churches, now it's hard to keep up with what everybody's doing, but we're gonna figure that out, and we will have a missions emphasis night to do that. One thing that I would like to see our church do as well is to plan some missions trips to Spanish-speaking countries and I think we've got the English-speaking countries covered and praise God for it, but I have a heart for Spanish-speaking missions, and I'd love to see us move in that direction and begin to work on those things in 2024. Along with that, let me talk about Spanish work. I'd like to see our church in this coming year translate written content into Spanish, and we've got a lot of content that we use for soul-winning and things like that, but I want to see some of that translated into Spanish, and there are some of you that can help us with that, and I hope you'll make yourself available to do that. Not only for the Spanish communities here that live in Sacramento, but of course, along with some of these missions trips to Spanish countries, we'll need some of this material. I'd also like to see us start hosting maybe some Spanish church services and things like that, but like I said, that'll require you stepping up and helping, and that'll require us getting past some of these things like that building right now and whatever, so just be aware of some of those things. These are some things that are on my heart. They've been on my heart for a long time, and we haven't accomplished all of it, but we're not done. I think we still have a long ways to go. If God permits, if the Lord will, then we can work towards these things. Okay, let's talk about the finances, financial future for the church, and my goal is to be done at eight. It's 754, so we can be done here in a few minutes, but let me just give you, like I said, this is not much of a sermon. I mean, I'm probably still better than the average liberal preacher, but this is not normal for us, but let me, more Bible, and I already said more controversial things than the average preacher, and I'm not even sure what I said, but anyway, financial future. Of course, we are having our vision offering this year, and my goal is for us to raise the same, if not more, money this year at this year's vision offering than we did last year, all right? Let me give you some dates. All of you are writing down the readout preaching conference dates, but you're probably not gonna write this one down, but that's okay. Vision offering this year is scheduled to be Sunday, March 3rd. Sunday, March 3rd will be the vision offering this year, and my goal is for our church, Lord willing, to raise the same, if not more, the same, if not more. Now, let me just remind you this. Last year, 2023, for the vision offering, our church, this little church next to the methadone clinic, raised $169,514.36. That's amazing. That's a testimony to the generosity of our church, and we need to do that again, all right? And I'm praying for that, and I'm asking that you start praying for that. Start praying for the vision offering. Look, it is December 31st. This thing is not till March 3rd, but I'm asking those of you who pray, would you just please put this on your prayer list, and would you pray for this upcoming vision offering, because we need to raise some serious money to help our church go forward, especially with this new building. So here's some things we'd like to do financially. First of all, we need to finish the work and the remodel that has already started over on that property. So that obviously needs to just come to an end and get that done before we start doing anything else. However, none of the work that has been done over there includes an HVAC system, and that building needs a new HVAC system. So our goal is for us to make it through now, from now to March 3rd, obviously finish up what we've already started there, and as finances permit, begin to maybe do some other things over on that property. But the goal for the vision offering, one of the goals, obviously we use our vision offering to put on the Red Hot Preaching Conference, we use our vision offering to put on the Next Generation Youth Rally, we use our vision offering to support our missionary and to do missions work. But something we're gonna have to do is raise money for this HVAC. And we don't know what that cost is right now, but I'm telling you right now, it's gonna be 100,000 or more. So we're gonna have to raise that. This vision offering, so just be in prayer for that. And I was talking to my friend, Pastor Thompson, about this and he told me that for the vision offering, I should preach a sermon, he said, where I just tell the people that my vision is that this place over there, that building, is gonna be hotter than hell in the summer if we don't raise the money for that HVAC system, all right? So anyway, those were his words, not mine. But that's something that we need to do. And then of course, continue to remodel things over there as the finances allow. One dream that I have on top of all this, and this is the point where I mean like, people get scared, because I just, whatever. But one thing that I would like to see our church do, and I think it's possible, is on top of all these things, finishing the work we're doing over there, there's some other things that need to be done over there, and then of course the HVAC, which that's probably gonna be a nightmare, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. One thing that I would like to see our church do is pay an additional $100,000 towards that mortgage above our regular payment in 2024. Now, if that didn't scare you, let me tell you the rest of my vision. And the rest of my vision is that we do that every year for the next 10 years, that for the next 10 years, we pay $100,000 over the mortgage, over the regular payments that we have already committed to make, so that we can, by God's grace, have that property completely debt-free anywhere between 10 and 15 years, is what I would like for us to see us do. If you don't think that's possible, I don't know what to tell you, but I know this, that unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly, above all that we ask or think. And that's who I'm praying to, and I'm praying that you'll pray along with me regarding that. Now, you're there in James. Go to Hebrews chapter number six, if you would. Hebrews chapter number six. I'm not gonna start my Wednesday night Bible study, okay? I just wanna show you one verse. And I hope that helps. I just wanted to share some of those things with you tonight and give you some important dates that you need to plan and ask you to pray for some of these things. There's other things that I'd like for us to do, but I'm not willing to share those at this time. So that's all you need, I think, for now. But be in prayer that the Lord help us and help us in these things and help us with these burdens. Hebrews chapter six in verse three is a passage that we actually dealt with last week. But I felt like the writer of Hebrews said it so well as far as capturing my intentions with the things that I spoke with you about regarding the things I'd like to see us do. So I'd like to just read this verse as we finish tonight. And I understand that I'm taking it completely out of context, and I understand that. But I think it captures my heart. When we talk about these things that we'd like to accomplish and things that we'd like to do in 2224, my heart is this, Hebrews six and verse three. And this will we do, if God permit. And I believe that if the Lord helps us and aids us and guides us, then we can do anything. All things are possible with God. And I hope you'll get excited about the things that are upcoming for Barre Baptist Church. I think the greatest year of this church's history is coming, and I hope that you'll be a part of it. I hope you pray, hope you'll get involved. And don't get scared, but have faith in God. That's why our hearts and our world of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you, and we thank you for our church, Lord. And of course, we've had many people saved and baptized and many wonderful things going on and happening during this year, Lord, and we pray that you would continue to help those things to happen. And Lord, we pray that you would continue to help those things to go forward. And Lord, we ask that you would help us. And we are a needy people. We need your help, Lord. We need your help to accomplish many of these things that we want to do, and Lord, we're praying that your Holy Spirit would help us, guide us, be with us. Lord, help us to have a great year next year. Help us to see many people saved and the church to grow, not just physically, but spiritually. Lord, I pray that you'd help us to deepen our walk with you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, well, God bless you. Thanks for being here tonight. Let me just give you some instructions just real quickly. We're gonna sing one last song before we're dismissed tonight, and then we're going to have our potluck. So the potluck will be in our fellowship hall here. I want you to be aware of that. It is 8.02 p.m. right now. The potluck will go till 9 p.m., around 9 p.m. Obviously, you can stick around and eat after nine if you'd like, but around 9 p.m., the plan is to start the movie here in the auditorium. We'll have the popcorn machine going, and the popcorn will be ready around 9 p.m. When the movie's over, around 10.40 will be a break. At 11 p.m., there'll be a comedy video, a Christian comedy video. I think you'll like it. If you don't want to watch the film, of course, you can just hang out in the fellowship hall and play board games or whatever you'd like to do, gossip or whatever it is you normally do, and then at 11.45, you stake around to the end. Around 11.45 p.m., we'll get together, sing some songs, and we'll pray in the new year together. So thank you for being here tonight. God bless you, and thank you for the great year we've had together. I look forward to next year. And don't forget, nine chapters a day, all right? Nine chapters a day. Starts in a few hours, so get ready for that. We'll be excited about that. If there's anything we can do for you, please let us know. I'm gonna ask Brother R.J. to lead us in the final song of the year. Brother R.J., would you mind praying a blessing on the food over there? And he will come and lead us at this time. Amen, let's grab our songbooks and turn to page number 86. ["In the Garden"] Song number 86 and last song of the year. Probably not gonna be able to sing more songs tonight. But song number 86, In the Garden. Sing it out on the first. I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses And the voice I hear, falling on the hay The sound of life, this causes And he walks with me and he's on my way He walks with me and he tells me I am his own And the joy he'll share as we turn him in None of them has ever known Sing it out on the second. He speaks and the sound of his voice Is so sweet, the birds are still singing And the library that he gave to me Breathing on my heart is ringing And he walks with me and he talks with me And he tells me I am his own And the joy he'll share as we turn him in Does mean everything None of them has ever known Guys, you're singing well, so let's finish strong on the last. I'd sing the garden in vain Though the night I'm finally free But he gives me room through the walls of Rome His voice to me is spoken in And he walks with me and he talks with me And he tells me I am his own And the joy he'll share as we turn him in None of them has ever known Amen, great team. Let's bow our heads and dismiss and pray for the food. Dear Heavenly Father, we love you and thank you for this church and thank you for our pastor and his family, Lord, and pray that you bless our church and pastor and his family and pray for the evening, Lord, that you bless it. Bless the food and the fellowship to come, Lord. Again, we pray just that everything will be said and done this evening, Lord. We bring glory and honor to you and pray that you would dismiss us with your grace. We love you and Jesus, and I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.