Interview with Pastor Ryan Blackwell

So good morning church, let's stand together, we're so glad you're here today, let's sing this out and reclaim the faithfulness of our Father today. The Lord will provide, my Father has, my Father has the way, oh I know my Father has the way Look at the sparrow, lacking for nothing In your field of tomorrow, what it will bring For you are enough Lord, I have enough, I have enough For your love will satisfy Everything I need, everything I need My Father has it, my Father has it In every single time, the Lord will provide My Father has it, my Father has the way So seek first the kingdom and its treasures And everything else that will be added All that I'm needing, I know the Lord will provide Cause I know my God's not empty handed He gives us blessings upon blessings And I'm still believing, I know the Lord will provide So seek first the kingdom and its treasures And everything else that will be added All that I'm needing, I know the Lord will provide Cause I know my God's not empty handed He gives us blessings upon blessings And I'm still believing, I know the Lord will provide For everything I need, everything I need My Father has it, my Father has it In every single time, the Lord will provide My Father has it, my Father has the way For everything I need, everything I need My Father has it, my Father has it In every single time, the Lord will provide My Father has it So seek first the kingdom and its treasures And everything else that will be added All that I'm needing, I know the Lord will provide Cause I know my God's not empty handed He gives us blessings upon blessings And I'm still believing, I know the Lord will provide Oh, I know the Lord will provide ♪ I, I know the Lord will provide ♪ Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Well, good morning, everybody. Great to have all of you and welcome all of our campuses via video right now. And we're so glad that you are here

on a Sunday morning with us for a One Church Day. And wherever you're watching, I encourage you to grab your journal, grab your Bible, and let's take some notes together. Today is gonna be, if you didn't notice already, an entirely different kind of day. If you're brand new, come back next week, okay? It's just gonna be different today. This is normally the time where myself or one of our teaching pastors opens up the Word of God and gives a sermon. This is just gonna be a little bit different here. I've invited Ryan to join me for this portion. And if you're new, Ryan is our teaching and executive pastor here at the church and today is his last Sunday. Collectively, we all say, I heard a boo. I got the boo. I like that. I feel that. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, let's boo you on your last Sunday, that's great. Ryan and I have known each other since we were about two and a half years old. We were raised in this church together. Y'all wanna see some old pictures? All right, let's throw some old pictures up here and you'll get to see, look at that right there. That is, it's impressive.

Me in a tie, Nick in a football jersey, seems about right. Yeah. And Ryan, why is your head so big in the left picture? I will say this, Nick has always had an affection for white pants, even on Easter Sunday this year, right there. They've always been a part of me. Can't get away from it. But Ryan and I were both saved in the same revival in the mid 90s. And we were both baptized here, called to ministry around the same time. Ryan surrendered to the ministry a few months before I did. And on a Sunday night service, back when we were doing those every week, we were sitting in this section right here when God was really dealing with my heart to kind of put like the nail in the coffin of I'm surrendering to ministry. And I remember like discussing with him during the music of like, man, I feel like I should go forward. I was like, you should go forward. So, so like we go way back and people say, don't hire your friends. And I just disagree. Maybe you've had a bad experience with that. We've had a perfect experience with that, is what I'd say. And so a few weeks ago,

it was announced Ryan was voted on and selected as the new president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources in Nashville, Tennessee. If you don't know what that is, we'll talk about that today. And give you a little bit more about that. But like I said, this is normally when we would give the sermon, but today I want you to see a sermon lived out. Okay, this is what like real time, this is Ryan, Rachel, their children are all here on the front today. And they're living out walking with Jesus right now as we do this together. And so if you've got your journal today, you'll see we were scheduled to begin a new sermon series on spiritual warfare. We will begin that next Sunday and it's going to mess up your journal. I apologize. Some of you that's gonna make you tick all week long. All right, you're gonna hate it, but it's really gonna be okay. All right, let me set the stage with one passage of scripture that really the Blackwells are walking through right now. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. It's Proverbs 16, nine. The heart of man plans his way,

but the Lord establishes his steps. Ryan, tell the people today, how is that actively working out right now in your own life and the life of your family? Yeah, I'll get there. I do wanna say one thing real quick. And it was just, it has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to serve alongside my best friend. If you ever wondered, do your friends matter? They matter. And he's been one of the greatest gifts that God's put into my life. But it's interesting, that verse that Nick just put on the screen, I actually was on this stage preaching. It was about a month and a half, two months ago. And I used that verse. And I can remember emotionally, there was this moment of standing here on the stage where I could hardly get through it because I could feel every ounce of the weight of that verse with what we were walking through personally. The reason I say that is I would just say this. I never aspired to or desired to be the president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources. We would've laughed when we were teenagers. Absolutely. And in fact, when a trusted mentor reached out to me, this was probably. eight or nine months ago for the first time and said,

hey Ryan, I want to recommend you for this role. I just kind of laughed and I was like, I don't think so. Okay, now it wasn't because I didn't highly respect Lifeway or the mission of Lifeway. It was just this, Lifeway wasn't in my plans. Wasn't in my plans. We love this church. I love pastoring and being an executive pastor. I love serving alongside my best friend. We were watching our kids absolutely thrive spiritually. And so I just say like none of this was in our plans and yet as we've walked with the Lord over the last, really three months heavily in the wrestling match with the Lord, you begin to, it's hard to always see what God is doing in your future. But you sometimes look back and you're like, okay, I see God's thumbprint there. And I see God's thumbprint there. I look back at my journey. For those of you that don't know our story, I served at a very traditional church with committees and subcommittees, orchestra, all that kind of stuff in Oklahoma when I was in college. We then went and served in a church plant in a very wealthy part of California. We went downtown San Francisco, served in a church revitalization of a dying church. And then multi-site mega church, home church, cross church here. I look back and I'm like, okay,

God was forming my heart to love all of Jesus's church in all of its different forms for this role. It may not have been my plan, but the Lord was establishing my steps. Yeah, for sure. One of the things that Ryan and I want to do today is to try to make this personal to your life. Even though we're explaining his story and the activity of God in his life, no doubt there's connections to your life. And one of those things is when God often calls you to something in the future, he started to work out a muscle in the past. And so let's even back up before we even get to Nashville and LifeWay. And you were serving here. You went to seminary out in San Francisco. You came back on our staff here at the Springdale campus, actually, for about a year. And God asked you to begin working out a new muscle of faith. And he called you back to San Francisco. Talk about that whole experience and what you did in San Francisco. Yeah, I pastored First Baptist Church of San Francisco, which just interesting, it was the very first Protestant church on the West Coast. So 1849 during the gold rush. So it was a church with a really incredible history. But right before I got there,

they'd gone through a real season of just hard. Their pastor, a very godly man, had been sick for a long time, had not been able to be there very often. So there's just a lot of distrust. And eventually it just caused a shrinking of that congregation. And so when we got there, what I would say was it was hard. You're going into a setting in downtown San Francisco with all that that entails and a church that was struggling. Rachel and I, when we came, we only had our son who was about 11 months old and then we had our two daughters there and we brought Brady and he pretty much doubled the kids ministry. It wasn't a large church by any means. And so I just say this, the Lord used those hard years, especially the first four years in San Francisco as some of the most formative times in Rachel and I's life. We learned, you know, when you're pastoring in San Francisco, every day I went into a situation that I realized, I have no idea what I'm doing. Don't know what to do. And so we learned dependence on the spirit. We learned the importance of just plotting and patience and relying on God for every single thing.

And so I look back at that season, it was such an amazing season. It's such a great church. You know, by year five, six, we began to get momentum, saw more and more salvations. By the time we left, we had about 400 to 500 people every Sunday, 40 different nations represented in that church. One of the coolest things was you had, you know, the GM of the San Francisco Giants at the time sitting right next to someone from the homeless community. We saw the power of the gospel and its ability to bring people together into family that otherwise never would have been. And so that's a special church. It'll always have a special place in our heart. Yeah, for sure. One of my favorite things is to listen to Ryan tell San Francisco stories because he has some wild stories from that church. Some of them are not appropriate for a Sunday morning gathering, but ask him outside of church and he can tell you, okay? But give him a good San Francisco story before we move on. What I love is this is Nick's party trick. Anytime we are at dinner with him and another couple, he's like, hey, just go ahead and share some stories. Yeah. And so we'll do it.

Dance, monkey, dance. I'll give you one that's just representative, okay? I talked about this on Easter with our Highway 62 campus, but there was one Sunday early. In the first two to three years, we didn't really have what you'd call security like we have at your cross church. And so you just never knew what was gonna happen. But on that particular Sunday, we were doing a communion Sunday. So we had communion elements, a table all at the front of the room, and we were moving into the invitation time where we were gonna do communion. And so everybody, head bowed, eyes closed, everybody's praying. But all of a sudden from the back of the room, I see an individual begin walking toward the front of the stage. Now, anytime that happens, I get a little nervous. I was very nervous because this guy, I can't, the only way I can explain it, he was trying to look like Michael Jackson, okay? So like, had the glove on, like walking toward me, had his hair, and I was like, okay, I have no idea. He did not moonwalk, he just kind of came forward. But he walks up and he gets to the front of the altar, right in front of the community ambulance, and he just lifts out his hands like this. And I'm like, okay, you know, my brother's just here

to pray, I think we're gonna be okay. Well, that was short-lived. All of a sudden, he looks at me. We make eye contact, and I'm like, oh no. Something's going down here. And what happens, he looks at me, he begins to down as fast as he can all of the communion elements. So like the bread, the juice, I mean, he's just drinking. And everybody else is praying, no one else sees what's happening. And so I'm standing there, I'm like, what do I do? Like, I gotta have somebody do something. Finally, one of our leaders is on like the second row, and I get their attention, I'm like, there's a guy. And so he comes, and he puts his hand on his shoulder, which, if you've ever been around individuals that are a little bit out of their mind, not a great thing to ever touch them. And so what happens is he stands up, and by this time, the whole church is looking. It's loud, and he looks at this little 85-year-old woman on the front row, and he yells at the top of his lungs, you killed my father. What do you do in that scenario, church? Like, how do you lead into communion and invitation time after that? We didn't, we just had to pick him up and carry him out of the room. But that's just one story.

You never knew what was gonna happen. Pastor Nick is coming out with his first book today, and I do hope that all of you will grab one. It's an incredible book. If I ever do write a book, it won't be spiritual. It'll be about those stories, so. And I'm just telling you, that's the tip of the iceberg on some of these stories. So let's fast forward. So he had a very fruitful ministry there for almost 10 years. March 17th of 2019, I know I'm about to be voted on to become the pastor here. And so Meredith and I book flights out to San Francisco, kind of covertly, to try to come and recruit you to come home. We talked about the muscle that God was working out of faith. God was working that out for you to come home. Talk about the wrestle just in that season about coming back home. Yeah, I think a lot of people really probably thought when we came back here that, well, it's a no-brainer. You know, this is their home church. You know, best friend, families live here. And all I can say is it was the furthest thing from a no-brainer at the time. And not because we didn't wanna come back here, but we had put in years and years of hard soil, and we were reaping the benefits of it.

The church was growing. Like, it was like, this is everything we had been praying for. We were getting comfortable. And that's when Nick showed up, right? And that's usually, we've just found in our life, that's kind of how God operates in our life. But when Nick came to us, for the first two times he came, we were like, we just can't do it, Nick. We can't do it. We're supposed to stay where we're at. It was so much that way that the first night we walked in and we went to dinner with him, and I gave him the spiel. I think it was like 10 reasons why you should take this job. It was, yeah, I still have it. Yeah, we still have the document. But I remember Meredith and I were staying with him. And so we're in one of the kids' bedrooms and looking up at like the stars that kids used to put on the ceilings, and we're looking at the stars, and I'm like, maybe this just isn't right. And it was right. We just had to push through. If there's one thing about Nick, Nick is persistent, okay? He is very persistent. Every time I would say, I don't think so, he'd say, we don't have to say no yet. This is just a conversation.

Let's just keep the conversation going. It's how I got married as well. Listen, you don't have to say no right now. We're just talking, we're just talking. So he just kept pushing us like, hey, keep praying about this. And what I would encourage you, for those of you who are ever in the midst of making big decisions, the Lord doesn't always do it the same way. You're gonna hear in just a second how the Lord called us to life, when it was a very clear thing. In this scenario, we really didn't have a clear word from the Lord, but we did know this. The Lord was gonna be with us and that he'd given us wisdom. And so as we walked through that process, there's just a few things that really stood out. One, to come back to the home church that had poured so much into me in a transition important season as Nick was becoming pastor. Man, what an opportunity. Number two, getting to work with my best friend, what an opportunity. And then three, there was a moment where you had invited us in, not even, this was for your first Sunday, your dad's last Sunday.

And we were sitting in a room with a group of the pastors here at Cross Church. And I can just remember looking at Rachel and saying, I wanna become more like those men. The godliness, the gentleness, the humility. And with all that, we just determined this was the right step. And man, by God's grace, I look back, all that we would have missed out on over the last six years, the movement of God that's happened. We're so thankful. Yeah, we'll talk. Talk about how God's moved in your own life, in the life of your family, in the church the last six and a half years. The one word that comes to mind for our family in this season is just flourishing, thriving. All three of our kids have come to know Jesus over the last six years. What a gift. Like my son was right in the middle of COVID, our daughter, Allie, about two years after that, and then our youngest daughter, May, just this last fall. And when I say that they have flourished, it has been one of the greatest gifts of my life to see my kids love Jesus and love his church and serve his church. And so I'm so thankful for that. And then for Rachel and I, I don't think we realized it.

We moved here in January, 2020, not knowing that COVID was coming two months later, but I look back in that season, and if we had not come then, we could have never come. We wouldn't have left that church in the middle of COVID. And so I just look back how much healing has happened in us, just rejuvenation, passion for the gospel. We've been changed by our time at Cross Church. Yeah, love it. Let's get to Nashville, okay? Many of these people don't know what LifeWay is, and it's a massive organization, and it really is a massive opportunity for Ryan. So explain LifeWay to them and give them the scope of all that they do. It is really helpful. If you ask the average person, what is LifeWay Christian Resources here in Northwest Arkansas, you're probably thinking, isn't that the old bookstore that used to close down and promenade? And so I think the general idea is, man, is this a sinking ship, Ryan? What are you doing going to this bookstore? It's not a bookstore, okay? Let me give you a little bit of the background. The bookstores were one element of what LifeWay did, but the broader thing, the way that you need to think about LifeWay,

it is the resourcing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. So Southern Baptist churches, pastors, but I would say this, actually reaches beyond Southern Baptist, administers to many churches even beyond that. And so the way that that comes out are a few kind of key avenues. One is just ongoing discipleship curriculum. And so even here at Cross Church for our preschool ministry, and our kids ministry, and our women's ministry, and some of our adult small groups, you utilize LifeWay curriculum to disciple your classes, to disciple the next generation. And so every single Sunday, there's 30,000 churches that use LifeWay discipleship curriculum, over 3.5 million people every Sunday being disciples. So think about the opportunity for the gospel to continue to go out in that way. That's a big one. A second one that they do is camps. You know, here at Cross Church, we are so blessed in that we can throw our own camps, we can kind of do that ourselves. Most churches around America are 200 people or less. They don't have the ability to do what we can do here at Cross Church.

And so what LifeWay does is it puts on student and kids camps around the country every summer. This summer, we'll have about 125,000 students that will go to one of those camps. Last summer, we saw over 57 kids give their life to Christ, over 900 people called to ministry. So that's a huge opportunity for the gospel. Another big one is Vacation Bible School. You know, they started Vacation Bible School over 100 years ago, and it still lives on today. Just this last summer, 67,000 kids made a profession of faith through BBS. And so that's a big piece of it. And then the last part of it is that kind of book wing where you have publishing, you have devotionals, you know, books, resources for pastors and church leaders. But then the really big one is the CSB Bible, the Christian Standard Bible. Three million copies last year, getting the word out so that people can hear the good news of Jesus. And so I just say this, it's not a failing organization, it's not a sinking ship. Far from that, it is a behind-the-scenes, disciple-making kingdom pipeline of the next generation of pastors and missionaries and church leaders that are gonna go out and change the world. And so that's why I'm excited,

because that's really been the heart of this church for a long time. Yeah, it is. You brought me along probably, I don't know, four or five months ago. And hey, Lifeway called me and said, I told them no. And, you know, so we go on for a few months and I'm out of town and come back and he texts me on Sunday night when I'm getting back in the office on Monday and he said, I need to talk with you just a few, through a few things, which is not abnormal. And so we meet on Monday morning and he says, hey, I need to bring you along on something. And I literally said, uh-oh. And then kind of take it from there of just the process moving forward and how God called you. Yeah, when I say it was a wrestle with the Lord, it was a wrestle. And, you know, we did, we had said no. And that committee had reached out to us again, I think it was probably November, December, and said, hey, can we just meet with you one time? And so I said, hey, I'm willing to meet with you, but you need to know this, I'm not your guy. And I need you to know this going into the meeting. And so I told them, like, I'm happy to meet you. but you just, I'm not the guy. Surely you have somebody else for this role.

And so I go into that meeting and it was interesting. It's the most loose I've ever been in a meeting because I didn't think I was the right person for the job. And so that makes it pretty easy. But I can remember there was a distinct moment in that first interview that for the first time I thought, oh no, like, is God gonna call us to this? And so fast forward, we had some more conversations and we were really still a no, but there was about a one week span where we were like, Lord, we're ready to give our final no, but we wanna be open. Like if you're in this, we don't wanna be closed to it, but we, our preference would be, hey, let's stay with our best friends, stay in this church that we love, part of the movement of God. That's our preference, but God, we wanna stay open. And so we prayed for two things that week. I was going on a pastor's retreat, a spiritual retreat. And so we said, Lord, would you speak to us through your word? That's how God speaks to us every single time. So Lord, would you speak to us in that way? And then number two, God, if you'd be so gracious, would you put it on somebody's heart that doesn't even know that we're in this thing? There was only about six people that knew we were even in this process. Would you put it on somebody's heart

to speak a word of wisdom to us? And so we prayed that prayer. And that Monday is the day I was getting ready to go to that meeting. And I get a text from one of our staff team. And it's one of the leaders of our women's ministry. And she says, hey, can I meet with you before you leave? And I'm like, yeah. That was, again, not abnormal. And so I meet with her. And she says, hey, I've got something really weird. But okay. I mean, church problem, a lot of weird things that happen in our church. So hey, I'm ready for this. She said, no, it's for you. She said, about a week ago, the Lord woke me up in the middle of the night and gave me a word for you and Rachel. And she said, I've been wrestling with this all week because I don't want you to think I'm weird. This isn't a normal thing. But the Lord has been relentless that I'm supposed to tell you this. I'm like, okay. And so she hands me this card. And we'll keep this card the rest of our life. But it simply says this. It says, obedience always comes at a cost. Count the cost, but in that obedience,

you will bear much fruit. She said, I don't know what this means for you, but I felt like today I needed to give this to you. Well, I read that and I did think, well, crud. Like, what does this mean? But my second thought was this. It didn't say go the life way, right? And I agree with that. There's a lack of clarity. I still think it doesn't say that. I texted him at 9.45 last night and said, it's not too late to change your mind. What she didn't know though is the thing that Rachel and I were wrestling with the most was the cost. It was that word, the cost, the cost to our kids. I mean, my kids are in middle school and high school. This isn't the ideal time to move. The cost to our friendship, the cost to the church. And so we said, Lord, thank you for that. You answered one of the prayers, but now would you confirm it through your word? And so I go to that retreat and that week, Gary Oliver was leading it and he said, hey, I know all of you do different things for your devotionals. For this one week, I want you to all jump in with me on something. It's called Lectio 365. And so I get up the next morning and I do that devotional and I just wanna kinda outline for you the next six days.

Again, I'm not gonna do all the devotionals, but I do wanna give you a glimpse of how God speaks through his word. The very next morning, when we're praying desperately, God, would you speak to us? The title of the devotional was this, Jesus the Disruptor. And it was a devotional about Jesus calling the disciples out of their comfortable boat to join him in furthering his kingdom. Next day, I wake up, the devotional was this, wrestling with God. He was calling us into a wrestle. The next day was Luke 9, 57 through 62 about Jesus calling his disciples to follow him urgently into the unknown, leaving behind family and all other matters for his greater kingdom call. At this point, we're like, God, like, we think you're in this, but Lord, we don't wanna do it. I had so many fears. And when I say I had so many fears, like, I think some of you think pastors never struggle with fears or inadequacy or obeying God. Or doubt. Doubt. I'm telling you, for two weeks, I did not sleep. I had this weird eye twitch things like, I could not make this decision. So the Lord in his kindness kept pursuing us. The very next day, Genesis 12.

Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. The next day, Isaiah 42, 16. I will lead the blind by ways they have not known. Along unfamiliar paths, I will guide them. I will turn their darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. The next day, Esther 4. Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this. God relentlessly pursued our hearts through his word. All this led to the last day when we went and met with them again. They offered us the job. And Rachel. I are sitting in beautiful Franklin, Tennessee. That's headquarters is in right south of Nashville. So we're sitting in Franklin, should be this peaceful moment. And I'm in the car literally about to have a panic attack. Like God, I cannot do this. And Rachel said, hey, did you read the devotional from this morning, my devotional? And I had moved on and I was going back to what I normally do. And she said, let me read it to you. And it was Joshua 1, 9, which is, have I not commanded you be strong and courageous, do not be disheartened or dismayed

for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. And that is the exact verse that God used to call me into ministry years and years ago. And so at this point, it was one of those moments. And for those of you that have been there, it's no longer, hey, should we do this? Should we not? It was, Ryan, do you trust me? Or will you obey me? Even if I'm calling you into something hard, even if you're calling into the unknown, even if you've got to put your kids in my hands, do you trust me? It was obedience versus disobedience. And we said yes that day. And man, we've experienced the peace of God, even in the hard. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. This is a big loss for our church. I think you know that from the pulpit of just the preaching element of what Ryan brings. But what I really want you to understand is his massive influence on the internals of the church, with our staff, with the planning, with the organization. Any of our staff will tell you that he has played a massive role over the last six years. And so some of you are wondering, well, Nick, what does this mean for us? And so let me take just a moment,

and then we'll get back to Ryan's story and close out today of what does this mean for the church? Are we adding another preacher? For right now, the answer's no. That may change soon, but I don't know. We don't have plans for that right now. But it will cause many other dominoes to fall. And really what I want you to understand is we're losing one guy, and it's gonna take really four guys to fill all the gaps. That's how big of a role he played here. And thankfully, as I look back, God had been preparing us for this moment for about 18 months, which is that hindsight we talked about last Sunday, the hindsight of looking at God's activity. And so God had been shifting things and bringing people about. And so moving into Ryan's role as executive pastor will be a guy named Phil McMichael. Many of you know who Phil is. Phil served alongside of me at Fayetteville Campus for years as the campus pastor. Then he really was the next-gen pastor. He's worked alongside of Ryan and I for the last six years. So he is well-prepared to step into this, a super gifted and godly man. You'll see also Nick Bethea up there. Nick was our Fayetteville Campus pastor for years, has now moved into a role

where he leads all of the leadership development of our team, which is a massive role. He's a part of every new campus launch. So everything taking place at Highway 62 have Nick's fingerprints on them. And so he walked with them for the first two and a half months, and now is kind of stepping back where they can take the baton and run. In the middle there, you see Dave Kinney. We brought Dave here to do an entirely different role than what he's about to do. And so even that, God knew what we would need. Dave was an executive pastor in Houston at a church that exploded. And so we hired Dave to help us in another area, and now he's gonna step into all that Phil was doing, leading campus pastors, leading campuses. He's got a massive role with us. And then Mark, who you know and love. Mark will continue to preach. And Mark was already serving in some of the next-gen world. When I say next-gen, that is birth through young adults, meaning events, camps, BBS, all that kind of stuff. Mark is going to step into alongside of Dave in the day-to-day leadership of many of those. So that's how it affects the internals, just so it's like a FYI and communication for you. Ryan, let me start to round third base here. We always tell these people,

man, build your life around the local church. Have your best friends be at the church. Involve your kids and their schedules in the local church. You're now stepping out of the pastorate and into a Christian ministry, but not as a pastor. And so you and Rachel are gonna be Christians as a Christian family, looking for a church. Talk about how that process has been so far. Yeah, it's one of the weirdest things about this whole thing. Our entire marriage, I have been pastoring in churches. And in this new role, my main role will be encouraging pastors, which is something I'm super excited about, blessing churches. And I'll be doing a lot of preaching on Sundays at different churches. But it's the very first time, as a family, we're gonna go to church together, which is a danger. thing. I don't know how that's gonna go, you know. I like to get there early, Rachel shows up first song, right? Like, so we're gonna have to live that out. And so we're walking through that together. But it was interesting, you know, a lot of times when a couple moves, you think, well, where are we gonna live? Where are kids gonna go to school? And we're having all those discussions, but what I've loved in this process is the very first decision we're making is, where are we gonna go to church? Because we actually want to buy a house near that. We want the kids to go to school near that so that their kids, you know, the main goal that we have in this season is to continue to have our kids in what we just call spiritually fertile ground. I think that's a phrase that you have used. And they have had that here at Cross Church, and our main goal is to make sure

that they have that there. And so we've already kind of narrowed down the churches that we're gonna look at. One in particular that I think we're probably going to go to. But as a family, we are so excited to get involved. It's gonna be different because, you know, I'm gonna move from preaching every Sunday to, hey, I'm gonna serve as a door greeter. I'm gonna serve as an eighth grade Bible leader, which is gonna be different. But our kids, man, we're so excited. They've already served here. They're ready to jump in. Yeah, I love it. Well, today is your last day, but your family will be here a little bit longer, and even you'll kind of be coming back on the weekends here and there. So if you see the black ones around, don't say, what are you doing here? They're in transition over the next month or two, and so you'll still see them around some. I know one of your biggest concerns is feeling like you're leaving almost the covering of prayer that this church has been. How can our church be praying for you and your family? Well, it is such a big transition for us. And what I'd say, too, is it's a big job. Lifeway, 800 employees, but just the span of reach, the kinds of churches, the kind of church leaders that they minister to. So I think for me personally, I just would ask, man, would you pray for anointing? If there's one thing I've learned in ministry, it is that the only thing that I have to offer Lifeway in this next step is the power and anointing that comes out of my daily walk with him. And so I need our big God to provide in a big way for me personally as I step into that role. And then just for protection, anytime you step into a role where you're seeking to advance the cause of Christ, you're seeking to push forward the Great Commission, the enemy does not like that. And so if you would, you are our church family, so pray for our kids in that, pray for my wife in that, and pray for me, that God would go before us in it. Love it. Well, man, this is your last Sunday with your home church that you've gotten to serve. I just want to give you the last word. Anything you want to say to these people, the floor is yours. Man, here at the Sparino campus in particular, we love you. I mean, this has been our church family from the time I was born, literally born, and then

started coming to this church. And so when we say that you're our family, you really are, and we need you to be our family in this next season. We love you, but I hope that today you're hearing our story, but I really would just turn it back to you. God doesn't have you here just to hear our story. God has you in this room so that he may be calling you to your next yes. And if anything that Rachel and I have done in our time here at Cross Church, I hope that you will at least see a family that says, Jesus, you're worthy. You're worthy. We're gonna live open-handed with our lives. We're gonna live open-handed with our kids, with our future, because you're worthy. We can trust you. And so I wonder even this morning, like, for all of you, what may be God calling you to? I think sometimes people, they talk about the Christian life as if it is a boring life. Here's what I tell you. It is only boring if you're living like this, if you're living closed off to the Holy Spirit's leadership in your life. And so what could it be that God's calling you to say yes to? I hope, if anything, we've been an example of what that can look like. Well, we're gonna pray over the Blackhawks here in a second. And if you're here today and you're like, Nick, I came to be saved today, like God's been working on me, or you need spiritual counsel or prayer, our staff will be lined up across the front here as we end in just a moment. But, Rachel, I'm gonna go ahead and ask you to come up. Kids, you wanna come up too? Why don't y'all come up too? Come on. I didn't tell you to do that, but y'all look nice today. I'm gonna bring you up. So, I just want to tell all of y'all... I made it the first service, just thank you. Jeremy, can you come pray? I warned him ahead of time, I said, if I can't do it, you gotta do it. All right, can we bow and pray for this amazing family together? Heavenly Father, we just praise you

and we say thank you for blessing us with this amazing family. What an incredible joy it has been to serve you alongside of them, to walk with them. And God, you have used them throughout Northwest Arkansas, America, and the world for Jesus Christ. And we praise you for that. And what an opportunity it is for us as a church to send them out from here, to do an incredible work through LifeWay, ministering to tens of thousands of churches all across the country. And Lord, we just pray that you would protect them, you would guide them, that you would strengthen them, and that you would use them to advance the gospel in such an extraordinary way. Lord, we pray, God, that you would just go with them. We thank you for what we've heard and getting to share in the story and hear how you've worked in their lives. And thank you for their obedience to say yes to you. And thank you for the example that we've been able to see watching their lives and their yes before you. Lord, protect these wonderful kids as they start new schools and make new friends. Would you overwhelm them with new friendships, new people that will support them and surround them. But I pray that they'll remember us that are faithfully praying for them back here.

Lord, we love you, we praise you, and it's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen.