The Locker Room | Next Man Up | Chad Bruegman

We're gonna sing some songs together. Come on. Let's put our hands together. Sometimes you've gotta dance through the darkness. Sing through the fire. Praise what it don't make sense. Sometimes you've gotta stand down the giant. Worship from the lion's head. Sometimes you've got shouted from the mountain and louder in the valley. Trusting that he's gonna get you there. Sometimes you've gotta welcome the wonder. Play for the answer. Worship with your hands in there. I'll praise you when you will. Praise you when you praise. In the highest praise. In the highest praise. In the highest. Be worthy. Yes you. As worthy of all of the praise. Come on hands together. Sometimes you've gotta pray in the prison. Cry out to heaven. Shout to the door. Swing wide. Sometimes you've gotta stand on the shackled. Pray in the battle. Worship with your hands held high. I'll praise you when you will. Praise, give a praise, give a praise. Come on give a praise. Give a praise to the highest. As worthy. Yes you. As worthy of all of the praise. Give a praise, give a praise. In the highest. Come on give a praise. In the highest. Be. As worthy. Yes you. As worthy of all of the praise. In the highest. Be. As worthy. Yes you. As worthy. Yes you. As worthy of all of the praise. Amen. I'll praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you. As worthy of all of our praise. Give a praise, give a praise. In the highest. Amen. I'll praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Praise you when you will. Oh y'all let's keep singing. At high speed in the river, wash off my sins away. At high speed in the river, let the big old flame. Yeah I know of my family. Praise your melody. At high speed in the river. Praise the Lord I am pleased. Oh hallelujah hallelujah. Praise you when you will. I was glad not to see you. Hallelujah to the King of King. Praise me in the river. Praise your hands. Come on let us be in the river, the nose I've come home. ♪ We've gone too long ♪ ♪ Yeah, the round town, you'll see us ♪ ♪ Safe and free to do ♪ ♪ That time's real, you're the river ♪ ♪ Lord, I'm coming home to you ♪

♪ We are ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, I have peace ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, oh, we'll find our peace ♪ ♪ Hallelujah to the king of me ♪ ♪ Yeah, I'm happy in the river ♪ ♪ Praise the Lord, I am free ♪ - Yeah, so awesome, thank you guys, y'all can have a seat. Well, welcome everyone, you picked a great day to be here. We're celebrating baptism after each of our services. Today, it's such a beautiful day out there. You know, think about baptism as Jesus was baptized and he asked us as his followers to be baptized as well. It's this amazing picture when we go under the water and come back up again of his death and his burial and his resurrection. It's a picture of what he does in our lives when we put our faith in him, our sins are buried and forgiven and we can rise and walk in a new life. And so I hope you'll stick around and cheer everybody on. In the meantime, I have a couple people who are out in the baptismal and they wanted to share their baptism stories with you today. So I wanna introduce you to Kyra first. How you doing? - I'm good. - We're excited for you. Let me tell you just a little bit about Kyra's story. She says that before she met Christ, she had questions about God

and why he allowed certain things in her life that really didn't make sense. She didn't have a church home and really got very depressed. So she Googled churches near her and she found RPC and decided to attend that Sunday. And after the service, two women prayed over her and her mental health. And that moment meant so much to her and she's so grateful for the love and the prayers and the comfort she received. Kyra wants to be baptized to say she's committed to God, leaving her past behind and beginning a new chapter in her faith journey with him. Yeah. (audience applauding) Thank you for sharing your story. So Kyra, is it true that you've put your faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior? - Yes. - Well, based on your profession of faith, we baptized you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, buried with Christ unto death. Rise to walk, newness of life. (audience applauding) Awesome. You know, the thing is many of you, maybe we're christened or baptized or dedicated as a baby or a child by your parents. It was a great decision that they made. But maybe today is your day to be baptized as an adult.

You know, in the New Testament, people were baptized as soon as they were able to find water. So I would just say, why not now? This may be your day to day. We have all the things we have closed. The water's actually warm out there. We have Bibles and certificates for use of that. It is you and you feel that prompt today. You can go to the desk in the lobby and we'll get you totally set up for that. So let me introduce you to Habakkuk. What a name, right? We love your name, Habakkuk, such a great thing. I wanna tell you a little bit about Habakkuk's story. His father was an evangelist and he met Christ at an early age. At 18 years old, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and he served for the last 23 years. How about that? Yeah. (audience applauding) So he knows it was God who carried him through combat and preserved his life when he was surrounded by danger. And he finds himself entering a new chapter. He wants to be baptized to say publicly for the first time that God has sustained him through his life. He's committed to surrendering to whatever comes next and wherever and whatever God leads him to, he intends to follow. So Habakkuk, is it true that you've put your faith

in Christ as your Lord and Savior? Absolutely, yes I do. Yeah, and based on your profession of faith, we baptized you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit buried with Christ unto death and rise to honor. Let's go! Yeah, y'all stand and sing with us. Continue to sing. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ I would sign up and sing, yeah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ All I knew was I had a dream ♪ ♪ That I think is a real girl ♪ ♪ Praise to Lord I had a dream ♪ ♪ All I knew was I had a dream ♪ ♪ All I knew was I was I had a dream ♪ ♪ All I knew was I had a dream ♪ ♪ I had a dream that I think is a real girl ♪ ♪ Praise to Lord I had a dream ♪ ♪ Take me ♪ (audience applauding) - And now we have one more song together this morning. (upbeat music) ♪ Lord is my shepherd ♪ ♪ And He is everything I need ♪ ♪ So I will not work ♪

♪ And I will not fear the enemy ♪ ♪ He said that He loves me ♪ ♪ He said that He's with me even though ♪ ♪ I walk through the valley of shadow and death ♪ ♪ But still I know He has good hands ♪ ♪ He has good hands for me ♪ ♪ So I will take heart, desert and garden ♪ ♪ He has good hands, good hands for me ♪ ♪ And I know my father, I know my father's ♪ ♪ Good hands ♪ ♪ Lord ♪ ♪ Lord is my shepherd ♪ ♪ And I walked out my video ♪ ♪ So I would our question ♪ ♪ The Lord and the staff that come to ♪ ♪ He quiets the waters ♪ ♪ He quiets the storm inside her ♪ ♪ So I could be better ♪ ♪ Than walking with Him when I believe ♪ ♪ He has good hands ♪ ♪ He has good hands for me ♪ ♪ So I will take heart, desert and garden ♪ ♪ He has good hands ♪ ♪ He has good hands for me ♪ ♪ And I know my father, I know my father has ♪ ♪ He has good hands ♪ ♪ He has good hands for me ♪ ♪ So I will take heart, desert and garden ♪ ♪ He has good hands ♪ ♪ He has good hands for me ♪

♪ And I know my father, I know my father has ♪ ♪ Good hands ♪ ♪ Come on, let's declare this together ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness ♪ ♪ And mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ So feel well, not find me ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness ♪ ♪ And your mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ You will not find me ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness ♪ ♪ And mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ Feel well, not find me ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness ♪ ♪ And mercy will follow after me ♪ 'Cause I'll be dwellin' in the house of time He has good breath He has good breath For him I will take hold Just to take hold of He has good breath He has good breath For me I know If I don't know father I know my father I could feel it I know

Good breath Yes he does The good breath If I know my father I know my father I could feel it The good breath Good breath Come on If I don't know my father I hope my father I could feel it Go on stay Good Good Good breath If I know my father I know my father Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Come on let's pray together as a church Heavenly Father you're good You're a good Father And I know that means that you have good plans You have plans to prosper us You have plans for hope

You have plans for a future I thank you for our church God I pray for everyone that you brought here this morning You have a plan for them And it was your plan that they were here this morning To hear the word that you have I thank you for our pastor God May He speak boldly to us this morning It's in Jesus name that we pray and we all say Amen If you're new or visiting or have missed We titled it the locker room right Hopefully by now if you come a lot you know what this is about And the whole idea with the locker room was number one it's football season So we knew it would work But number two And more importantly We talked about this thing called the church gathering This thing we do on the weekends Where a bunch of Christ followers all come together And we call this place our home away from home We call this place church The Bible in the New Testament has a word for it the Echlea Sia or the gathering And what we said was Without even meaning to this gathering can look and fill If we're not careful a lot more like a Friday night game Than it does a Sunday morning worship service But the gathering was never intended to be the game The gathering was always intended to get in the locker room together So that we could suit up so that we could prepare for the game

So that we could deal with wounds We could deal with injuries So that we could once again go over game plans And talk about strategy and all the different things that we as the church Are supposed to do to be mobilized And to be empowered So what we walk out of the doors today Ready to go onto the football field called life again Out into the workforce Into our homes into our schools And kind of just re-up and on the vision for What a healthy powerful transformative church Should look like on the weekends And so I'm ending with a message that I don't know how you're going to receive it But this I think is so fundamental And so important to the health of our church And so sticking with the football metaphor Just one more time some of you you're over it, right? Football's not your thing You're like if I hear one more analogy about football I promise we will do appellate cleanser this next week, next series But every now and then, unfortunately If you really love football One of the hardest things about it is Throughout the season because it's a violent game Players get injured And sometimes like really important Like future Hall of Fame players get injured And you can just fill the oxygen, leave in the stadium

And you can see it on the coach's faces They're trying to be strong and play it cool But you know the implications of that person Or people getting injured And then every good coach in the NFL or college or whatever They have to go to a press conference After every game and answer questions And when they get the question about the big injury They all say the same one line every single time They go, you know, it's hard and it's tough And we really, you know, need him out there But here's the deal Next man up Next man up And here's what they're saying Every coach that's worth their weight and salt in any sport If they're really a good effective coach They get the second string players and the third string players And they get the rookies To train and to practice And to play and practice As if at any time they could be the next man up They don't condescend to them They don't treat them like second class citizens start every single week because in a violent game like football, guess what? You're one play away from all of a sudden having your number called. So they go, "Next man up." And if you're taking notes today, this is the title of this last message. I've titled it, "Next man up." And again, I want to be clear, this is not about football. This is about our church. This is about River Point and West End's locker room. And the reason I call it, "Next man up" is because of this. Do you know in our church, there are seven

different generations represented? Seven. Talking about football, you got the veterans, long-time veterans in the room. And then you've got the brand new rookies in the room. And then you've got everybody in between. We have the silent generation. Those are the elders of our elders. Those are the people in our church that deserve the utmost of respect. We're talking late 80s and people in our church in their 90s. They deserve the utmost honor and respect. If you're in 90 and you got to church, especially in our parking lots, you better be honored while you're here, taken care of, affirmed, esteemed. Right? Then we have the baby boomers. We got the baby boomers. Every campus makes some noise. You've got a whistle left in you. I appreciate that. And then we got my generation, the Gen Xers, the middle child, the forgotten generation, they say. I think we're awesome, but where are Gen Xers at? There we go. Then we've got those pesky millennials. Where you at, millennials? Starting to see the energy. You see how this works? And then we got what? We got Gen Z. Anyone in here? Okay. I love it. And then we got... I think we're getting close to youth group now, so there are much of them are in different buildings. What is it? Generation Y? Is that it? What's next, right? Generation Alpha. Where are you at? In kids ministry. Okay. And then if you got like a one-year-old or a little bambino in here, a little baby, then we got generation beta. If you hear them crying, take it up with God. He loves that generation. Whatever's going to come of them. He loves that generation. And listen to me, having seven generations of people represented in our locker room makes the heart of God smile. This was how God always intended us, the church, to live together and to be together and to work together. How we treat and how we take care of each generation in this church has a direct influence on the blessing of God and the favor of God over our church. And don't you want to go to a church where you can just sense and fill the blessing of God? You may not be able to define or explain it. I pray so hard all the time. It's the top of my list for our church is that the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit would be felt every single time we're in small group every time we gather on the weekends with the big group. Every time we're doing anything in the church, I pray that it's the Holy Spirit. You can't fully define it. You can't fully say what's happening, but you can just intangibly fill that no matter what happens each weekend, the presence of God is in this place. The presence of God is being affirmed and being honored in this

place. And one of the greatest ways we do that is by leveraging the beauty that every one of our seven generations brings to this locker room and to this family. But doing the locker room thing with multi-generational approach, it also makes the health of our church and the unity of our church a lot harder. More challenging, but I am telling you this is a challenge that is worth accepting. Twelve different times in the Holy Scriptures. Old and New Testament, do you know what God is referred to by his people? They would pray to him like this to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why would they do that? Because he's the God of multi-generational storytelling. The story of God does not work without every generation, with its distinctions, with its differences, with its strengths, even with its weaknesses and shadow sides. Every new generation that God puts on the earth is with the ultimate purpose of continuing to tell his perfect plan and his sovereign and perfect story as it moves along. But what we all know about any good story broken up by chapters or generations is the next chapter is only as good as what was set in the chapter before it. When they prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, here's what they were realizing. Here's what they were declaring is this. that God all of this started from God. But Abraham could never have fully realized that covenant and that promise if he didn't, by God's grace, give birth to a son named Isaac. Isaac could have never been the person Isaac was created by God to be if he did not first stand on the shoulders of his mother and father. Isaac then gives birth to twins, both playing an important part in God's story for totally different reasons. One of them being Jacob. Jacob was a scoundrel when he was born. You ever give birth to one of those? Coming out of the womb, lion cheating deceiving?

Like that was Jacob. He was literally, his name literally meant in the Hebrew deceiver. And then all of a sudden he starts wrestling with God. God refuses to let him not play a part in the story. God refuses for the generation of Jacob to be the one where the promises don't work anymore. And so he wrestles with him and he changes his name to what? Israel. We would not have had Israel, which was the seed, the nation of Israel through Abraham was the first seed God planted in his garden of restoration and redemption. Not so it would grow up to be the only part of the garden, but so it would be the first plant in the garden to prepare for all nations, all tongues, all tribes to enter into that garden. And it was through Jacob because you know what? For everything wrong with Jacob, you know what he was really good at? Making babies. He had like 20 of them, boys and girls. But he would famously go on to give birth to 12 sons that would become known as what? The 12 tribes of Israel. It was through his sons that the nation of Israel and eventually the kingdom of God through Christ would get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And Jacob, although he wasn't the best of humans half the time of his story, do you wanna know what God used Jacob to do most in terms of what his contribution was? It wasn't anything he did or did not do, but rather it was who he had as children. That'll preach to a few of you. Down on your luck, insecure about your career, getting older in age and looking back with maybe some regrets you think you should have 'cause you didn't go as big as some other people went or you didn't do as great things as other people you hear about. What if the biggest reason in your part of telling God's story was simply not what you were gonna do but the kids that you were gonna have? What's better than that? Let me tell you just about a few of his sons that would be the 12th. There's one named Joseph and some of you will get this. Joseph couldn't have been any different than his father. If you read the story of Joseph and Genesis, do you know what you'll walk away calling him? A man of complete integrity. Like he sets the tone when it comes to integrity. Jacob would have died a death of starvation, way too young if it wasn't for Joseph. But instead because of Joseph who he gave birth to, Jacob, if you read his story, would go on to die the way we all wanna die,

of old age with his whole family around him, burying him and blessing him as he passed away. Not by anything Jacob did, but because of the son that he gave birth to, the next generation. He gave birth to a son Levi. Without Levi and the tribe of Levi, we wouldn't have the Levites who literally gave birth to the priesthood and to the stewardship over God's first locker room, however, which was his temple. God gave birth, or Jacob gave birth to a son named Judah. You ever hear Jesus a couple of times in the Bible? Refer to as the line of the tribe of Judah. Without Judah, we don't have a bloodline for King David number one, but way more importantly, that's the bloodline Jesus eventually came through. He gave birth to a son named Benjamin. He was the last one and the smallest of the tribes, right? What can small things do? Well, it's through the tribe of Benjamin that the first anointed king over Israel came through hundreds of years later, King Saul. And then you skip all the way to the New Testament and we get another Saul that we get introduced to who've told us in his scriptures that he came from the line of Benjamin. And he got his name changed from Saul to what? Paul. And you know what's funny is we're gonna be reading in a few minutes the very words of Paul.

The locker room is a multi-generational, interdependent dynamic that we have to look at and that we have to talk about to end this series because of the seven generations represented in our churches, they are in no way, shape, or form mutually exclusive from the others. But here's why it's challenging 'cause I know how we get. "I am naturally getting grumpier." I'm telling you, if you're young, it's annoying, I get it. I say this all the time. I'm fighting every urgent need to not become to get off my long guy. Everything that used to drive me nuts. You ever grow up with grandparents? We walked uphill both ways in the snow to school them back and we're sitting there going, "Why?" Like, get a car, like younger, you know, younger, they're like, "Couldn't you Uber or something?" You know, and I'm like, or a better question is, if there would have been a car or a new before you, would you have still just nobly walked up hill both ways? No, you would have gotten in the car like we do. Well, those darn kids and all their screens and their phones and their screen time, can I just remind us, my generation and the boomers above me, we're the ones who built those screens and put them in their hands. We can't be mutually exclusive from each other. See, God designed every generation to be ready, equipped, and prepared

to take all the wisdom you've learned from simply living and then become a blessing to the next generation. But the temptation is, as we get older, and the world's changing at a rapid pace and you no longer have the energy or margin to keep up with all those changes is to just think, "Oh, the world's over, these darn kids." But we have to forget the Bible says we're sinned off the bound. That much more does grace abound. You go, "What's that have to do with generations?" That tells me, "Yes, in some ways this world is gonna get darker and darker." We see that happening in many different aspects of life, but at the same time, it will not get darker than the light of Christ no matter what we walk through. So we can take two routes here based on that. We can just sit around and get fixated full of fear about all of what the world looks like it's turning into or we can get up, we can get fired up, we can look at the generations below us, know that God's gonna put a new song in their heart to sing to the world and we can say, let us help teach you how to sing that song that God's put in your generation, that God's put in your heart. Let us be the people that have had some experience and some wisdom and some time under our belt. Let us be the people that bless you and that speak life over you and that find the giftings in you and call 'em out,

maybe the same way somebody did for us when we were younger. The question I wanted to answer as we end this series is what does it look like for us at River Point and West End Church to have a healthy, multi-generational church. And I love the book of Proverbs, almost every sermon I use one 'cause it's just a hard-hitting one-liner. And King Solomon says this in Proverbs chapter 20, verse 29. He says, the glory of young men, and you can add young women in there because in the Hebrew ancient way of writing, they would just write about the men on behalf of everyone. Sorry, ladies, we're trying to be better. The glory of young men is their what? Their strength. And the gray hair or what meant in the Hebrew splendor of old men and women is their what? Their experience or their wisdom. And then he just stops and it's like, what's your point, Solomon? And that was Proverbs. It wasn't a point. The point was for you to search that out and figure it out. And after years of reading that and living a little bit more on both sides, I'm getting some grays now,

but I also remember what it was like to have abs and strength and energy. King Solomon saying this, if you really wanna do it God's way, then you have to take the gray hair that you earned through life and experience and hard times and blessed times and everything in between, you have to take that gray hair and then you have to come over to all of these younger kids and generation that are full of margin and strength and zeal and passion and what I call divine naivety, keyword divine. Naivity by itself is almost always a negative, but I'm talking about God or divine naivety. They haven't lived enough life to let cynicism went out over childlike faith yet. We have generations in our church that haven't lived and been through enough things yet to have all the cares and craziness of this fallen and broken world get in the way of what they believe is possible in the name of Jesus. So we have a responsibility to leverage that strength of those kids and those generations below us. To maximize it, not for their selfish gains, but to be a church that teaches kids to do something in their life that's bigger than themselves, that's bigger and getting outside of themselves, use that strength, use that single life,

use that time, margin, energy and passion 'cause eventually you're gonna get adult bills and eventually you're gonna have babies, some of you, and eventually you're gonna have a lot more pressure and promotion at work, and guess what? It's gonna be a lot harder to walk in that young first love that you were given when you first met Jesus Christ. So when we have kids that are growing up and getting to know Jesus Christ over in our kids ministries, over in the youth ministries, our kids that are 18, all the way up to 30, these young professionals, these young adults, man, I wanna be a church that empowers them. I wanna be a church that speaks life over them. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy, and just so you know, so this matters more. Paul is writing the last writings he would ever write in 1 2 Timothy. Paul even mentions in 2 Timothy his death was impending. Rome was about to put him on public display and kill him for his leadership in the early church. Timothy was one of his, if not most important, proteges. Paul mentored Timothy like he was his own son. Timothy was gonna be the pastor of this church, Paul loved that he started in Ephesus. And so Paul's writing him some final letters, just covering every last thing that he's tried to teach him over the last 15 years, that they had done missionary work together. Listen to what he starts by saying in 1 Timothy 1.

Paul, he writes, "An apostle of Christ Jesus "by the command of God, our savior, "and of Christ Jesus our hope." Now here's what I want you to hear. To Timothy, my what? My true son in the faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Why did I read that first? Because I wanna be a locker room. I wanna be a church where we don't just bring our biological sons and daughters, which is huge. What if you as you got older and a little more gray started praying a prayer like God? I love my sons, I love my daughters. Or God, we were never able to have sons or daughters. Or God, I never wanted to have any real like biological sons or daughters. Great, everyone different story. But God, I would love to go to my deathbed with a few spiritual sons and daughters. I would love to have what maybe I never got. I'd love to have somebody that's been there and done that. I'd love to have had somebody older that just encourages me relentlessly, that speaks life over me, that sees things in me that I don't yet fully see, that refuses to let me be anything other than my best self. I would love to have someone with some gray hair in my life who loves me so much that when it's time

to maybe challenge me or rebuke me or exhort me, it's not an offense. Instead, it's a blessing because I know they have nothing but my best interest in mind. To talk like that is not to wish for something that sounds nice but is not real. This is the plan of God. This is the model of God. It's the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I'm talking about being a locker room moving forward where, and I'm already proud of the last 30 years of work that's been done here. But refusing to accept that we can't even be better and better at being a church with seven generations and all of those generations being challenged to work in unison and harmony together. To understand what each generation brings to the table of this locker room, what each generation needs from each other, what they have to give and what we have to give. That is one of my driving passions before I ever hand this church off whenever it's my time to take the baton, I'm now holding that I got from Pastor Patrick and to hand it off to whoever that might be. One of the legacies that I will not feel good about if I do not leave when I leave this place and my time is done is that we did not get ready for the next 30 years by equipping

and embracing the generations who were gonna blink and they're gonna be the next leaders of this place. See, we've had 30 incredible years, River Point. Look around, the harvest has been plentiful. It's been good, it's to be celebrated. But one of the natural patterns of churches is you spend so long celebrating what is and what was that all of a sudden you blink and all of a sudden there's nothing prepared for what's supposed to be next. And I think what's supposed to be next and I'm not just talking while I'm here, I'm talking about after I'm here, I'm believing it's gonna be better than anything they've ever experienced here in Southwest Houston and downtown Houston. I'm believing for that, why? Because God says that's the pattern how when you do it, not perfect but healthy, that's how it should be. Every generation of the bloodline should get a bump, should get better and better and better. and he says this to Timothy because historians and theologians believe Timothy was between 25 and 35 years old when he took over the church at Ephesus. They believe Paul was somewhere between 55 to 65 years when he was writing this letter. They had a couple decades between them, and they were like BFFs. Paul could not have done what he did without Timothy. It wouldn't have worked.

And Timothy would have never even tried to do what God used him to do if it wasn't first for someone like Paul becoming a spiritual father and treating him like a spiritual son. And so he says this, his parting words. Timothy, don't let anyone in that church look down on you because you are what, young. But do this, Timothy, set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity. And the reason I wanted to read that is because we, if we're a healthy locker room, will be a church that does not condescend to the young people or ignore them or dismiss them or think they're next up later. They're now generation. Do you know, historians, theologians, believe based on very educated guesses that every disciple of the 12, except for Peter, was a teenager when Jesus had come and follow me. Only one that was over 20, the only one that asked Jesus for money to pay the temple tax. And Jesus didn't say, well here, here's 13 coins, pay it for all 12 of us and pay it for you and me. He said, go get two coins and pay the temple tax. Because in Exodus chapter 30 verse 26, 38, excuse me, verse 26, the command for Israel was, it wasn't until you're 20 years old that you pay the drachma, the temple tax. Jesus looked at teenagers, just learning how to work, just fishing with their fathers and doing other things,

young bucks, formidable, divinely naive, and said, if this kingdom's gonna move forward, I gotta have faith of a child. This older generation that I came into, they're too steeped in religion right now. They've been too corrupted by legalism. They've completely misunderstood the power and the beauty of the law. So I need some people that are fresh, some clean slates to get this thing moving again in the right direction. Now did Jesus sign up for some really annoying problems with these young bucks that he wouldn't have had if he would have had some more gray hairs? Absolutely. I'm sure Paul had that with Timothy. But he said, I'll start with this. I'm not waiting for someday for them to be next. I'm gonna call them the next generation. I'm gonna call them the now generation. So come and follow me and they did. Don't let anyone look down on our kids because they're young. We're not gonna be that church. We're gonna empower them only if we're willing to walk alongside them. 'Cause they're gonna do some beautiful things in this church and they're gonna do some annoying things in this church. It's just a fact. But then what does Paul equally say to Timothy

in terms of how he pastors elders? You wanna talk about weird pastoring people older than you, smarter than you, wiser than you, live longer than you. He says, Timothy, here's your year now responsibility. Don't let them look down on you because they're young, but live a life of purity and speech in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. I wanna have a church where we start to do things like never before, where we teach our kids from the youngest of ages. Come on, mom's a dad, you know you want us to help you out with this. You know we're here to help you out. Parenting's hard, right, it takes a village. We're here to be that village. We wanna church where from the youngest of ages, we start to teach and mentor our kids what it looks like to live a life of purity, a life with pure speech, pure living, pure conduct, honor, respect. You know in second Timothy, Paul said, "Jesus is coming back, but until then, the world in many ways is gonna get worse. This is how you're gonna know he's getting closer to coming back." And then he lists all these really bad things that are gonna happen. And one of those things on that very long list is children are gonna become more and more disobedient

to who, their parents, in the end times. But not our children. We're gonna do everything we can to be a church that teaches kids what it looks like to live a life of honor and respect and purity. What it looks like to remember kids in your young naive age that you stand on the shoulders of parents that have sacrificed for you in ways you'll never know about because of how much they love you. They're never gonna tell you how much sacrifice it was to raise them. You're never gonna know about the nights they cried themselves to sleep. You're never gonna know about the times where they prayed to God in hopes that there was no- because of parents, this is what we do. And we owe it to the older generations for the sake of their kids and their grandkids and great-grandkids to be a church that teaches from the youngest of ages what it looks like as a kid to grow up and be a leader, not a follower, to grow up and be someone who walks in honor and walks in respect. Living a life of honor and respect is an issue of a witness for us as the church. So he says, "Until I come, Timothy, "devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, "to preaching and to teaching." And then he says this, "Timothy, do not neglect the gift."

Now, here's the question. When and where did he get that gift? Listen to this, "Which was given to you through," big Bible word here, "prophecy when who," I love this, "the body of elders laid their hands," that was an ancient way of blessing and anointing someone to do a work, "when they laid their hands on you." And this prophecy here wasn't, they were predicting your future, it was speaking the words of God over this young man, Timothy, about the gifts they saw in him and what he would become and what he could and what he would do. And it was elders, people that had been there done that, lived a lot more life than Timothy, earned those gray hairs, earned that splendor, earned that experience, earned that wisdom that put their hands on this young man and said, "We bless you to be our pastor, "we bless you to lead us. "We're speaking this, we can see in you "what you can't yet see in you." I have a lunch buddy. He goes to the West End campus. He's a really important person around here at this church because of the person, his name's Mike Moore. He's got a couple decades on me. When I first got here, he started taking me out to lunch. We go to the same Mon Pop seafood shop downtown close to the West End campus every time we meet.

He's only here in town this phase of life about half the year, but all year, we'll go sometimes where we can't have lunch for a while. I'm getting texts from him regularly. I'm praying for you, Chad, I'm praying. And then he starts naming different kids that we talked about in my family that he names them by name and says, "I'm praying for so-and-so specifically today. "I'm praying for you and Rachel today." How you doing today, Chad? And then when I meet with him at this seafood restaurant, I promise you this guy smells more like Jesus than most people I've been around in my life. There is a lightness to a life well-lived and a lot of hard lessons he's learned. There is a man in his 70s, looking at a man in his 50s and his reminding me life will be hard, leadership will be hard, Chad, but just keep bringing it back to Jesus. And then he starts giving me anecdotal evidence in his own life as to how faithful Jesus has been to him and his family through some hell that they've been through like the rest of us. And every time I leave that seafood restaurant, there's a spring in my step. There's an excitement to get back to work. There's less fear to do my job the way I'm supposed to do my job. Why?

Because someone with way more gray hair and way more life under their belt took the time. And that's vulnerable for him too. What if this young guy just thinks he's better than everyone and he's the next thing and what if he doesn't wanna hang out with me 'cause I'm just old and boring and this and that? No, no, no, I understand that he put himself out there and I just wanted to meet him with honor and respect for that. And when those two things work the way they're supposed to work, I just, I don't know about him. He'd have to speak for himself. But I leave literally more excited about my relationship with Jesus. I leave more excited about being a pastor of a church. I feel again like I can do it again. And this is how God designed it to be for all of us is to take care of each other in that kind of way. And so I wanna read one more thing, Paul says to Timothy in first Timothy chapter five. He said, "Timothy, you're gonna be a good pastor "and you're already super insecure "because of how young you are. "Then let me help you out here." He says, "Do not rebuke Timothy an older man harshly, "but exhort him as if he were what, your father." You wanna be a good pastor at your age? Talk to the older men, bend there and done that? Not like you're their leader. Talk to him as if they're your father.

Says, "Treat younger men as brothers. "Listen to this, ladies. "Timothy, you wanna be a good pastor? "Treat older women who have been there and done that, "who have more gray than you. "Treat them as if you're talking and leading your own mama. "And younger women as sisters." And he says, "Do it with absolute purity." Not up here, I'm just getting this out for the first time up here. We've been talking and strategizing for a while now about how to take everything in the younger generations to another level. And it's not just everything we do for them, but it's teaching and training them as to what their responsibility is to do back for us. But we as the elders, those of you who I'm talking to the elders now in our church, we have to set the standard, we have to first go first, right? So what is, and now I'm talking about the age group from 30 down to zero. I want to have a church where we just get better and better and better and more intentional about how we train them in the way that they should go so that in the end when they get old they won't depart from it. I want to send seniors in high school off to college where they go to college and college doesn't take the faith out of them, but instead they bring a whole new passion and faith through their college. And it's possible. I want to send seniors in high school out into the workplace and into the marketplace that won't be going to college that will be studying trades and all of these other things that are beautiful as well, how to go into that and not just be a young tradesman who's trying to earn some money, but how to take that trade and make it your ministry. Man, we don't want to have them just grow up and hope eventually they get it. We want to do everything we can to make sure by the time they're out of here and you have to have that tearful goodbye and they start their very awkward adult life as 18-year-olds,

which is crazy enough, that they're empowered and ready to go. And we can do this. Here's the deal though. And by talking about one particular group, and it's the group of students from 18-30, my observations over the last two years, and even when I was guest preaching was this, there are so many incredible, healthy, good things at this place, but there is a forgotten generation in our church. And it was the group of people once they leave high school to about 30 years old, forgotten. And I'm like, this is way too important of a season of life for them to be forgotten. Here's what I've named this season for lack of a better term, 18-30, purpose puberty. Right? Not biological puberty. Purpose puberty. You know how awkward it is when you're going through real puberty? All the changes, all the awkwardness. This is what it's like when you're 18 and say goodbye to your parents and go to some dorm with some person you just met for the first time or out into the marketplace, out into the workforce. And the biggest question we get from these 18-30-year-olds is, what's God's will for my life? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to marry? What school am I supposed to do? How do I know what God's telling me to do? Who should I pick? Who shouldn't I pick? What should I do? What shouldn't I do? Somebody help me. What's God's will?

I don't want to get this path thing wrong. Every decision feels like, if you don't get it right the first time, you're toast for the rest of your life. They're going through a purpose puberty. They've never needed us more, but do you want to know, and there's data on this, do you want to know why that group gets forgotten accidentally? More often than not in any other church is because they're no longer in the groups, age-wise. A lot of them go off to college, so they're no longer sitting here, and you know what? They drop the least amount of money in the bucket. We can't be that church where we don't give them everything we can give them simply because they don't have the resource that a bunch of us have. One of the biggest reasons we have gray hair in this room is because you've worked hard enough and done enough life to be able to resource that generation that can't fully yet resource themselves. When we start working together like that, God starts smiling, and the blessing of God starts coming on this church in ways we haven't seen in a while. Do you know last year, we just said we're tired of talking about it. We're just going to start doing it even if we start with two people. We've got a bunch of people on staff that said they would volunteer to start a young adult, 18 to 30 ministry, young adults, young professionals. Every one of them didn't get paid a dime to do it, and they already had a full job description. And within several months, over a hundred people that were zero before that started showing up on Thursday nights to our Missouri City campus to have young adult services. Go ahead and put up a couple of pictures just to show what I'm talking about. Leave that picture out for a minute. Why wouldn't we want to invest in that? Remember the glory of young men and women is what? Their strength. Not just physical.

I'm talking zeal, passion, first love, divine naivety. This first love feeling, this childlike faith, look at that. They're supposed to be at the age where they would never get on their hands. to lose their riz or whatever they call it. But that's an environment in a room where nobody's sitting around worried about that. They're basking in the presence of God. It's moments like that, it alters on your knees at that age where God is speaking into that. What am I supposed to do next? Where am I supposed to go? What's up? What's down? What's left? What's right? You had him where God is solidifying as they're figuring out their purpose what he wants to do in them and through them. Why wouldn't we want to resource that? And I finish by just simply saying this, this is what I built up to simply say, we have been nursing our finances since I got here back to what we consider healthy. Took a bit of a hit when there was a transition. That's normal. No whining, no complaining, but we've slowly in the last two years been nursing that back to health. I have to stop and brag on you guys for a minute. We have been going in the last year up and to the right slowly and steadily every month up and to the right because we've asked for help and guess what? This locker room at every campus has been stepping up and helping. But one thing that has never been in the budget and won't be in the budget unless we are able to put it in the budget is this 18 to 30 year old group that we will no longer ignore.

And so many of you in the last year have been giving for the first time ever at this church. And I don't take that lightly because that's worship. That's your hard earned money that you are giving to God for a cause that's bigger than yourself. And I love when it happens because I'm like I can't wait, you're going to learn lessons over doing this. You're going to see that when you start getting open handed and you start giving to causes that are bigger outside of yourself, you will watch God start to get really interested in your cause. It's just how we set it up. It's just how it works. And so I guess what I'm asking at the end of this series is this. I'm asking for more and more people to consider. Maybe those of you who have been going here for a while and you said, hey, part of my locker room experience hasn't been helping fund it. I'm just going to ask some of you to pray about it. It's between you and God. I'll never know. I don't look at who's individually doing what. I'll never know that it's not my business. My business is to ask, pray and ask and trust. But I know this is the church that wants to do this and will be happy to do this. And I promise you, I can't prove it right now or talk you into this or I'm not going to try. I promise you. It will affect the overall blessing, protection and favor of God over our locker room. Everyone will win when each person is doing their different part based on the different generation that they're in. If you've already been given and you're fine and faithful with that, I say thank you. If you want to pray about doing something extra specifically for this age group, we won't

turn it down. I promise you. But either way, I wanted to say to everyone, thank you. You guys have been faithful. We're nursing this thing back to health, but I'm not just seeing health. I'm seeing moving forward. And right now, the vision for the future is we want this church in the next 30 years to be even more fruitful and more of a blessing to us and to a community than it was in the first 30 years. But we have to start taking these younger generations and equipping them, teaching them and resourcing them at the highest level. I promise you, it's worth it. I've said more than my peace. You guys are amazing. I hope you've enjoyed this series. I'm going to do this. I'm going to pray a blessing over us. Gentlemen, don't forget this Friday night, 6 p.m. would love to have you here. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless every single person in the sound of my voice. God that you'd keep them in the grip of your grace. God that you would cause your face to shine upon us yet again this week. God that you would be radically gracious to each one of us as we leave today, that you would turn your accountants towards us. And God, I pray everyone would walk out today with a peace that passes understanding, that guards our hearts and guards our minds in Christ Jesus. We pray this. Everybody said, Amen.