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

All right, I think we're okay, all right? So we're here in Exodus chapter 17, and the name of the sermon is Lifting Up the Hands of the Leadership. And this is a sermon about volunteering, and it kind of ties together with the first sermon I preached here today because by virtue of the fact that I do work a job, it means I'm not 24-7 available for every single thing, it means I am busy sometimes, I can get stressed out and tired and stuff like that, which I think is a good thing of our church because we're able to save up money we wouldn't be able to have and plan out for things we wouldn't be able to do, but it also means that we need a volunteer attitude at a church, okay? Now I believe it's always good for any church to have a volunteer sort of spirit where it's organized and it's just professional, and we want to make sure, especially as people are new at church, that they have an opportunity to serve if they would like to, okay? So this is a sermon I do want to preach once a year. I preached it once before, and I was looking forward to preaching it again as I have more experience leading now to try to get things more organized. Due to the lockdown and people not being able to come to church for a long time, it just is kind of like a free-for-all method, just, hey, anybody do whatever you can so we can get this stuff done, you know? And it's like, well, we're kind of past that point now for the most part, so now we want to get organized here again, okay? Notice what it says in Exodus 17 verse 8. Then came Amalek and fought with Israel and Rephidim, and Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with a rod of God in mine hand. And so Moses gives instructions, and he sends Joshua out to lead the battle, to lead the charge to fight against Amalek. Verse 10, So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and her went up to the top of the hill, and it came to pass when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. And so basically imagine this battle, and this is a literal story that took place, but it is meant to teach us something. And so when Moses had the rod of God, right here, I got my rod, the rod of God in his hand, right? His hands are up, they're winning the battle. Once they fall, they lose the battle. You say, Brother Sucky, why would that be so hard to keep your hands up? So I remember when I was 14 or 15 years old, our soccer team, we got really beat down in a game. We got in trouble with our coach. And so the next practice, he made all of us hold a soccer ball over our head and run. And it was meant to be for 15 minutes, but if anybody let their hands down, five minutes were added. An hour and a half later, we're in a lot of pain, okay? It might not seem like much, but it's hard to hold up your hands for that long, okay? And so sometimes Moses' hands were dropping because he got tired, okay? Verse number 12, but Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat there on, and Aaron and Hurst stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. So in this story, you see kind of four people mentioned, plus the army with Joshua. You got Moses, you got Joshua, you got Aaron, and you got Hur. Now Moses is always front and center. He's kind of the man orchestrating everything. Well Joshua is kind of front and center in this story too, because he's the one leading the charge. Then you got Aaron and Hur, who are just kind of people that nobody notices. They might not even realize what happened, but they are the ones that are holding up Moses' hand to win this battle. In this story, you need Moses to get the victory, right? No question about it. You need Joshua. You need somebody to lead the war. You need the people with Joshua. You also need Aaron and Hur. And they don't get the credit for what they do, but they are vital to winning this battle. There's no question when you read this story that all of those people are necessary. And the thing we can take away is this, that Moses by himself would not be able to win this battle. He actually needed help to win this battle. Isn't that clear? It's clear he needed help to win the battle. But what's interesting is there's one person who doesn't figure it out. He doesn't realize at the end of the story in Exodus 17 that, guess what, Moses alone couldn't win this battle. Go to Exodus 18. Exodus 18. I mean it seems pretty clear to me. I mean you weren't able to hold up your hands on your own. Obviously you needed help, and yet one person mentioned in Exodus 17 doesn't figure it out, and it's Moses. The greatest man on earth at the time didn't figure out from Exodus 17 that I need help to win this battle. Exodus 18. Exodus 18 verse 13. And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. And when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone? And all the people stand by thee from morning unto evening. And Moses said unto his father-in-law, Because the people come unto me to inquire of God. When they have a matter, they come unto me, and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God and his laws. And Moses' father-in-law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away both thou and this people that is with thee, for this thing is too heavy for thee. Thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Now look, God tried to teach Moses this in Exodus 17. And yet Exodus 17 goes by, and Moses wins the battle because he has help. And then in the next chapter, he hasn't made any changes, right? I mean, and look, I'm not trying to criticize Moses. It's just kind of ironic that the greatest man who lived in the world at that time didn't understand what God was trying to teach him, even though it's obvious to all of us that are reading this. Okay? And we don't know how much time has gone by from 17 to 18, but probably not a whole lot. And God tried to teach him something, and he didn't figure it out. You say, why is it that Moses did not figure this out when it's very clear from this story? There's two possibilities, and I think it's very obvious which one's correct. One possibility, why would a leader just try to do everything by himself and not get help? Because he's arrogant. That's one reason why someone would do that, because they want all the credit. They want all the responsibility. I'm just going to do it all myself because I want to be seen of men. Is that Moses? Was Moses an arrogant person? Was he my Yavon? Not at all, right? That's not the reason why he tries to do it by himself. The reason why he tries to do it by himself is because Moses did not want to burden other people, because he's actually a great man of God, and that is going to be the natural reaction from a great man of God. This is the sort of person you want as a leader, right? I mean, Moses is one of the great leaders throughout the entire Bible. I have no doubt he'd do a better job than I am running this church, right? He was a great man of God. He was a great leader, and this is the sort of leader that you want. You want a leader that is not going to try to burden you with stuff and just ask you to do everything, do this and this and this. You want a leader who doesn't try to force you into things, right? Because people can guilt you into doing certain things. Isn't that true? Sometimes people do things out of obligation, but they don't necessarily want to do it, and you know what? Moses could have guilted people into doing things. He didn't want to, though, okay? Why? Because he just didn't want to burden other people. Now this is the sort of leader you want. However, he will fail with this method, because Jethro is right. He said in verse 18, thou wilt surely wear away both thou and this people that is with thee. Basically, Moses, you're not going to be able to have the energy. You're going to wear away. Didn't he not have the energy to keep his hands up? And what ended up happening, the people wore away and got killed and got destroyed as a result of that. And see, what that's trying to teach us is this, that Moses as the leader needs to make sure that he is staying strong, and if he is overburdened, he is going to fail, and the result is going to be everybody's going to fail, okay? There's a verse in the Bible that says, be not righteous over much. What that means is don't put on too many responsibilities that you're not able to do, because you're going to wear away. One thing that Pastor Menes tries to do, because there are people that love God, and they're willing to do everything, but he tries not to give anybody too much to do, because sometimes that can get them overburdened, and then they just throw in the towel and just give up, and then that could be how people quit church years down the road, because they were too burdened. They don't feel like they get enough credit, and then the result is, man, I'm just done. I can't take it anymore. I don't want you to be overburdened, okay? Look, I hope you know me well enough, having been here for a couple years, I don't try to overburden you. In fact, there's probably a lot of stuff we could do better, but I don't ask anyone to do it. I don't want to burden you and stuff like that, but what we want is a once a year opportunity so people can volunteer in their own free will to volunteer for certain ministries. If you choose not to volunteer, that's fine. It's completely up to you. If you choose to volunteer, then, you know, we could definitely use you. There are a lot of things that we could do. I would say that, you know what, it seems obvious when you read this story, but yet when you're actually a leader, if you're a good leader, you're going to be just like Moses. You're just not going to figure it out, and then what you're going to find is you start failing at certain things, things you could have been doing a little bit better, and, you know, maybe there's a little bit of stubbornness with Moses. Maybe there's stubbornness with me sometimes, I'm not sure, but the reality is Moses just inside of his heart, he didn't want to burden the people, okay? But it is good for people to be able to get involved in the work of the Lord, because this is not a one-man show. It wasn't just Moses, it was Moses, Jethro, all the people, Aaron, and her, and our church will be successful not because of me, because of us. We are a body. I am not the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the nose, the feet, and everything, okay? I'm not sure which part of the body I am, but I'm only a small part of it, okay? For us to operate, the reality is we need people to chip in and do things. Otherwise, we're just not going to be able to do as much as we could do, okay? And look, I want you to realize this, as a church, I hope our church grows, just in terms of numeric growth, that there's more people. But if our church grows, there's more stuff to do. Things are more busy, they're more magulo, and we need to have a structured, organized system where people chip in, and then we can slowly add on more ministries as the church keeps growing, okay? And so notice what it says in Exodus 18, verse 19, harken now onto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee. Be thou for the people to Godward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God. And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt show them the way wherein they must walk and the work that they must do. Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all seasons, and it shall be that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge. So shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee. Obviously, if this was like a church that existed today, this is like a mega church. There's a lot of people, okay? I don't have the exact number in front of me, but this is a lot of people. Our church, we don't need a ruler over thousands of people, okay? We don't have thousands of people here, probably never going to have thousands of people, okay? But on a smaller sample, obviously we have a lot of different ministries, and to get them done, you know, it's like you need various people to do them, right? I'm not up here doing the song leading while playing the piano with my foot. My other foot's playing the guitar and everything, and it's like it doesn't work that way, right? You need a team effort to get things done, okay? Now go back to Exodus 17, Exodus 17, Exodus 17, Exodus chapter 17. There are two types of positions that are volunteer positions. One position is a position where you get no credit from man, okay? Exodus 17 verse 12, but Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat there on, and Aaron and Hurst stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. I can promise you if you lived during this time period, you'd walk away from winning this battle, say, hey, great job Moses leading the charge. Great job Joshua. You wouldn't say anything about Aaron and Hurst, would you? You wouldn't even probably notice what they did, right? The people you would notice are Moses and Joshua, right? Now does that mean that what Aaron and Hurst did was not as valuable? It was just as important, right? See there are certain positions at church where you don't get credit from man for them. Not everybody at church knows that you do them. Right now people volunteer for various ministries here, and you're not aware of it, okay? Now here's the thing, we shouldn't really look at ourselves and say, I want a certain position because I want credit from man, okay? Look, if you have a bit of a Mayavang attitude, you should probably volunteer for something you'll get no credit. That will actually help you in the end run, okay? Look, all of these positions are important, and there's no reason to try to compare what's more important, the nose or the foot or the eye. All of the parts of a body are important, okay? Every single one, there's no reason to compare the different ones. What's more important? They're all important, okay? So some positions you don't get any credit for, that's Aaron and Hurst. But then Exodus 17 verse 13, notice this, and Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Joshua has a very public position. Joshua is known, look at this great thing he did. There are some positions where it's very visible. People see, and you know what, you might get a lot of credit from man. One of the great examples is song leading, right? Basically that's a very public, visible position, okay? And that's something that you would get credit from man. You know, people see what you're doing. There's other positions that are just as important where you're not going to get credit, okay? Everything is important. Go to 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, notice what it says in verse 10, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 10. According to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth there upon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest. Now what does that mean? What does it mean every man's work shall be made manifest? Well, think about it in the Bible, it says God was manifest in the flesh. Who's that referring to? The Son of God, because we know no man hath seen God referring to God the Father at any time. The only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. God was manifest in the flesh. It was seen with the eyes. He was manifest, okay? People are aware of it. And what the Bible is saying is the work you do for God, it will be made manifest someday, right? You will get rewards in heaven based on the work you do. And some of that work might have been something already manifest, people already know it. But it might be something that nobody's aware of. It might be something behind the scenes that nobody realizes you volunteer an hour every week or two hours every week, but make no mistake about it, it's going to be manifest and you will get rewards for the work you do. So it's important as we're setting the scene for this sermon and as I go through this checklist, don't try to compare what is more important or, you know, what is more spiritual. Look, everything on the list is important, okay? And many of these things we pretty much have to get done every week. Some of them we could go without, but some of them we can't really go without, okay? We actually need this to actually get done. And some of them, though, you might not get any credit from man for this, okay? Now turn in your Bible to Psalm 149, Psalm 149, Psalm 149. And while you're doing that, I also want you to take out your checklist, okay? And you might not have a pen, we have extra pens here, but you could also do this after the service as well. But I want you, I'm going to be going in order from top down all the way through this. I want you to be able to look at this as I'm going through the sermon as I'm going to explain all these different ones and show you what the Bible says about them. But let me just say a couple things ahead of time before I even get into this list, okay? And I know this is not really like some deep doctrinal sermon, you know, or whatever. I'm just kind of going through this, trying to get organized as a church. But I do believe it's very important, okay? One thing you must realize is this, you will not get stuck with doing too much stuff, right? I mean, if you volunteer for everything, I'm not going to force you to do everything. I don't want to burden you, okay? If we don't have enough people to volunteer, then there's stuff we just won't end up getting done because I don't want anyone to have to do too much, where it's like your life is just Verity Baptist Church, like 24-7, you're exhausted, you're tired, and six months from now you quit the church. I won't force you to do too much, okay? Another thing is, obviously, if you volunteer for various things, or you volunteer for whatever, I'm going to try to pick what I think you're good at, okay, where you would be a fit. Because some people just aren't going to be that good at song leading, right? I mean, it just is what it is. You say, Brother Succy, I volunteer for whatever's necessary, all right, you're going to leave the music next Sunday. It's like, obviously, I'm not going to do that. Or you say, I volunteer for all fill in to preach from time to time or whatever. If you've never preached a sermon, I probably won't pick you for that ministry, right? And so I'm going to obviously pick what you're good at, but I want you to realize just because you volunteer for something, that doesn't mean that automatically, okay, there you go. It just means you volunteer. We might have a lot of people that volunteer for the same thing, right? I mean, if we have 20 people that volunteer to lead the music, we're not having a rotating schedule of 20 different people leading the music, okay? If you volunteer for something, it means you might be selected, you might not, okay? What we're planning to do is for a lot of these things, have it organized, even having it on the wall where it says this week, this is the person doing this, this is the person doing that, especially if we have a rotating schedule. So don't be upset if you pick something and say, hey, I want to volunteer for this ministry. And for whatever reason, I don't pick you for that. We might have a lot of people that do it, or I just might not think it's a good fit for you, right? There's no guarantee that you're going to do that. Another thing I will say is this, one of the main important things for volunteering is this, that you're found faithful. That if you volunteer for something on Sunday, I'm going to do this that I can count on you to be here because if I have to scramble around to try to figure stuff out because somebody volunteers on Sunday, but they only come every other week or whatever, and you might be in that schedule. Maybe you say, brother, I can't commit to being here every week. Well, there's probably a lot of things that you really just couldn't volunteer for because of the fact it's going to just make it more magulo if people volunteer and then they don't come and stuff like that. Okay, so you have to be willing to say, hey, I'm committed. You can count on me, brother Stuckey, right? The Bible says, but a faithful man who can find, okay? And so one other thing before we get into this is this, I would say that if I was a church member and somebody was preaching this sermon, what I would put is I volunteer for whatever I am most needed, and I would also pick specific things that I more wanted to volunteer for, something I thought I was good at. I would put I'm willing to do whatever, but I would also put, hey, they're prepared to preach ministry. I enjoy preaching sermons. I want practice. So I would say this, that you know what? You can pick, I volunteer for whatever, and also pick specific things that you believe that you're good at or that you want to volunteer for, or you could just pick certain things. It's totally up to you, okay? And so Psalm 149, let me turn there myself, Psalm 149, and we're going to be going back and forth through this, but Psalm 149, and one volunteer option, the first one listed here is the music ministry, okay? Now I want to specify this is apart from the choir, okay? I'm not saying the choir ministry, that's kind of a separate thing that's a little bit more in depth, but the music ministry means the song leading, playing the keyboard, piano, playing guitars or other instruments. That's what I'm referring to. Psalm 149, verse one, praise the Lord, sing unto the Lord a new song and his praise in the congregation of saints. Music should be a part of a church service, okay? Go to Psalm 33, Psalm 33, I'll be Joe Biden, Palm 33, the new president of the US, my favorite palm is Palm 33. It's like, no, you're thinking of Palm Sunday, you grew up Catholic, right? So Psalm 33, okay, Psalm 33, Psalm 33, verse two, praise the Lord with harp, sing onto him with a sultry and an instrument of 10 strings, sing onto him a new song, play skillfully with a loud noise. Now it mentions here and we saw in Psalm earlier, it talks about singing praises, but here it also talks about instruments in Psalm 33. Now some people say, well, I think it should just all be a cappella, right? No instruments because the New Testament never mentions instruments. Once again, is there anything that would say all of a sudden instruments were fulfilled by Jesus Christ on the cross? No. And the other thing is this, just because it says they sung hymns when they were gathered together, that doesn't mean that they didn't have any instruments. They could have had instruments with them. Now obviously they didn't have a big giant piano that they were bringing. All right, it's like, all right, Peter, you've been lifting weights, you bring the piano for us and everything. But there's a lot of instruments that aren't large, right, that they could have used. And so just because it doesn't mention instruments in the New Testament, that doesn't mean that they didn't have instruments there. And it also doesn't mean that it would be something done away or that it's wrong. There's nothing wrong with instruments and we have instruments during the services, okay? And so some of the things you could volunteer for are song leading, okay? Now let me also say this before I get going, as even if you're already doing something, I still want you to put that category to volunteer. And the reason why is some people might have volunteered for ministry before and they feel like they're stuck in that position, but they no longer want to do it. Well, this is kind of the way to easily say, hey, my life is too busy now, I can't do that. That's perfectly fine, okay? So maybe you're leading the music and you say, Brother Stuckey, I just don't want to lead the music anymore. That's perfectly fine, okay? But song leading is something that's going to be a part of every single church service, okay? Now, generally, we have two men that lead the music on Sunday morning. We could potentially have a rotating schedule of more people, but it's an important part of our church. Now, I'm capable of leading the music and I'm kind of in the middle. In the US, this means in the middle, like tamalang or meijo. I know it doesn't mean that here, but that's what I do because that's what it means in the US. But I'm okay at it, but there's people that are better than me. And you might say, Brother Stuckey, you know, I don't lead the music now, but it's something I'd like to do. And I want you to realize, if you're saying I volunteer for the song leading, make sure you know how to lead the music, okay? This is not something where it's like, hey, I volunteer, but I can't do it. Well, don't volunteer, okay? Because obviously, we have to count on you being able to get up here and not just like, oh, just run away like you're... It's like, we need to count on you to be able to actually lead the music, okay? And so, but if you're someone who says, hey, Brother Stuckey, you know what? I'd like to lead the music. I'm not doing it now. I'm capable of doing it. Then feel free to volunteer for song leading. Another thing is the keyboard and piano, okay? This is something that we incorporate into our church. And I've heard there's other people at our church that play musical instruments. This is kind of like your yearly chance to get involved in the ministries of our church. Another thing is the guitar, okay? And another thing are other instruments. Now, if you sign up for another instrument, that doesn't mean that we're going to buy the instrument, right, automatically. It's like, it's under the assumption that you probably have that instrument. I mean, we could add more instruments, but we're probably not going to just go out and buy a new instrument for the sake of buying one. But if you have another instrument that you could bring to church and you could play every week, then you're welcome to sign up for it. One thing we are going to do differently than we've done in the past, and one thing that I know they do in Sacramento, is instead of picking the songs a week beforehand to line up with the sermon, we will pick the songs more than a month ahead of time. That way the people playing the instruments can get practice. So you say, Brother Stuckey, I know how to play the piano, but I'm not good enough just to show up 10 minutes before or the day before and try to figure out how to do it. Well, what we're going to do is pick the songs in advance and just have it on a list. And we're going to try this out and see how it works, and you never know, but I know some other churches do this, and it's helpful for them. And when you have a lot of instruments, it's very important. I used to lead the music in Sacramento. And I will say this, if the timing is just slightly off, it can make the song leading really messed up. It can make it almost a disaster. So we want you to have practice ahead of time. Now here's the thing. If you're signing up for the music ministry, it means you have to be able to get to church on time, right? It means you can't show up 20 minutes into the church service like, oh, our piano player didn't show up. Well, we could have backup people for these various instruments, but on a lot of the stuff, you have to actually be here ahead of time, right? You have to forget about Filipino time and just make sure you're here ahead of time. Otherwise, I mean, obviously you're just not going to be able to volunteer for that ministry, okay? One thing is with the music ministry, go to 1 Corinthians 16, 1 Corinthians 16, 1 Corinthians 16, 1 Corinthians chapter 16. And look, maybe you say, Brother Sukkie, I'm practicing an instrument. I'm not at the level to be able to play yet in church. Well, I just say keep practicing, stay dedicated this year. And then next year, boom, you're going to have an opportunity to be part of the rotation if you're able to play the music. But obviously, you know, if you're going to make a lot of mistakes, I mean, if you're not good enough to do it, then, you know, you need to get better first, okay? And I'm not trying to say that to be insulting because I can't play any instruments, okay? But I'm just saying, you know, obviously you have to be good enough to be able to play the hymns that we're doing. Here's the thing. Let's say you sign up for the ministry and there's just one specific hymn where you say, I keep making mistakes as you're practicing ahead of time. Well, we could obviously go without that instrument for that specific song. I understand that some songs on the piano, if you're adding sharps, because I used to be able to play songs, I just can't anymore. I get it. There's a sharp in the song and you can miss it and everything. I get that some songs are harder to play than others, then, you know, you could play for the other three songs in the service and just kind of take that one off or whatever. But you know, if you're interested, just sign up for it and then we'll talk about it. The goal is that by the first service in January, we're going to be very smooth in getting it all organized. It's going to take more than a week. But the goal is by the first service in January, where we hit the new year, it's going to be very smooth and everything's going to be more organized, okay? Volunteer option number two, and you can see it on the volunteer signup sheet before church service, setting up for church, setting up for church. This is definitely something you have to be early for. So if you can't be early, you know, that's fine, but you have to be here early in order to set up for church, okay? Now you say, Brother Stuckey, what does it mean by to set up for church? Well, for the most part, a lot of stuff's already going to be organized by people that might clean the building, which is one of the ministries. But there's also last second stuff sometimes to make sure it's set up. And some examples are this here this morning, right? This was put in all the bulletins. This was put in all the bulletins. And we have more things like this I want to start doing in year three. It's just a matter of it takes organization to do this, okay? And so there might be certain things to set up each week. I want to make sure we have a communication card in the bulletins and stuff like that. We want to make sure we have gift bags for first time visitors and things like that. And, you know, the reality is that if there's nobody signed up for ministry, it's something that sometimes gets done. Sometimes it doesn't get done, right? It's hard to get everything organized. So we want to be as organized as possible. So this is something where you say, Brother Stuckey, I come early to church. I'll be early every week. Well, this might be a good ministry for you. If you can't be early, then you can't set up before church, right? Maybe you can clean after church, but not set up before church, okay? And so that's volunteer option number two. Volunteer option number three is taking the offering, okay? We have a couple of men each week that take the offering. And I want to show this to you in the Bible in 1st Corinthians 16, verse one. 1st Corinthians 16, verse one, you say, Brother Stuckey, is it biblical to take the offering, okay? Verse one, now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the church of Galatia, even so do ye. Now, the implication with collecting when you're collecting money is it's something that could be visible, okay? There's nothing wrong with offering plates going around. Now, obviously, you're not supposed to make a big show of it and say, you know, look at this blue bill that I have in my wallet. In fact, I've got 20 of them right here. It's like, obviously, you don't make a show of it. And obviously, you're not trying to look, say, oh, man, what's so and so giving? I want to make sure they're giving their 10% or whatever. Brother Stuckey, priest that sermon. Obviously, that's not what I'm talking about. But there's nothing sinful about passing around an offering plate. There's also nothing sinful about on Wednesday nights, we don't pass an offering plate because our attendance is smaller, so we just have it in the back. And some churches have their offering plate in the back. They don't collect. And that's fine, too, if you want to do that. For our Sundays, we just think it's more organized for us to pass an offering plate. Right now, as a church, with the size we are, we have two people who get the offering, okay, which is what we'll keep doing. But I want it to be organized where basically every week, I know these are the people that are taking the offering, okay? Rather than just certain people are filling in, and then we figure out a so and so here, but just that we have it more organized, okay? Go to Jonah chapter three, Jonah three, Jonah chapter three. Look, I want to emphasize, I'm very thankful for everyone that stepped up as things were very, you know, magalo, disorganized during the lockdown and the coronavirus. And people stepped in to fill certain voids for ministries, and we got things done, and praise the Lord for that. But we want to be more organized going forward, right? Obviously, you know, the Bible speaks about being things done decently and in order. And here's the thing, most of these things are getting done every week. However, every single week, there's something that's just a little bit off. And I'm not saying it's your fault because I've been waiting to preach this sermon and to get things organized. I'm just saying that that's just a matter of fact, there's certain things, or certain things all check, you know, right before the service. And for the services, I'm looking around, and I do a lot of volunteering stuff before the church service. Here's the reality. You want the person preaching the sermons to be fully focused on what they're preaching as much as possible. I preach sermons, and I don't get nervous when I preach, but I will say this, when you preach sermons, your thoughts are all over the place. Honestly, it's like, you know, if somebody's preaching the sermons, you want to make it very easy for them. I'm not saying that, say, oh, I just want to sit here and I'm going to roll in at, and say, I'll be 20 minutes late, just sing four more songs and I'll be there, that's not what I'm saying, okay? But I'm saying, you know, it's very difficult to preach sermons. And I will say this, at a lot of churches that are maybe bigger, they have their own building, they'll have like an office and they'll be reviewing their sermon beforehand, they'll look things up. And you know, as much as is possible, that's good for me to be able to do that, rather than me being stressed out about making sure things are getting done, okay? I don't mind to volunteer for stuff. I mean, when I'm here, you see me volunteering and doing things and making sure things are organized. But as much as is possible, you want to make it easy on the person preaching. And I would have the same philosophy, if somebody's going to be guest preaching, I'm not going to try to have them taking the offering five minutes before they preach, right? You know, in a couple of weeks, Brother Chris is going to preach one of the sermons. I don't want him to be taking the offering and doing the audio right before he's going to preach. I want him to be able to focus on the sermon he's going to preach, right? It makes sense, okay? And so taking the offering ministry is one of the things as well. Another thing is our sound, audio, video ministry. And so this encompasses the live stream, the recordings, all the sound equipment and things like that. And Jonah chapter three, I want you to notice verse four. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey. And he cried and said, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. Now you say, Brother Stuckey, how did one man preach a sermon or preach against a country? How did it cause an entire country to change? Well, let's keep reading, verse five. So the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, even to the least of them. For word came out of the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne and he laid his robe from him and covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles. The king actually hears this message and he causes it to be published and proclaimed, okay? It wasn't just that Jonah heard this sermon and everybody in Nineveh heard it. No, actually the king heard it. He's like, man, we got to get the sin out of our lives. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published and it's being repeated by lots of different people. It wasn't just Jonah. Well, in our modern day, our online ministry in a way is kind of like that. People that are not here at church are able to hear the preaching. Maybe you're home sick or not able to come to church. Well, I don't want you to miss out on what's being preached, especially if we're preaching through a series or we have people that don't have churches that listen online and things like that. Well, we want to give them the opportunity to hear the sermons and be edified. And the reality is this is a large part of why we do get donations online. So I personally, I'm not really a sound audio video sort of guy. I'm not a technology person, but honestly it is an important part of our ministry in order to get donations and so people can hear the sermons, okay? Go to Ephesians chapter four, Ephesians four, Ephesians four. Volunteer option number five is, let's see, counting the number of people at church ministry. What that means is just every single week, you just count how many people are here. Now, when different people are counting from week to week, sometimes the numbers are, sometimes they get the numbers back and I'm just like, I report to pastor men as well. They said this many people are at church, but I think they're off for like six or seven, right? Or sometimes, you know, maybe, cause if there's different people counting, some people don't catch who's in the mother baby room. Some people don't catch people coming in late and stuff like that. And so it's good just to have one person just count the number of people. And this is part of what I report to pastor men is every week of how the church is going and everything. And it's something that we put on the offering things is the men count the offering and things like that. And so just counting the number of people that come to church, okay? And so it's not a complicated ministry. It just means that we can count on you being able to do that. As the church grows, it's gonna get a little bit more difficult, okay? Now, I wanna also say this, that most of these ministries, ladies are welcome to volunteer as well. It's not like you've gotta be a guy to count how many people are at church. I mean, it's like, you know, oftentimes my wife gives me the report of how many people are at church. There's not, oh man, I can't accept it. It's from a woman. No, I mean, most of these ministries, you know, ladies are welcome to volunteer, okay? For the vast majority of these, okay? Counting the number of people at church. Another one is the scripture reading ministry. You know, just basically you just read the chapter ahead of time before the services. And that's something we do every Sunday. And a lot of these things we also have on Wednesday nights as well. And that's, you can volunteer on the section on Wednesdays. There's a lot of the same stuff, but I understand a lot of you are not able to come on Wednesdays. Volunteer option number seven is the ready to preach ministry. The ready to preach ministry. What does that mean? Ephesians 4, verse 11. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. The Bible speaks about apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers are given in order to help edify the local church body, okay? Now with some churches, you might have a smaller church, maybe only one person's capable of preaching or something like that. But some churches, we have a lot of men that are capable that I believe could step up here and preach a sermon and things like that. And what the ready to preach ministry means is I can count on you on Sunday morning, and there's also a section for Wednesdays as well, to bring a sermon without expecting that you're gonna preach it, but that you're ready to preach at a moment's notice. And let me say this, if you're someone who wants to be in the ministry one day, this is something you should do. This is something I did at Verity Baptist Church. Every Sunday, I came to church with a sermon ready. Now, the reality was, you know, there's only one time and that was like a 10 minute, I'll just explain the story, we'll go on a rabbit trail. The first Red Hot Preaching Conference, we didn't know how many soul winners there were gonna be. We figured like 50 people, no big deal, you pair them up, you send them out, because realize people are coming from out of town without cars. Usually in Sacramento, I mean, everybody, most people have cars in the US, most people drive. People are coming out of town though, they didn't all have cars. And so ahead of time, we're thinking, you know, because things were busy that week, the protests had just happened, all these cancellations. I mean, we're going off two hours of sleep. It was rough, okay. And so, you know, I just had this pattern of having a sermon ready and my sermon wasn't printed off, it was really just kind of like scribbled here, this verse, this verse, this verse. And we figured no big deal, there's only gonna be 50 soul winners and then like 150 people showed up or something like that. And you know, it's hard to pair up 150 people. Now you say, brother, second, why didn't you just do, you know, just say, hey, just pair up yourself. Problem is a lot of people didn't have cars. So it just wasn't gonna work. And you know, we couldn't have just sent people in walking distance from the church. It was rough. And so the pattern when we do the pairing on Saturdays, when somebody was the one doing the sermons before the pairing was done, is basically the person that does the pairing, which sometimes is Pastor Mendez, sometimes myself or other people, once they're ready, once they got it finished, they would stand up. And so basically I stood up there, I had my notes and I was just preaching, waiting for Pastor Mendez to stand up. I'm thinking, I hope he'll stand up soon. He figured it out within 15 minutes, he came up with a good system and everything. But one time I had to kind of step up. It wasn't a main church service, it was kind of a special event. But I want you to realize this, that it's very possible there might be a Sunday morning where I wake up and I'm sick. Isn't that possible? I'll be honest with you, given how things are right now, maybe a couple of years ago, if I was sick, I'd just still show up here to preach. But if I'm decently sick, I will probably, it's probably better for me to stay home because certain people might be very fearful. Just a lot of implications there, right? And so I would like to be at ease with the fact that if I cannot come on Sunday, and look, this is something that we might never avail, right? I might be here every Sunday, but I just want to be at ease with the fact if for whatever reason I can't preach on a Sunday, I just know ahead of time, okay, this person's preaching, this person's preaching. Now I get the fact that if nobody's ready, something will be preached, but that's how a lot of mistakes can get made, right? That's not what you want to take place. You want people ready ahead of time. You say, Brother Stuckey, what could possibly happen on a Sunday? Well, maybe my wife is in labor. Right, didn't that happen earlier this year? And here's, I mean, and I appreciate the men said, hey, we got this covered, Brother Stuckey, go be with your wife. But the reality was there was a Sunday morning, I didn't preach the sermons because my wife was in labor, and I dropped off my wife. And then I came here to preach a sermon because I, and it's not because I didn't want to be with my wife, I just, I wanted to make sure this church was covered, right? I didn't want to burden people and say, hey, can you do this? And people pretty much said, lifted up the hands of leadership and said, stop, Brother Stuckey, we got this covered. You go back, be with your wife. And then I texted during the service, the baby was there, Christabel was fast, right? But you know, it's very possible. I could come back on a Saturday night from preaching in Pampanga. And you know, sometimes I'm pretty tired on Saturdays. I wake up on Sunday and I might have a sore throat and maybe I'm just like, man, I just can't do it, right? I don't know if this will ever happen, but I would like for us to be ready in case it does happen. I do know of a church in the US that is like-minded and this was a long time ago, but they had a smaller church. The pastor was very sick one Sunday. No church service, they had to cancel. I mean, that is the last thing we would want to take place. We're just going to cancel the preaching. We don't cancel preaching, okay? So I'm asking some people at this church, and look, this is a ministry that is for guys, okay? No offense, ladies. But just a couple of guys would say, hey, Brother Stuckey, I'll be ready. I'll bring a sermon and I'll be ready to preach, okay? Another ministry is the ushers ministry, the ushers ministry. I'll try to be fast with all this stuff. You say, what is the ushers ministry? It is the worst ministry to sign up for, okay? Because basically you fix any problems that take place during the church service, right? For example, if somebody comes in to cause problems, which might happen, I don't want a free for all system because I know that there'll be a couple 18 year olds that will jump up and they will like slam this guy's head into the wall and then knee him and everything like that and we'll be on the news. It's like, that's what we want to avoid, okay? And so the ushers ministry, and look, I was part, I worked for Verity Baptist Church, but there's also other ushers that if somebody ever stood up during the service and was causing problems, that we could deal with it. And look, there have been services at Verity Baptist Church where somebody stood up and started speaking in tongues. Let me tell you something, that is not welcome at our church. And that has to be dealt with. But here's the thing, when I'm preaching a sermon, it's gonna be hard for me to deal with that. And I don't want it being dealt with by shoving them down the stairs. That's the wrong attitude to have. That makes our church look really bad, okay? So the ushers ministry is you deal with certain problems. Or many times we've got times where music was blasting next door or below us to the point where it's really hard to preach. Hasn't that happened, people that have been with us? When that happens, I can't just stop the sermon and try to deal with it. That would be something where the usher or ushers would step in and just try to get him to lay off or whatever. So this is not the greatest ministry to sign up for because it's dealing with problems and problems can happen. Kids can spill coffee on the ground and stuff like that. But it's something that's needed because sometimes problems happen. It's just reality, okay? Another volunteer option is the hospitality ministry. Okay, that's under the after church service. What is the hospitality ministry? Well, we want every single person who visits our church to have an opportunity to hear the gospel. It's vital, right? We don't have an altar call here where I try to get them to come down to the altar and we preach the gospel. But we don't want somebody leaving without getting a chance to hear the gospel, okay? So basically the hospitality ministry is you kind of make people feel welcome. If they're already saved, just kind of make them feel welcome, try to encourage them to come to church. We give out the gift bag to first time visitors. And if they're not saved, we try to give them the gospel. We double check their salvation. And it's a ministry where we do need somebody who's a lady as well as a guy to sign up for. You say, why Brother Stuckey? Well, because we'd prefer ladies to preach the gospel to ladies and men to preach the gospel to men. Now, the way this ministry works is pretty much the same way as when we're going soul winning. If someone says, no, no, I don't want to hear that. Well, we don't force it on them, but we want to give them an opportunity, okay? And so that is what the hospitality ministry is. You're basically making people feel welcome, okay? Another one is the baptism ministry, okay? Now, I'm not sure if we're going to be able to start doing this or not, but what I'd like to do that they do at Verity Baptist Church is they do not only get a baptism certificate, they also get a picture right before they got baptized to remember it. And I would like to be able to start doing that where we get a picture, we have it printed off for them. And it's a good way to get people integrating into the church that are new, because it shows that you actually care about them. So you get a picture of them, and I give them a baptism certificate, I sign it and everything. And that is a ministry we would like to start here sometime, right? Volunteer option number 11 is taking the inventory each week and basically what this means is you have a list of things that you tell my wife or you tell me, it's like, hey, Brother Stuckey, we need to buy this. Now, here's the thing about this. Sometimes people tell me, hey, Brother Stuckey, we're out of this or we're out of this. But it's kind of confusing if you hear this and this to remember everything, right? It's better just like these three things we need to buy and then just during the week, my wife and I will buy them and we'll have whatever we're missing. Because we go through a lot of food here, which means we go through a lot of plates and forks and spoons. And here's the thing, if we had a big building, which Lord willing we would one day, we'd have a big stock of like 1000 plates ready to go. But the reality is we don't have that. So we only have so much room in those cabinets to stuff everything in, right? So taking the inventory each week. Most of this stuff is not hard. It's just a matter of being faithful with being able to do it. Another thing is counting the offering ministry, okay? Where basically we have at least a few people for every church service that count the offering, okay? Now we have two people each service and both people sign off that they counted the offering. I will never count the offering at this church. Every single offering that we do, it's scanned on a Dropbox. I give pastor men his reports of our accounts, but every single one, we have scanned everything. We have records of everything. We have to do that for accounting with our registration, but it's also good to be organized and just have a memory of everything that happens. And if anybody ever accuses me of anything, I can come up on Sunday and say, well, here it is. Here's the record, two people signed that they counted the offering, right? There are other churches that I don't think they do this anymore. They were shown to be whatever. They just had a free for all technique of taking the offerings. We're like, hey, just give it in my pocket. And we're good to go. It's like, all right, Judas, right? It's like, that's not what we do here, right? We have a couple of men that count the offering. I don't say just trust in me, just give me the offering. I'll make sure I don't take any of it. And look, I'm sure Baptist churches do that here in the Philippines. We don't do that system. We try to make it organized and I don't want anyone accusing me of anything. But what we've had going on is certain people count the offering, but sometimes it's kind of like a bit random. We wanna have a list printed off where it's like, this week, these two people count it. And if one of them is gone, here's the backup person to count the offering. We wanna be as organized as possible, okay? And counting the offering is something that happens after church, usually after soul winning. And look, we don't have a building where we can have a separate secure spot, but we wanna be as secure as possible, right? In Sacramento, they have a set room. They have a safe where they keep stuff. They're super organized. We're not able to have all of that, but we don't want it to be a free for all technique. We wanna be as safe as possible. So we count the, and people take the offering, we put it in those containers, we put it away, and then all of a sudden it comes back afterwards. But we wanna be as safe as we possibly can, okay? Now turn to Malachi one, Malachi one, Malachi one. I understand this is a lot of information. You're welcome to ask me questions afterwards, later today or during the week and stuff like that. And we're just kind of going through all this is a lot of information. And another ministry is closing the building, closing the building. This is a ministry for both Sundays and Wednesdays, okay? You know, by virtue of the fact that I do work, and by virtue of the fact that on Saturdays, I'm usually exhausted coming back from Pampanga, I don't always wanna stick around on Sundays till everybody leaves. Now, sometimes I might, and sometimes I might not. This past Wednesday, my wife and I, we stuck around, we had fellowship, we stuck around. But yeah, there's sometimes where I'm tired because I also have to wake up early in the morning to work, okay? And so what the closing the building ministry means is this, that you'd say, hey, I commit to, I'm willing to be the last person there to close the building, okay? Malachi 1, verse 10. It says, who is there even among you that would shut the doors for naught? And what he's saying here is this, they were so messed up during this time period, there was nobody willing to just close the buildings unless they got something for it. So I'll close the buildings as long as you give me money to do it. Well, that's a big problem at a church if there is that attitude. But I also would say, I don't want a free for all technique where I have no idea who closed the church building, random people, you say, why? That's how stuff gets stolen. We wanna be as organized as possible. In Sacramento, when anybody comes in the building, because certain people have keys to the building, immediately Pastor Mendez gets a text that says, this person is in the building. And they also have high level video cameras and things like that, but it makes it impossible to steal, right? I mean, there'll be video cameras to give evidence, but he knows who's in the building. So if something goes wrong, it's like, well, who was in the building? This person, all of a sudden, we don't have this equipment. I mean, it doesn't, but here's the thing, we don't have all of that advanced equipment right now. I would say though, random locking of the building is not safe, but I don't want certain people to be forced to always lock. So basically this is a ministry where you would be given keys to the building, but at the same time, I don't want you just randomly coming to the church either. We wanna be as organized as possible. So one of them is you volunteer on Sundays, I am willing to close the building, okay? Now, if there's multiple people that volunteer, we might have a list. So it could be every other week or every once in a while, a rotating schedule. But you know, if there's only one person, then that would be the person I guess that would be locking. Same on Wednesday nights. Some Wednesdays, my wife and I stick around, sometimes we don't, okay? Now, I would say this though, if we only have one person volunteer for the ministry, if one person volunteers on Sunday, that doesn't mean they have to stay here till midnight. It means we might have to set up a curfew if people are gonna stick around longer, because I don't want anyone forced to be stuck at the building till, you know, way past when they want to, because somebody's not, you know, wants to stick around. I have no problem with people fellowshipping, I think that's a good thing, but we need to be as safe as possible because we do have equipment that costs money here. We can't afford to have something stolen, that'd be terrible, okay? We need to be as safe as possible. And you know, my wife and I, sometimes we stick around, but given the fact that I work, and then on Saturdays I'm gone all day and I get back at night, I don't want to be the one who always closes. And look, I want to say this, that we have had people volunteer for these ministries already, but I want it to be organized, and I don't want people to be forced to volunteer and always stuck late at the building. So if only one person volunteers, it means we might end up having a curfew. I want you to realize a lot of churches have curfews, it's not the end of the world, okay? To say, hey, by 8 p.m. everybody must leave, okay? If that's what we end up doing, then it's not the end of the world, okay? Many churches do that. I do know of a church, and I doubt they do this anymore, they have different leadership at the church, where it's just kind of, whoever's the last one in the building locks the door. I don't like that technique. I think that's a very good way to have stuff stolen and be very dangerous, and we don't want that situation, okay? Closing the building ministry, that's something for Sundays and Wednesdays. A couple other quick things, one is getting the water ministry. So what's getting the water? It means basically just walking down to where we order the water and having them delivered here on Sundays. So something you would do on Sundays, you just walk down there, I will give you the money for it, I'm not asking you to use your own money to pay for this stuff. And we always have the water, but sometimes on Sundays we run out, sometimes we're ready ahead of time. We want it to be as organized as possible. We want to run smoothly and organize as a church. It's not very far. It's like, what, two minute walk down there, three minutes? It's not far, and it's just like, but you know, just having them deliver it, okay? Just pretty simple, and I'll give you the money for it. It's not very complicated. And basically you would know, you'd look down at the five gallon water jugs and see how much do we have left, and we would just refill as necessary, okay? A couple other quick things. One we'd like to do is start cleaning the filters on the air conditioning units. This is something that may be monthly or every two months we could do, because of the fact eventually a lot of time goes by and they're pretty dirty, and it's something that just on Sundays you could do, cleaning the filters on the air conditioning units, cleaning the fans. Obviously those get dusty after a while. This is not something every week, okay? It's just as needed from time to time. Another ministry is dumping the baptistry ministry, which means dumping the water out, because as somebody gets baptized, we usually replace the water. That's something that needs to be done from time to time, okay? Another one, go to Proverbs 14. I'll try to hurry up here. Proverbs 14. Proverbs 14. Another one, which is a very important one that I want to spend some time talking about is, and this is on the last part of your tri-fold brochure or whatever during the week, and the ministry of cleaning the building, cleaning the building. This is something where you do not get credit for it. This is something where people are not aware of what you're doing. But you know, I'll be honest, I very rarely clean the building here. We actually have people that step in and do the cleaning, and I'm very thankful for that because, you know, I'm already pretty busy, and it's just like, you know, if it needs to be done, I could obviously do it, but I'm very thankful that people actually step up and are able to do the cleaning. Now, this is probably something that if you live a long ways away, it's probably not something you're going to be able to do, because I don't think on Sunday at the end of the day, you're going to be capable of sticking around to do the cleaning. It's probably going to be hard because sometimes we have events and stuff. So this is something where if you live nearby during the week, if we have a lot of people sign up, we can have a rotating schedule. This is certainly something where it could be men, or it could be women. And look, if you need keys to the building for a certain ministry, you know, obviously we will provide the keys. We will give you the keys. So cleaning the building, notice what it says in Proverbs 14 verse four. Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increases by the strength of the ox. See, the Bible says where no oxen are, the crib is clean. If there's no animals, no problems. And the implication is this, if no work is being done, there's no mess, right? I mean, if we never had soul winning, if we never gave you prayer lists, if we never had food and fellowship, there wouldn't be much of a mess. But if you have those things, guess what happens? You have a mess, right? And by virtue of the fact that we are a family integrated church, there are many benefits of a family integrated church. But since we do not have a nursery, the reality is the kids in this room, they can make a bit of a mess. They can accidentally spill something. This is something that takes place. And by virtue of the fact we're getting a lot of work done, and we want to get more work done, not less in year three, cleaning is something that is important, okay? And so basically there's two slots for cleaning. One is basically between Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday before the Wednesday church service, where basically you do kind of a clean, you get everything done that needs to get done. And then another one is after the Wednesday night service, basically Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, where basically you say, brother stuck in, I mean, I guess you could show up really early on Sunday and do the cleaning, but probably not gonna show up here at five or six in the morning, I don't know. But, and like I said, obviously on Sunday, we're gonna have somebody who's setting up for various things, but as much as is possible, we wanted to get it as clean as possible so it's very easy for them. And if we have a rotating schedule, then we could have different people. I would say this also, if you're part of a family, right? If you sign up on behalf of the family, it doesn't have to be you specifically that comes, right? It could be a rotating schedule within that family, but the idea is it's not just somebody else who's given the keys that's completely apart from that family, but that just I can count on that family to do that. So cleaning the building before Wednesday, before Sunday, another ministry, go to Acts 15, Acts 15. We only have two more spots to look at, Acts chapter 15. Look, like I said, many people are already volunteering for stuff and much of this stuff is already getting done, but we wanna be organized as a church. We wanna give people an opportunity to volunteer and maybe wanna volunteer. Because here's the thing, if you're kinda new to a church, you might not wanna overstep your bounds and maybe you wanna volunteer, you just don't know what opportunities are there. Here's your way of finding out the opportunities. This is something we're gonna do every year. Here are the opportunities to volunteer, the things that we could do. And I will say this, there are various things I would like to do in my mind that are not on this list and various activities, but you can only do a certain amount of activities based on how much stuff is getting done, how easy it is to do, right? I mean, if things are really complicated, then there might be a reason why I don't do certain events because it's like, man, I'm already tired anyway. It's just like, I don't wanna be overburdened because be not righteous over much, right? But there are a lot of things I'd like to do. For example, on, I think it's the second Sunday in Valentine's Day, we are having a Valentine's Day banquet. And it's something we'd like to start doing yearly, obviously, for, there'll be plenty of time to plan that out and everything. But here's the thing, when you do events, they take time and effort to do, right? That's why we kept things simple when we started this church and we're slowly adding on. And the more organized we are, sometimes people suggest, hey, why don't we do this? Sometimes it's a great idea. The thing is, I'm just, I'm not trying to come up with more stuff for myself to do. Okay? It's like, we'll do activities as we're able to do them, but sometimes I might be like, man, I just, I'm stressed, I'm tired, I just want to relax, right? And so Acts 15, another ministry that would be a good one, I'm not sure if we'll be able to do this yet. And this is something that I don't think by January, the beginning of January, we'll be ready, but something maybe for this year is a follow-up ministry. Notice what it says in Acts 15, verse 36. And some days after Paul said on to Barnabas, let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they do. And see, the Bible says here in Acts 15, verse 36, Paul says, let's visit our brethren, the people that we've gotten saved, okay? There is a semblance of following up here in the Bible. Now, I want everybody to have their own personal responsibility to try to follow up on good converts themselves via text message, via call. However, if we get good contacts that are very close to the building, somebody who lives nearby might be able to say, hey, I would follow up on good contacts. Here's the thing, what I don't want though is the person who's doing the follow-up, if somebody volunteers to get like 50 cards, follow up on these 50 people before Sunday. The point of this is to follow up on very good contacts where maybe you could drop off a small gift that is not expensive, but shows our gratitude. And that might be the extra bit of thing that could bring them into church. When my wife and I, when we were in Sacramento, on Saturdays, we'd follow up on converts. We'd give them a small little thing of cookies and I'd write a note on it. And then if they weren't there, I'd call that night and say, hey, did you get the cookies that I left you? People did come to church. People did get baptized as a result of that. And they might not have otherwise. So I'm not saying that we're not replacing soul winning. I'm just saying sometimes there's good converts where it might take a little bit of energy and effort to bring them to church and then they can get fully integrated, okay? Turn to Matthew 10, the last place. Matthew 10. Matthew 10. Matthew Jepperton. I know this is not the most exciting sermon. Okay, Brother Stuckey. But hey, I did give you some information with Moses being just a little bit bobo there in Exodus 18, which I freely admit I'm kind of like that too sometimes. So I guess that was your main big thing you're learning here in Exodus. But volunteer option number 20, last one on the list is for Saturday soul winning, okay? And what that means is you volunteer not to go soul winning, but to be the person that I'm trusting to run the soul winning, okay? We provide on Saturday, we provide lunch payment for the people that are going soul winning. And there's various different people that lead that ministry, like they lead the soul winning during that time period. And if you're someone who says, hey, I'd like to come every Saturday, but and you'd like to volunteer, this is your opportunity to volunteer for that ministry. What I don't want is people that have been doing a lot of, because certain people this church have been volunteering a lot, and probably most people are not aware of it. And I don't want them to feel forced to keep doing it, okay? But I like our Saturday soul winning and I cannot lead the Saturday soul winning time because I am in Pampanga with that church. And so before we had the Pampanga church, I would either lead or co-lead on Saturday, sometimes I lead or whatever. But here's the thing, since I'm in Pampanga, I'm not available on Saturdays to lead the soul winning. And so just having someone who would say, hey, I'm in charge, I'm willing to run it, hopefully there'll be someone. And that's one of the ministries that you can put down. Here's the thing though, with all these things, if you say, brother Stuckey, I'm not sure I can commit to it, then you might not be able to sign up. Notice what it says in Matthew 10, verse five. These 12 Jesus sent forth and commanded them saying, go not into the way of the Gentiles into any city of the Samaritans, enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Now, when you're reading Matthew 10, I do not believe when you're reading this, this is like going out soul winning for an hour and a half. When you're reading this, Jesus is sending them out for a bit of a time period to do some real soul winning. Look at what it says in verse 11, and into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy and thereby till ye go thence. So Jesus tells them, whatever city you're in, well, that implies they're doing some real soul winning. It's not just, hey, we're gonna go soul winning. And it's like, hey, you might be in resolve, you might be in passing. I mean, they're actually going out for a bit of a period of time where he's saying, choose the most receptive area. Well, by virtue of that, there's gonna be a bit of leadership within those 12 people going to make sure things are running smoothly, picking what areas and things like that. So when it comes to soul winning ministry, this kind of means that you're kind of organizing it. You're there, but also you're saying, hey, this is where we're going and things such as that. And look, as our church grows, I think it would be great to have official times on many days during the week. We have three official times in the bulletin, excluding Pampanga, that's sort of another time. I am running two of those times, Wednesdays and Sundays. I mean, obviously I'm committed. You see me here just from time to time, for whatever reason, maybe I'm not able to come once every several months, but I'm committed to being here for those soul winning times but I'm not gonna commit myself to be running a soul winning time, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays at 6 p.m. Now, if there were people that wanted to go and they say, hey, I'd be the leader, we got a small group, I think it would be great to have more soul winning times, but I'm not gonna commit more of my time because I've got so many maps for Sacramento to make during the week, right? I've got accounting, I've got my job to do during the week. Now, before we close, I just wanted to mention, because you say, well, Brother Stuckey, you preached on tithing and volunteering. I mean, that really benefits you and everything like that. But I just wanna let you know that I have always volunteered at church ever since I first started going. And I wanna give you a couple quick examples. I'm not trying to lift myself up because there's many people that are doing the same thing, volunteering, but I just wanna let you know, I'm not asking you to do something today that I'm not doing or I've never done, okay? I'm not saying, hey, do this, you tithe, but I don't tithe. No, I mean, I do tithe. I'm not saying, hey, volunteer at church, but I've never volunteered. No, that'd make me a hypocrite. No, I mean, I've always volunteered at churches. First church I went to was not a great church. It is probably not a church that any of us would wanna go to if it was around here, but I was newly saved and I went to a Baptist church and they had church inside of a movie theater, okay? And so on special events, it's like come to church and you can stay for the movie afterwards, okay? So not exactly. It was only for special things like Bruce Almighty or Evan Almighty, like these Christian or, I don't know why anyone would, whatever, but on special occasions, that's what they do. I was there for like a year, a year and a half, obviously I was newly saved and everything like that, but I asked the pastor, pastor and assistant pastor, how could we help? Well, since they met in a movie theater and they had projectors and a lot of sound equipment, I would show up an hour and a half early every single Sunday for church to help set up and that's not a front and center position. Nobody knew I was doing it, I wasn't trying to get, it's like, oh, I just wanna be a preacher so everybody knows who I am. No, I was just setting up sound equipment inside of a movie theater before church, okay? I also led the small group Bible study that they did midweek they did it in the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and I led that Bible study. So don't hold my past sins against me for those that know Rick Warren, obviously that's not something I would agree with now, but that's what I did at that church, okay? The next church I went to, I was looking for a King James only church, given my past experience of a church that was just not like-minded in that way and I lived about 30 minutes from that church, I think a little bit more and it was the best church within my scope of, at the time I thought at least they're a Calvinist church, but of churches I could go to, it was probably 30, 40 minutes away and I would volunteer to clean every few weeks, I was on the rotating schedule. Because look, every church has a cleaning ministry. I don't know if you realize that, but that's kind of like one of the big, big, big, big, big things. You say, Brother Psyche, what ministry is the most important to you? It might be the cleaning ministry. I'll be honest, you know why? It takes time, it takes effort, okay? And so every church has that, well, I used to do the cleaning at the building and it takes time, it takes effort and I drove out of my way, but I was just trying to help out the church, that's the opportunity I had and he had me preach at the church a few times and things like that. And another church I went to in West Virginia was I was the backup person to pick up kids on the bus route, right? We don't have a children's ministry in terms of picking up kids whose parents are not here. We have many reasons for that, we're a family integrated church, but when we used to pick up kids on that bus route, I rode the bus to be basically the backup person. What that means is I dealt with the problems. I was the usher, so to speak, of the bus. So basically when you have a bunch of six-year-olds without your parents, guess what? It's a big mess on that bus, there's a lot of problems. And you know what, for a time when I was at the church, I lived like an hour and a half away and I showed up an hour and a half before church. I would leave my place at like 5.45, six in the morning and I would drive down several hours to come to the church and look, I didn't even believe in a children's ministry, but I said, how could I be a blessing to this church? Because it was a good church, I liked the church, I liked the pastor, I hope they're still doing a great work there, I haven't talked to them in a while, but I was just trying to help out, how can I help? Okay, that was my attitude. And look, I hope if you say, Brother Stuckey, this is my church, this is my church family, I love this church, I love the preaching, I love the soul-winning, I am committed to being at this church every week. And I hope most of you feel that way, this is my church, I hope you would also say, man, how can I be a help? Because I would say this, and I'm not trying to say this in an arrogant way, but you know what, our church does provide a lot for everybody here. And I'm not saying financially, I'm saying with the preaching of God's word and with leading soul-winning. And look, I've seen many people at our church make major changes over their life over the course of two years and I'm very thankful. When people make big changes, that's really the thing that keeps me going. I remember six months ago, I was feeling kind of down, I don't remember the exact time, but I was just in my head like, man, I was like, I preach these sermons and I don't always feel like people are applying it. And then I saw a lot of people really made some changes and everything. I was like, man, you know what, it's actually worth the investment to spend hours on sermons, to spend time dedicated. It actually, the preaching of God's word makes a difference. And obviously we know that's true, but sometimes you can kind of have a foolish attitude and get kind of down saying, man, does it even make a difference, right? But it does make a difference. And I'll tell you what, as a church leader, the reality is you do get burned out also, right? There are times where it's like, man, I'm exhausted. I don't feel like coming to church. I'm like, man, I'm just trying to get through this and everything like that. But you know what really helps to get through that? When there's people that come alongside and say, you know what, I'm just gonna help the hands, the leadership, because I just wanna support this church and make this the best church in Metro Manila. Let's close in a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here today. And I ask you to help us to apply these sermons to our lives, God, and help us have a volunteer attitude at this church. And I know this room is filled full of people that love God and that love you, God, and help us to do great works, get many churches started in the future, get many things very organized and lead great soul-winning campaigns, God. Help us to have this volunteer attitude where we're capable of doing these things, God. And I just pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Just one thing before.