Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction - New Series

We are starting a new 4-part series here today at McCleary Rock Harbor.

This series is going to be beneficial in many ways.

Not only will we continue to learn rich biblical truths that will help us to continue to live the best life for Jesus but we will also be gaining some practical understanding about the church - both the global church abroad as well as our church, McCleary Rock Harbor, and how all of that fits together.

Furthermore, this is also going to serve as a membership “class” so to speak.

At the end of this 4 week series, anyone who wants to commit (or re-commit) as members of McCleary Rock Harbor will have the opportunity to do so.

We will be walking through what it looks like to be a growing and thriving Christ follower and local church member.

I am excited to kick this series off with all of you!

I want to start this off by asking this question:

What is Membership?

Being a member of a church isn’t just about joining a club to be one of the cool kids, although that is an added benefit ;)

But in all seriousness, this series we’re doing is called “Discovering McCleary Rock Harbor” and in this we are going to be talking about who we are as a church and why churches in general exist.

Traditionally, churches have membership classes that can be anywhere from one day, to actual classes over a period of months.

There is no right/wrong way to have membership “classes” .

I choose to err on the side of being practical by doing it in such a way that what we cover and learn about is given in doses that are challenging but not so much data overload that we don’t retain the important information being taught.

See - I remember years ago, 17/18 years old, I sat through a church membership meeting that was 4 hours long on a warm, Sunday afternoon in a corner classroom of the church that didn’t have any air conditioning and I was closer to sleep than I was to awake :) I hope this serves as an exciting time for all of us to learn about how great it is to be able to come together as the church in McCleary and to make a difference in our community and world through what Jesus has made possible!

For those of us who are members of the church, it serves as a refresher and reminder as to what we are committed to.

For those who are not yet members, it provides biblical and practical teaching as to what it means to be a member, why we should be members and, once members, how to be a fruitful member of this local church body.

Reading throughout Scripture, it becomes evident that local church bodies were intentional groups of believers who gathered together as a church.

We just finished studying Philippians.

Recall the opening verse, Paul penned this to “all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.”

This shows that churches were officially assembled groups of people and that they had structure and purpose.

That is denoted by overseers/deacons - showing that they have a “governmental” structure of how things work.

1 Corinthians 1:2 says “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:”.

Take note of those words - the church of God in Corinth who, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul highlights the reality and the importance of local churches who are part of the church around the world.

That’s what we are!

We are uniquely placed, called and gifted by God to reach our community and that is AWESOME!

Local gatherings of God fearing people isn’t anything new.

Remember when we were studying Acts, Jews would setup synagogues in cities as they were needed.

This is very practical from a reach perspective.

We are called to be together, to learn together, grow together and go together.

That is our purpose statement: Learn.

Grow.

Go!

We are positioned best to reach McCleary better than a church from somewhere else.

A church in Seattle isn’t going to be able to effectively minister to people and equip the saints for ministry in McCleary from all the way up there.

Today we are going to be focusing on the Learn portion in a few moments, but to help give some more support to churches and members, 1 Corinthians 12 points that out well.

In this, Paul is discussing how there is one body but many members and the members are all different.

Verse 18 of 1 Cor.

12 says “But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.

If they were all one member, where would the body be?

But now there are many members, but one body.”

Paul is pointing out the fact that God created us as individuals, yes, but as individuals that need to come together in order to make the most out of the individual gifts God has given to each of us in order to be most effective.

We’re better together, right?

So throughout this series, we are going to be covering each of the 3 pillars of our purpose/mission statement: Learn, Grow and Go and then we are going to wrap it up with “Commit” — more to come on that later

I wanted to start out this series by sharing our story!

McCleary Rock Harbor – Our Story

Prior to 2018 - a history of pastors and people who loved the church.

We are grateful for the history we have here.

We have amazing people who have been here for many years and are pillars of faith in this community.

January 2018 - we started here as campus pastors of Evergreen Christian Community McCleary.

I want to share some of the cool things God worked out leading up to this point.

We had been in and out of ministry with some, moment of honesty, difficult times on staff at some churches.

I DO NOT share that to cast any negativity towards those churches nor do I bring it up to try and bring anyone down.

I DO share this to be honest and real.

It is important we don’t try to veil reality.

EVEN THOUGH we went through our share of struggles, God still worked in us and through us in many mighty ways and I am grateful for those things.

I also share that for some context.

As a result of some of those difficult life experiences, I wasn’t sure when/how/if we would be in ministry again in a non-volunteer basis.

I wanted to be faithful and obedient to God but I’d be lying if in those moments that I wasn’t a uncertain about stepping forward into ministry again because of the past pains.

In 2015, we moved up to Olympia as I was hired in IT at a credit union in Shelton and that is when we started attending Evergreen.

I prayed and talked with God.

I made a commitment to serve where I could and if that was what He had for me, being a committed volunteer, then I was going to do that to the best of my ability.

I also prayed and laid it down before God that if He wanted to take that and make it into something more by opening up a door to vocational ministry again, that I would trust Him and walk in faith.

I did a variety of things at Evergreen: prayer ministry, young adult ministry, tech ministry, men’s ministry and when they launched their Centralia campus, I went down there at the launch to help serve on the team there - primarily running the tech booth but also helping on the worship team from time to time in addition to the setup/teardown each weekend.

After half a year, we came back up to the Olympia campus and that Fall, Pastor Jim at Evergreen approached me as I was walking into a Wednesday night service “I want to talk with you” haha.

We met a few days after that and he asked me if I would consider coming on as the campus pastor in McCleary at the first of the year.

We prayed and discussed it as a family and responded to Jim and the team saying yes.

This was also around the time that we found out Josh was on the way :)

So in January of 2018, we came on staff here at Evergreen.

We started pouring into our kid’s and youth staff, investing in our community, having mid-week Bible studies, etc… in addition to the campus pastor responsibilities on Sunday mornings

Fast forward a little over a year, Evergreen decides that it is time to return ministry to the heart of McCleary so a pastor who lives there can teach, lead, etc…

In 2019, we do a silent soft-launch on Father’s day where I started teaching here full time while we started to put together plans on how to carry out the transition.

With a lot of help from our network staff, we officially launched in September of 2019 becoming McCleary Rock Harbor!!!

When we started that September off, we were starting from scratch financially.

Evergreen took up an offering for us that was about $1500 which helped us get a copy machine, logo design and cover some fees for our production software to get us started, but otherwise, we started from scratch.

It was a step of faith and let me tell you: God provided massively.

Of course, not very many months after we started, 2020 hit.

Church doors were closed and everyone went online.

A few cool things happened during this time.

Our network has a program called “Minute Man” where churches/businesses/people donate money to a specific church in the network for a quarter of the year.

Our turn was in 2020.

We initially palnned on using that money for cosmetic upgrades and other things around the premises

However - our needs shifted quickly and we needed a camera and equipment to be able to record (and eventually stream) our services.

Slowly but surely we started to get this equipment and put together online services here.

It was a lot of work at first because we would record each segment of the service (worship, then the message, and Chris and Vicki would record a portion and send it in and I would stitch it all together and then publish it) and we would all watch together online.

June of that year, we had gotten some more equipment and we welcomed people back into the building and did our first live stream service.

We eventually upgraded our sound board and added a second camera and through are where we are today.

God provided both the finances and the volunteers to help make things happened and we are so grateful for His faithfulness!

Another cool thing that happened is when the church’s doors were closed to the public, we had record giving coming in.

That tapered off a bit in later months but it was so cool to see God’s hand of faithfulness on us in that season to see the highest months of giving come when we literally had no one in the building :)

The latest incredible news of God’s faithfulness just happened this year.

We had been praying about our building.

Evergreen gave us a killer deal - $28 a month for renting the building with the opportunity to buy it at a great price down the road if we so desired.

As time progressed, we were torn because we didn’t want to have any debt.

We didn’t want to make a down payment and then have a large monthly mortgage.

But we also wanted to have the building be ours so we could start making improvements, upgrades, changes, etc… over the year

Prayed with a fellow pastor

Met with him