Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in our final week of our Remember series where we're walking through our membership commitment and remembering the things, the values, the beliefs that bind us together as a church on the 14th and final commitment this week. And then next week, we will start our annual give series that we do, but we are wrapping up Remember this week. Before I launch into this final commitment, I want to give a caveat. It has a word in it that is a bit triggering, upsetting for Americans. It's something that we're not a fan of, and that is the word submit. So submitting or submission carries a lot of negative connotations in American culture. So if you watch ufc, mixed martial arts fighting, submitting is choking someone out until they have to tap out, which can carry a negative connotation. If you had classes where you had to turn in papers, you had submission due dates for your papers, and that's not a good reminder of things. We as Americans did not want to submit to a king. So we threw tea into a harbor and declared independence. Like, there's a lot of things that when it comes to submission, as Western Americans, we're just not the biggest fan of. There are some people that come out of religious traditions where submission was used, but practiced in ways that were cruel and evil. So there's a lot of ways this word gets muddied for us, which begs the question, then why use it? Why use a word that has been sullied for so many? And the reason is because it's a Bible word. It's a Bible worth worth keeping, worth clarifying. And the Bible sees submission as good, as beautiful. And so we include it in our 14th commitment for that very reason. So let me read our 14th commitment. It says, I agree with the beliefs and values of Mill City Church and submit to its elders. I will approach church leadership with any questions or concerns that I may have. Okay, so before we get to the what of submission, we're gonna take a lot of time to talk about the whole who is involved, who is submitting, who we submitting to. So we need to clarify that. And that's going to take up quite a bit of space for our sermon this morning. And then we'll get to the what which is submission. And then we're going to end with, why? Why do we do this? So who, what, why? In our final commitment of our member series. So let me pray, and then we'll walk through this together.

Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help Us have ears to hear. There are certainly those of us here that don't come to a subject like this neutrally based on culture, based on experience. God, I pray that you would break through all of that to help us hear from you in a way that compels us to be the people that you've called us to be. Ultimately, in submission to you, we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

All right, so it starts with, I agree with the beliefs and values of Mill City Church. Let me do that very quickly. That just for clarity, means these 14 commitments that those who are recommitting and signing this, those who walk the membership process and sign the commitment. It's I agree with these beliefs and values that are bound up in this commitment that bind us in belief and practice and submit to its elders. I will approach church leadership with any questions or concerns that I may have. So we need to understand who specifically here in the leadership structure of our church. And that starts with elders. So we're looking at what this is called, church polity. This is what theologians call church polity. This is the structure, the governance, how the church is ordered, how the church is run, the organizational structure of our church. And we're gonna start by looking at elders because we are an elder led church Now, Elders, the word elder, the Bible doesn't use this in the cultural sense of how we think about this as those who are elderly, those who are older. Elder is a church office, which is another theology term meaning the public role of leadership in the church. They got us ordained that there's a, there's a public role of leadership in the church, and we call this eldership. So let me define quickly what we mean by elders here, and then we're going to walk through this definition piece by piece. Elders are a plurality of qualified men who lead the church. Elders are a plurality of qualified men who lead the church. So let's speak, spend time on that first part. Elders are a plurality. So when many people think of church leaders, some of the words that most often come to mind are pastors and ministers. So you hear the pastor of this church, the minister of this church, those are the ones that come to mind most often. Now, those are descriptions of what this office of leadership does. But in the New Testament, that's not what the office is called, that's not what the role of leadership is called. But in the New Testament, this role of leadership, there are two words that are used, elders and overseers.

So elders, coming from the Greek word presbyterios, which is where you Get Presbyterianism, presbyterias, and then the overseers. The Greek word episcopos, which is where you get Episcopalian, okay, elders and overseers. And these get used interchangeably. And what you see when you study the New Testament is that each church was supposed to have a plurality, meaning multiple. Multiple elders, multiple overseers leading each church. When you read the Book of Acts, as the church is spreading across Asia Minor on Paul's first missionary journey, when he's in Lystra, in Acts, chapter 14, it says,

> And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

And this is the pattern that happens. These churches are starting, and Paul as an apostle, is leaving behind elders to lead these churches. This happens over and over again. The church of Ephesus, which is what the letter of Ephesians was written to this church. We see that Paul later comes back to them to spend some time with them before he goes to Jerusalem, where he will be persecuted. So he meets them at a place called Miletus. And there he gives this long speech. I'll just give a quick snippet of it. In verse 17, it says,

> From Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him.

And he gives this whole speech. That's a wonderful speech, worth reading. And towards the end of it, he says, pay verse 28,

> Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

And in that right there, we get multiple pictures here that these elders are meant to care for the flock. That's the language of shepherding, which we'll get to in a moment. The language of pastoring we also see here has made you overseers. That's again, this word Episcopal. You're overseers. You're leading and providing oversight to this church that Jesus obtained with his own blood. So this is the pattern of how the church is established. When you read the rest of the New Testament letters, you start to see this evidence all over the place. When Paul is writing a letter to Titus, who's pastoring on the island of Crete, in chapter one, verse five, it says,

> This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

So again, that's multiple elders. These leaders in the churches throughout Crete. Now, there are five elders in our church. So Raz Bradley, Matt Freeman, Chet Phillips, Isaac Hill, and myself. So we're the five elders overseers who lead this church. And we lead this church together in a way that is actually even a little bit different than some other churches. We different than many don't actually have a lead elder. We don't have a lead pastor, senior pastor. We actually lead together in both unity and in mutual submission to one another. So we all. If you look at our, if you ever want to see our organizational chart, you can see the things that we oversee. Every elder has different areas that they oversee. And we are in mutual submission to one another. And we do that unified by the gospel and the beliefs and values of our church and the core doctrines that guide us and bind us together as an eldership team. But that's us. That's the five of us who lead together as a plurality of elders. But one of the next things you see in this definition, elders are a plurality of qualified. Let me sit in this idea for a moment that you must be qualified, which means you can't, not anyone can be elder. This has to be those who are qualified. And when you read the New Testament, what you're going to see is that the main qualifications for what it means to be an elder is character. They are character based. So if you keep reading Titus 1 after he tells Titus to appoint elders in every town, in verse six, it says,

> If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered, or a drunkard, or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good self, controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also rebuke those who contradict it.

The majority of those are character based, not violent, not a drunkard, hospitable. These are character. Now, there also is some competency in this as well. You gotta be able to teach, gotta be able to teach sound doctrine, gotta be able to rebuke those who need rebuking. But it's character. When you read First Timothy 3, which I won't read the whole list, but First Timothy 3 also has a very similar list. It says in chapter three, verse one,

> The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

And then you get the list.

Therefore, an overseer must be above approach. The husband of one wife, sober minded, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. And the list keeps going that most of those are character based, that elders must be men of character and competency matters. But boy, oh boy, it's not weighted as much as character. And what the y'. All. The problem for many churches in America is that they're too quickly to value the competencies before you've evaluated the character. And often the way that happens most is can he preach, can he lead worship? Those are the top two. And if you can preach, you can stand in front of a group of people and talk with some sense and you can play and you have a good voice. What happens is that competency is valued in a way that puts them forth before they've been properly tested to see the character that is bound up within them. And what you see over and over again is church implosions because their giftings talents were weighed more than their character. No, God values fruit. God values character and his leaders to be able to lead with character, not perfection, but maturity in their character that will last for seasons upon seasons. So sure, yes, you should be able to teach and to lead and to correct and do some of the competency based things. But God wants his leaders, he wants his elders, wants his overseers to be men of character, which is why we take eldership very slowly. Mike Goble is an elder in training, has been for, I think about a year in our church. And we take this process slowly because what we want to see is character over seasons. Because I mean, when you're in an evaluation process, you could probably fake it for a bit, but over time it's going to come out. When you're tested, when you're facing trials, when you're working together in a way where there's friction, we won't be able to see that character tested over time. So we take it very slowly before we lay hands and install someone as an elder. So notice our plurality of qualified. The next thing is men. So I don't have near the space to get into all the nuances of this. We have taught this for years. So I just want to be quite frank about how we believe this. We do not see any examples in the New Testament of women as elders or overseers. We only See the command for men, husband of one wife, that this is the office for men. We actually see a prohibition against women teaching with authority over men, which is the type of teaching that is reserved for elders and overseers. So I'm aware that that might be a difficult subject. And I know this is a difficult subject not just on a Western American church basis, but also in our own church, as folks have wrestled with this. And I am happy to. And our elders are happy to sit with anyone that has questions about this to talk more about this. But we do believe the Bible teaches this. We believe that it is not culturally bound at all in the text. We believe it is creation bound. We believe it is. It is not harmful, but actually flourishing for both men and women to abide by the Scriptures teachings on this. And yes, there are certainly traditions that disagree with us on this. One of my dearest friends, mentors for decades, is a Methodist minister in Texas, and him and his wife are both ordained Methodist ministers. And I love them to pieces and I see so much wisdom. I message them regularly like we. I love them so much. And we just disagree on this. And we're going to work together on all types of things, care about greater mission efforts and we'll. But we'll never lead in the same church context together. And that's okay because we can guard our consciences in a way that he can lead his church in the way that he wants to. I can be part of a team that leads our church in the way that we on this conviction. So yes, there are churches that disagree on this. Many of them, we love them as brothers and sisters in Christ and they're doing wonderful things. As for our church, we look at the Scriptures and we think the Scriptures teach this very plainly. And therefore it is qualified men. And the last part of that definition is who lead, who lead the church. So this leadership is called overseeing. This leadership is called pastoring, called pastoring. Which is why in our culture, I'm very okay. Even just how we talk about it, that we're elders, overseers, that we're pastors. I'm very fine with the interchangeability of that word, even though it doesn't show up as much as a noun as it shows up as a verb, is what elders do. I'm very okay with us being called pastors, but that's leadership. Pastoring is shepherding. It's tending to sheep. In First Peter, Chapter 5, one of the more helpful passages on this, it says,

> Therefore I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

That's where we get pastor, shepherd, shepherd, tend to care for the flock that is among you. And then that gets unpacked. Exercising oversight. That's leadership. Exercising oversight. Not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, don't do this compulsively step into this willingly. Don't do this for your own selfishness, gain your own selfish benefits, but sacrificially give yourself away eagerly. Not verse three, domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. Good shepherds, good elders are, are not with an iron fist leading their people, but are saying, come, follow me as I follow Christ. Compelling their people from the scriptures. This is where Christ is going. Let's go in this direction. And when verse four, the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory, which is the reminder that Christ Jesus is the chief shepherd of this church and that ultimately we all are in submission to him, and that the elders, the pastors of this church, are under shepherds of our chief shepherd, Jesus Christ. So elder overseer is the office. Pastoring is what we do. It's the leadership that we do so as elders in this congregation that we care for the needs of our congregation. And most of the time, those are spiritual needs. And we're ministering from the word of God, caring for those spiritual needs. Sometimes those are physical needs. It means we're like what we talked about last week, rallying the church who's been saving money to help meet physical needs, to go fix things, to go take people to doctor's appointments. We want to care for one another well, as we lead this church, it means that we teach the word of God, that we as elders, as pastors, have the responsibility to rightfully, accurately, winsomely, compellingly open the Scriptures and teach with authority what God has commanded from the scriptures that we want to teach. That's why we get in 1 Timothy 5, 17,

> Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

And it's talking about the elders who rule, who lead, be considered of double honor. The two honors being one that is respect and submission, and the other is being paid and that's why a few of us, three of the elders are on staff and we are paid generously by our church. But there's a responsibility for pastors to teach the church. This is something that we own, that we care deeply about, that we have a team approach to. So we teach that we rule, which means that we provide leadership and direction, that we lead by exercising oversight, which y' all is important. If we lack oversight, and at times we have, we've had to shift here and shift there and think about how we, how we grow and organizationally structuring our church and how we do this. But when we organize well, it allows us to be freed up to do the things that God has called us to do. If we are a disorganized mess, y', all, we will not accomplish the purposes that God has called us to be as a church. So we provide oversight and we do the other things. We correct those who are in sin, we admonish those who are idle, we encourage those who are faint hearted, that we help those who are weak. This is what it looks like to lead and to shepherd, and this is what it means to be an elder. So our elders are plurality of qualified men who lead the church.

But our 14th commitment doesn't just say elders. It says, I agree with the beliefs and values of Mill City Church and submit to its elders. I will approach church leadership with any questions or concerns that I may have. So that's written intentionally that we don't say eldership twice because that leadership part broadens out a bit, because you're not just coming to us with questions, you're coming to our leadership, which is not just elders who lead the church, it is also deacons. And that's the next thing I want to talk about in the structure of our church is deacons and how our deacons function. In this church. Deacon comes from the Greek word diakonos, which means servant. So the title and the job description are the same. Deacons, deacons, servants, serve. The same way that if you are a salesman, you do sales. If you're a teacher, you teach, if you're a lifeguard, you guard lives from the water. This is what deacons do. You okay? Deacons, deacons, servants, serve. Now, if some of you have church background, especially in some traditional Baptist churches, this may look different from your experience because in a lot of churches, deacons are kind of the board of leadership that run the church. If you came from that background or you're familiar with that background, that can be somewhat confusing. Now what I will say is that I think those churches miss this. The way that a lot of those churches functions, where you have the deacon board who helps run the church and organize things, they are functioning more like elders than actually deacons, because deacons aren't leading in that aspect. They're not ruling in that aspect. They're not running the church. Deacons are meant to be servant leaders. They are leaders in a specific area of service. And I just want to hit a few passages to help us see this. In Philippians chapter one, the very beginning, we see it says,

> Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:

That's overseer elder. And we also say pastor and deacons, those who lead in service. The earliest example of this is in Acts chapter 6. In Acts chapter 6, they are facing a crisis because there's a daily distribution of food that needs to go out to different people, to widows, to those who are in need. And the leaders at the time, which are the apostles, they're covered up and they're doing all these things. They finally realize we need to do something about this, because if we're simply just serving tables, all of the what we're not going to have time for the ministry that God has called us to do, the ministry of word and prayer. And in Acts chapter 6, it says,

> And the twelve called together the whole body of the disciples and said, "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty."

So they realize we, in order to continue the ministry of word and prayer, we need people who can actually do some of these logistical tasks of service that matter in the church. And while the word deacon as a title doesn't show up In Acts chapter 6, most theologians look at that, and I look at this as well, to say that is a picture of what is coming in the formal office of leadership, a formal public leadership role in the church that is known as deaconing. So we see this in the New Testament, and unlike the leadership role of elder, we see in the New Testament that deaconing is not just reserved for men, but it's also for women as well. In Romans chapter 16, as Paul is finishing this out, he's addressing different leaders. He says in verse one,

> I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchrea,

And if you have an ESV Bible in front of you. What you'll see is there's a footnote, a little number that follows that word servant. If you look at the bottom where that footnote is, it says deaconess. And what that is the ESV is doing there is it's saying, you can translate this as servant or you can translate this as the official role of deaconess. And we look at this and say, no, actually Phoebe, from the context, she's clearly a servant leader in this church. She has a leadership role of service in this church that allows the elders overseas of that church to continue the ministry of word and prayer. When you read first Timothy 3 past the overseer elder qualifications, then you get to the qualifications for deaconing. It says,

> Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. Let them be tested first; then let them serve as deacons, if they prove themselves blameless. Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things.

Again, character. The deacons are to have character and let them be tested first, then let them serve as deacons. If they prove themselves blameless, there's this testing period, this evaluation period of seeing the character that is bound up within them. And then in verse 11 it says their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober minded, faithful in all things. And again, if you look at the word for wives, so you have an ESV Bible in front of you, you're going to see a footnote there. And that footnote, if you go down to it, it's going to say women, because the same word for wives in the Greek is the same word for women. And we look at that and from the context here we say, no, this actually is women likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober minded, faithful in all things. And we look at that, interpret that and say, absolutely, this is talking about the women deacons and specific qualifications to them. So in our church we have deacons, servant leaders in a variety of areas that allow us as pastors, elders to focus primarily on the ministry of word and prayer. We have deacons in community groups, so all of our group leaders are deacons that continue in a service capacity that free us up as elders overseers to shepherd and lead this church. We have deacons in worship, we have deacons in Kid City, we have deacons in financial care and host. And all of these different areas of service are important and they matter immensely. And if all five of us had to do all of that by ourselves, it would kill us. We'd crumple under the pressure. There's no way we can't accomplish all of these things. We would eventually give up our primary ministry of word and prayer. So I'm so thankful that we have so many gifted deacons in our church who fill that necessary gap to serve in a way that helps accomplish the purposes of our church. It's wildly helpful for us. So when we agree to the beliefs and values of this church, you're submitting to the eldership, but also if you have questions, you're welcome to bring those to also those who are deacons in our church. It means if you're in a group, a lot of times that's going to your group leader and having conversations with them. If you're in Kid City, you go to the deacon who's in charge and all the other service areas as well. So that's the who as our membership comes together and looks at this and commits together to be bound together by these beliefs and practices.

But what, what I said earlier is submission. Submission, submission to authority is seen as a wonderful thing in the scriptures. It's good. I mean, Hebrews chapter 13, one of the many passages that speak on this is obey your leaders and submit to them.

> Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

That there's this expectation in Christ's church that he's set apart these elders to lead and the flock, the congregation, the people of God who commit to that local body are meant to follow and submit to the leadership of those shepherds as we all collectively submit to Christ. And that's a beautiful picture. As elders who are submitting to one another as we submit to Christ, as the body is submitting to elders, as we submit to Christ, submission is seen as good. It is a good thing to do in the scriptures. And I understand culturally it is seen as a bad thing that culturally it's seen as a bad word. Submission in our culture means that you're less than. Because so much of our culture cares so deeply about individualistic free expression and no limitations on what you can do. That if I'm honest, so much of our culture values you by what you can do, that what you're able to do is where you find value. And I'll be honest, that is an evil way to measure your value. Because if you apply that logic to other things, apply that logic to disabilities, that finding value in what you can do, and if you can't do that, there's less value. It's like, no, that's so wrong headed and foreign to the scriptures in so many ways. Our value does not come from the things that we do. And our culture values freedom so much. If there's any limitation on those values. If you're gonna submit anywhere and not do these things, that you're missing out. And that's such a foreign concept to the scriptures. And honestly, our culture that's so drunk of that ideology has never been more unhappy, more unfulfilled, more empty, more longing and more lost. No, submission is good that when God looks at us from the scriptures and says, submit to these commands, he's not limiting our joy, he's maximizing our joy, knowing that these things that he doesn't want us to take part in ultimately rob us of true joy and satisfaction and fulfillment that is found in him. So we submit to God. And when God orders his church and says that, I've set apart these leaders, these elders to lead you, that submission to elders is a good thing, as we're responsible, we're going to answer for to the Lord, our chief shepherd, how we care for you. That it is a good thing to submit to eldership, that me as an elder living in submission to my fellow elders is a good thing. It's a wonderful thing that I don't get in my way all the time. It just is that every now and then, as I'm leading alongside our elders, it's happened to all of us that at some point, as we've debated from the scriptures, as we've argued, as we've come together to try to make a decision on something, every now and then there's an odd man that just says, I'm going to lay my preferences down. I'm going to submit to you as elders. And every one of us has done that. And it's good. The scriptures see this as good. And for clarity, y', all, submission does not mean silence. Submission doesn't mean silence. And if you've been a part of this church long enough, you know that our elders are approachable, that you can come to us and talk about anything. We're having meetings all the time with people talking about things that there are times where I've said something or done something that someone else has disagreed with or has hurt them and they've come and they've talked, and there's real emotions and sometimes real pain attached to those conversations. But I've seen it over and over again. Our church, in loving respect of our elders, coming and talking through things together. And at times we won't be in agreement. And that's going to Happen at times, we're going to disagree on things, but I've seen it over and over again, just as I am in sometimes disagreement with our elders, in submission to them, and they likewise. I've seen our members who say, you know what? I just disagree here. But I love this church and I respect and love y', all. And I'm gonna yield here as I follow y' all and you as elders, you're gonna answer for how you lead this church. But in submission, I'm going to follow you, y'. All. That is a beautiful display of unity of a unified church together. That's one of the reasons we actually don't vote on things as a church. We actually see voting as a democratic, an American democratic understanding of collective authority. And we actually. We don't vote on things, and that puts us in differences from other churches and other traditions. But when we have decisions as elders, we do things quite slowly, sometimes annoyingly slowly. Just want to move, but it's like, no, there's a reason for that. And we go through things slowly. So when we pitch something to our church, like a few years ago we pitched, we're going to buy the lot right next to us because we need space for parking. Because parking is a massive issue for us. And there are a few folks that came and so always say, come and talk to us. And they did. There may have been some areas of disagreement, and we listen. And then we moved forward in a decision and we bought the piece of property. But there are also, sometimes, I'll be honest, a few years ago, we pitched a mission initiative. We didn't go about it the right way as elders. And when we pitched it to y', all, it did not go well at all. Half our church was like, you lost us. And then when people came and talked to us, we didn't say, no, we're not listening. We listened. People reasoned from the scriptures and we said, you're right, and we stopped. We corrected, and we moved forward in unity. But that's how we move forward together. And I'm so thankful that we do. I'm so thankful that y' all come and talk to us. Y' all listen. If you have questions about how we're leading a thing and you remain silent, do you realize you were co signing and are okay with something being done stupidly or unwisely or not God honoring? No. We want you to come and talk to us. And if you've been around long enough, you know that you have our ear. And it's written here for leadership as well, to let you know, don't. You don't just have to come to us, go to the deacons, go to your group leaders, go and talk to them. We talk through things together as we move forward in unity, submission to the elders. But as we all submit to Christ.

So that's the what let's talk about why. Why have so much intentionality on church structure? Why have submission? Why have this 14th commitment? Because there is so many much on the line. If we spin our wheels without the type of organizational leadership and structure and this 14th commitment, there's so much on the line. Go back to our seventh commitment. This Jesus will return to rescue his church and judge his enemies. Those who have trusted in something or someone other than Jesus will be separated from God for eternity. As a part of God's church, I'm sent to proclaim the gospel so that as many as possible might be saved through Jesus. We should every now and then come back to this and realize what's on the line. To be sobered by the eternal reality of friends, neighbors, co workers who are destined to destruction, to a endless separation from the goodness of God that will have no end. There is so much on the line and if we are a disorganized person mess, we will spin our wheels with sideways energy and foolishness in a way that wastes the very precious time that we have to accomplish the purposes that God has called us together as a church. And there are churches that do this and we don't want to fall into that. We don't get bogged down into things like dividing over voting on the aesthetics of this space which has happened on repeat as churches have divided over the color of the carpet. That we don't want to waste time with rivaling leaders who are so concerned about their own kingdoms and their own interests that they split the church with their own selfishness. That we don't want to waste our time by having tyrannical CEO as pastors who are domineering from the top and not collectively as a plurality saying follow me as I follow Christ. We want to waste our time with deacons who are at war with the pastor. We want to waste our time with warring factions because people care more about how the music is done here or how missions is done here. We don't want to waste our time as pastors who can get bogged down in very necessary day to day tasks that distract us from the ministry of word and prayer. We don't want to waste our time as members who. And that's elders included because we're members. Members who stir up trouble with gossip and slander and create the kind of sin and sideways energy that distracts us from what we're supposed to do that has plagued churches for far too long. And we ain't got time for that. So we, in this structure, submitting as we submit to Christ, abide by this 14th commitment that keeps us on the same page for what eternally matters. So as we recommit, as we celebrate tonight or remember dinner, let us remember why it is good to have these values, these practices, these things that bind us together. And let's do so in an organized manner to the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom here and across the world.

Let me pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us as we close up this series, remember what is good and that we would live out the implications of these teachings in a way that makes much of our chief shepherd. In Jesus name, amen. Man's going to come up. We're going to sing one final song together. I hope as you walk through this series, as you walk through this process, we remember the good news of the gospel in new and better ways. We remember the values that we have that's bound us together. And then as we submit to Christ, we sing this song that ultimately what we desire is the will of God accomplished in this church. So y' all stand and we will sing.