Vision Weekend: Go 2025 PDF

Vision Weekend: Go February 2025 June 23^rd^, 2018, there was a MS soccer team in Thailand that had soccer practice. But when the practice was over the team didn't come home. Their parents kept waiting by the door and so those parents got together to search for them. After searching for hours, the...

Vision Weekend: Go February 2025 June 23^rd^, 2018, there was a MS soccer team in Thailand that had soccer practice. But when the practice was over the team didn't come home. Their parents kept waiting by the door and so those parents got together to search for them. After searching for hours, they found a bunch of bikes and backpacks in front of the mouth of a cave. In front of the cave was a warning sign that said, "Do not enter this cave during rainy season." It had just rained that afternoon and so what had happened was these kids went into the cave, but as they were inside it rained and the rain flooded the cave and pushed these kids further back and back into the cave. By now, there was water blocking the entry and no way to get to these kids. People got together from all over Thailand to figure out what to do. Finally, the plan was to send Navy Seals from Thailand into the cave. For days they searched and couldn't find the kids. Until day 9. They got 2.5 miles into the cave. Here's a picture of them after 9 days. (pic) Problem was, there was no way to get them out. They thought about drilling to them, but this cave was at the bottom of a mountain. They couldn't drill all the way through. They thought about training these kids to dive. But it was a 2.5-mile dive and had taken hours for the most skilled diver. The other option was to send food in until the rainy season was over. But they were monitoring the oxygen in the cave, and it was going down and these kids probably had days to live. Finally, they decided to send one world class diver in for each child. They would strap one kid to one diver. But this is where it gets crazy. They decided to have each kid go unconscious. They assumed that kids would have panic attacks during the dark 2.5-mile dive and if they did, it would take up all the oxygen and kill both diver and teenager. They gave these kids a sedative that knocked them unconscious for one hour, but the whole procedure was going to take three hours. That meant that multiple times these divers had to inject these kids again with this sedative. While they were diving. It was a crazy plan. And no one knew if it would work. But it did. 18 days after those kids entered the cave, every single one of them got out alive. But here's what I want to point out. Think about the moment when those kids came out of that cave. They were probably overjoyed. Their parents were probably even more overjoyed, but do you know who I think had a huge smile on their face? The people who came up with this plan. The divers. The people who risked their lives to get those kids out. We forget this. There's a joy in seeing people saved and come to Christ. There's a joy when you lead someone to Christ, give to a church, or hear stories of life change. It's a joy that I don't want any of us to miss out on. Everyday there are men and women who need Jesus. All around us. In Luke 19:10, Jesus said, **"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."** What was Jesus' mission? To seek and save the lost. In Matthew 28:19, Jesus said to us, **"Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."** Go. Seek. Find. Rescue. No parent would have left those little boys in that cave. The question I often ask myself is: How much do I care about the people who die every day and head to an eternity without God? Will we go? Will we seek? Or will we just huddle up together and hunker down against a sinful world? There's a lot at stake in that question. Romans 10 spells it out. **"How can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?"** They can't. They won't. You might wonder, "Why does our church keep building campuses? People who are cynical to the church would most likely attribute it to money or ego, but here's the real reason: Jesus said to Go. On September 27^th^ of this past year, Bob Van Dillion was reporting on Fox News about Hurricane Helene flooding in Atlanta, Georgia. Helene wracked our country, especially Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Bob was doing a report next to a freeway, when he heard a woman behind him yelling. The woman was yelling for help. Her car had gotten submerged as she was trying to drive through, and she was out of the car and screaming for help. At first, Bob was like, "We called 911, help is on the way. Just wait, they'll be here soon." But then you can almost notice something shift in him. Take a look: Video. Bob told his viewers, this is a situation, I need to go see if I can help this woman out. And he did. Bob went into the flood waters and carried this woman out to safety. Pic. I watched that, and thought, "There are people around us every day who are lost and drowning in their sin. They need to be saved. Who's going to do that?" You can see the moment in Bob's face, when he thinks, "I need to go." At first, it was like, "Someone else will do it." 911. Help is on the way. But then he realizes, "I'm here. God put me right here, right now. I need to go." Who's going to reach people for Christ? Oh, someone else will, I'm sure. Someone else. Some other church. Maybe. But God put you and I here. Right now. Who's going to reach your neighbor? Your friend? Oh, someone else? But God put you there. Right now. Go. Drop what you're doing. Go. It's not someone else. It's us. It's now. God is the one who will save, but let's not sit and wait for someone else to go and rescue. We are here right now. Jesus said, **"Go and make disciples."** In his book, "Think Ahead" Craig Groechel, talked about a time that he went to the sauna at the gym and a guy walked in who seemed like something was bothering him. And I love that Craig had the boldness to start a conversation, because I struggle big time with that, but Craig said, "I don't mean to pry, but you look like you've had a hard day, if you want to talk, I'll listen." The guy kind of hemmed a bit and then he opened up and said that he'd cheated on his wife, and they'd just gotten in a huge fight. He started to cry and said, "I'll never forget my 3-year-old daughter as I backed down the driveway yelling, "Daddy, don't leave us, don't leave." He said, "But I just drove down the street." Craig said, "Dude, I don't mean to be over religious with you and I don't know where you stand with God, but I believe he wants you to know that your marriage doesn't have to be over. What if you drove home, got down on your knees and apologized and asked your wife to forgive you? Don't give up on being a daddy to that girl and a husband to your wife." The guy looked at him through tears and said, "I'm not a religious guy or church guy, but I think God sent you here to tell me that." The guy drove home. Got down on his knees. His wife forgave him. They started coming to church. And they now never miss. Why? Because (as Craig says in the book) he prayed for it. He'd asked God that day for opportunities just like that. Do we pray for opportunities like that? Craig did. Maybe because one day, when he was in college, three guys came up to him and said that on their first weekend, they went to a party and Craig was the drunkest, most obnoxious person there. These three guys were Christians, and they decided to make the drunkest, most obnoxious guy at the party their prayer project. They said, "We prayed for you every single day since. And now that they had heard Craig had become a Christian, they wanted to come and introduce themselves and say "Hi." Do we pray for opportunities like that? Do we act on opportunities like that? I was reading my Bible many months ago, and I was hit (once again) that I need to go. I need to do whatever it takes for everyone to hear that Jesus died for their sins. I had a guy who I was going to reach out to and see if he wanted to grab breakfast. He's a guy who I've gotten to know, who has a lot of questions about God. I thought, "Ok, I need to text him." But then, I didn't. I forgot. I got busy. Nothing I was doing was more important than this man's soul, but I was busy. Never sent the text. Never had the breakfast. What stood out to me more than anything, was for the next 2 or 3 months, I felt like I wasn't hearing from God. I'd read my Bible in the morning and nothing. I was reading the words on the paper, but I wasn't sensing God saying anything to me. I've heard one pastor say, "If you're not hearing from God, go back to the last thing you thought you heard him say and do that." I wondered if I wasn't hearing from God because I wasn't being obedient to God. How will that man hear unless someone tells him? It's not your neighbor. It's not the person next to you. We are the help. It's why the next verse in Romans says, **"How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel."** My hope today is that you would be like the reporter who hears the woman calling for help and you'd say, "It's me." I need to go. Right now. I need to give. Right now. Here's what our church wants to do: **1st: We want to pass the church onto the next generation better than we received it.** This past summer, Mark Aardahl (our GZ pastor) said that he was talking to a student at a Rally night (which is a one-night event we do in the summer) who had been to Valley Fair that day. The kid was like, "Best day ever, I was at Valley Fair all day, and now I'm at Rally night." Mark smiled and kiddingly said, "which was better?" And the kid, super seriously said, "Oh, youth group is way better, Jesus is here." Valley fair is fun. But Jesus is here. Valley fair is a thrill, but Jesus is here. And that's what students need and want. They can get entertained 24 hours a day on their phone. What they can't get is real connection and love. What they can't get is to find their identity in Christ, when the world around them tries to confuse them. When you give to our church, that's what you're giving to. Students who have a place to escape the madness of our world and learn that their identity is not found in how popular they are, their sexuality, how they dress, who they date, how successful they are, but that their core identity is found in Jesus Christ. They often can't get that anywhere else. Have you ever said something in a social situation and right away you thought, "Oh man, why did I say that?" I could give several stories of this, but my latest was at a gathering with a few pastors from around the Twin Cities and one of them asked my why we did Minneapolis. I'll tell you what I said and then what I meant to say. They said, "Why'd you guys do Minneapolis?" and I said, "Because I'm going to die." That's it. What I meant to say is, "As I get older, my heart is turning to the next generation. I want to pass the church (our church and the Big C church) onto the next generation in better shape than when we got it. And I didn't want that church building in Minneapolis to get knocked down and have condos built there. I wanted that to stay kingdom ground and kingdom real estate. I want to be able to pass onto the next generation a church in Minneapolis that has a heart for lost people and at the same time stands on biblical truth. That's what I meant to say. Instead, I said "Because I'm going to die." They were like, "Are you dying soon, do you have cancer?" And then one joked, "That's how we're making decisions now: Impending death." It was a fun conversation. I was telling all of this to Jeremy Adelman, who is the pastor at River City church, the church that sold us the building. By the way, their church replanted and grew for the first time in 88 years. It was a win/win. But I was telling him about my desire to serve God in my generation and pass it off better than it was, and he texted me this verse one day: Psalm 71, **"So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come."** That's a prayer. God, even as I age and grow old, do not forsake me. Do not let me go until I proclaim your might to another generation. Last year, we did a video at the end of a service, where we were talking about Rochester, and we interviewed a few of our attenders at Rochester. One was a woman named Tori. She was in tears during the interview, and she said, "I went to another church, but it wasn't until I came to Eagle Brook that I understood how much God loved me to send his son to die for me." She heard the gospel. Then there was the motorcycle guy named Shorty. And Shorty had a rough past and wanted a church that he could invite his rough crowd friends to. He was a Matthew. Matthew met Jesus and he wanted to throw a party in our seats for his sinful friends, just like Matthew did. And Shorty was doing it. He fills a whole row at Rochester. I watched that video and I thought, "There's Shorty's and Tori's in Rochester, there's Shorty and Tori's in Maplewood. There's Shorty and Tori's in Red Wing, there's Shorty and Tori's in Brainard. There's Shorty's and Tori's in Minneapolis. There's Shorty's and Tori's in Plymouth. There's Shorty's and Tori's in Blaine, SLP, Anoka, Ham Lake, Lino Lakes, WBL, Apple Valley, and Woodbury. We exist for Shorty and Tori's. We exist for people to hear the gospel, to understand the gospel, and for them to have a place to invite friends who are far from God. **2^nd^: We want to create a place where lives are changed** Top ten Don Graffam list video. At one point, Jesus turned to his disciples and said, **"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see."** I feel that way every weekend. My eyes are blessed. Your eyes are blessed. But that's what God has done, here's my question: what will God do this year? Here's where we believe God is leading us: To put a **Permanent campus in Rochester.** Rochester currently meets in the Mayo Civic Center, but that means we have teams of volunteers that for the last 5 years have set up kid's spaces at 5 am and have to tear down after. They do this every week. I was there a few weeks ago and the student space is wide open into a hallway that other people walk past. It's not good. We have 30 or so students who come to Rochester now, but at permanent campuses like Blaine we have X. Think of how many more students we could reach. In fact, when we move from a mobile site to permanent, we have historically seen overall attendance double or triple. There are people in Rochester who need Christ, and we have an opportunity to reach them. We have the land already. We have city approval. We just need to raise 9 million dollars by June 30^th^ of this year, and we can put a shovel in the ground and open in the fall of 2026. **(SLIDE):** \$7,000,000 (will allow us to build, debt free, in ROC) \$2,000,000 (will allow us to be ready for future opportunities like Brainerd Lakes and Red Wing) Total: \$9,000,000 I want you to know... that since July 1^st^, we have been challenging our Board, Executive Team, staff team, and hundreds of our partners to take a faith step and join the effort. As of today, I am excited to share with you, that we have seen God bring in over **(SLIDE)** **TBD** toward the goal of \$9 million, which leaves us as a church **(SLIDE) TBD** away from the goal... I would love every person, at each of our locations, viewing groups, and online to consider participating to help close the gap. Maybe you're here today and you're thinking, "But I could only give \$50, \$100, \$500. Does that even make a dent?" YES, IT DOES! Imagine the impact collectively that could be made if everyone gave something; a gift of any amount makes a huge difference. Some can do more. I am simply asking you to prayerfully consider, what God might be nudging each of us to do. And know this, it's never about buildings. It's about reaching another person for Christ so they can experience the hope only He can provide! When you walked in today, you should have received one of these. (holds up packet) Go ahead and open it up and take out your phone to scan the QR code inside. If you're with us online, scan the QR on your screen. There are two ways for you to get involved today: **(SLIDE)** 1. Some of you can give today. If that's you, click the "Give Now" button and set up your one-time or recurring gift to support this effort. Or you can make a gift in the lobby on your way out today. 2. Some of you would like to make a gift between now and June 30. If that's you, click the "Submit Intent" button and fill out your digital intent. Inside your packet, there's also a paper intent card you and fill out and drop off on your way out today. We can all do something. Let's pray.