Well, we're coming to the epic conclusion of a two-month-long sermon series in the book of

Ephesians.

And I got to be honest with you, I do feel like God has saved the best for last in this

series, and I cannot wait to open the Word of God with you.

But I also know of all the times in the life of our church where we have people in front of a band or in front of a speaker,

the most captive audience I have is in the first five minutes of my sermon.

And I found that to be true just over and over again.

And so as a leadership, we were talking, we have these really important things to update all of our members on.

And it was like, well, the most anyone's paying attention is at the very beginning of the sermon so i don't do what i'm about to do lightly but we're about to have a mini family conversation together as a church and if you're like a guest and just checking this place out you can totally tune out you can get on your phone if you're watching on video or you're on a podcast just fast forward and get to the part where I open the Word of God. But you're in person. So you actually have to listen to this, whether you are a member here or not. And a lot of what I'm going to be saying has needed to be said for a while. But there's been so many details that we've been figuring out. And it's not something you need to be nervous about. You're like, Oh, no, I've been to churches where they have family conversations. Who's resigning?

And what happened? No, it's not anything like that. It's an update on Hamilton Road, to be honest with you. Because we ended 2019 with some pretty clear direction about where God was leading us. And 2020 has thrown everything for a a loop including our plans to build a building off

Hamilton Road but I feel so confident in what I'm about to share with you is anybody excited for this

update at all are you all just like so okay thank you for like doing that even if it was fake because

it makes me engage in this moment a little bit better okay to catch those of you up who are new in 2019

god miraculously

enabled us to purchase 17 acres of land off of Hamilton Road to build our future home. And at the

exact same time, he miraculously gave us this space that we were able to renovate in a couple of months

before that school year started. So we spent the majority of 2019 designing the building that we felt

like God was calling us to build

off Hamilton Road. It's a beautiful space. If you've never driven by it, it's right next to a Publix. It's all you need to know. And so it's in a great spot. We got up here a year ago. It was like a year ago this weekend. And it was me and our elders. And we sort of unveiled this, here's the building. Here's what we're thinking about building, but here's what we said.

We said, your generosity this month is going to determine a lot of the decisions that we are about to make. And in one month, last December, in one month, you guys gave $1.5 million, which is insane. And I know, oh, golf clap, that's cool. It's's a lot of money we started in a hardware store

with 30 people and like that wasn't a long time ago so some of these things that we've just grown

like oh that's mundane that's normal not for us like we're not we're not a part of a denomination

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