Thank you very much. It's great to be with you these several weeks that my family and I are on vacation here in Georgia.

And I wanted to say a couple of words of appreciation.

One is to you, Mr. Fincher.

I don't think many churches are privileged to have such consistently good violin playing.

We get a violin about once every two months or so.

And I leaned over to Benjamin a minute ago and said,

he's good, you know, listen to this. I think that's really, really terrific. So I've enjoyed very

much being here and I want to put an underline under what the speaker this morning said about your pastor, namely that he's a gift to you,

not just because that's what it says in Ephesians 411, but because having heard him preach only once and give one Sunday school lesson I think you're very fortunate

because I hear a lot of preaching over the years and I don't remember too many messages but it's two

weeks now and I can tell you some key insights from John 10 tonight that I didn't

know before about the two different sheep folds and the way Jesus can be both a

shepherd and a door. That's good preaching. And so I hope you encourage him and give him all the vacation he needs,

but I'll try to fill in a little bit tonight.

And I ask you to open your Bibles if you have one to

acts chapter 20 and as I was pondering what we might talk about tonight I

decided to pick a verse or two that are very, very precious to me and very applicable

I think to every church, even though I don't know much about this church.

Acts chapter 20, beginning at verse 17.

Let me set this on the stage of Paul's life for you and then read a few verses with you and then we'll get into it.

Paul spent about three years in Ephesus beginning and building this church.

That's longer than he spent anywhere else in his ministry that we know of.

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