Hey, Bridg Towns Church. Happy Sabbath to all of you. Today we end our vision series. I actually have the weekend off, so I snuck over to the coast for a few days to get a mini vacation in to kind of attempt to get a little bit of my soul back before the fall push.

I just want to introduce you to our very special guest, Darryl Johnson from the Way Church in Vancouver, BC. Now, I have been wanting to introduce you to Darryl for over a year now. He was on the schedule to come and teach over the summer, but then COVID hit and the border between our nations was closed and everything was off. And finally, I just said, you know what? I'm tired of waiting. So we have yet to do this. I think eight months into the pandemic, but we asked him to kind of pre-recorded teach in email.

I'm going to put that down for us to play a recording of because I just really want you to receive the gift of the spirit of God through his life and his story. Darryl is somebody. He's not a celebrity per se, though he was very well known. He was a long time pastor in the West Coast, down in Hollywood. He's American years ago, moved up to Vancouver, BC to become the professor of preaching at Regent's Seminary. He was there with Eugene Peterson, our number of other luminaries. He's really kind of of of that generation.

He's the last pastor that we have kind of a pastor's pastor. And over the last few years, a number of us kind of younger, I said tongue in cheek, I'm 40 years old, but younger-ish leaders around the Pacific Northwest and beyond have more and more been looking to him as kind of a North star of the kind of pastor and in his case, husband and father and grandfather and man of God that we want to grow and mature into.

He's 70-something who is compassionate and wise and intelligent and a gift and full of strength and vitality and at peace. And he's kind of the kind of person I want to become when I grow up, so to speak, or when I God willing, continue to mature.

And more and more, and under the conviction and a lot of the recent neuroscience stuff is saying this from a secular perspective, that one of the acute pain points that we're feeling as a generation is really where a generation without elders.

There's such a dearth of older women and men that we have to look up to and model our life after who are not just old but who are mature. Not all people age. Nobody matures that aging, but a lot of people age without mature. We all know.

And so Darrell is that he is an elder, both at a literal level and a metaphoric level. And now in his 70s, kind of as he's winding down his quote, career, he is now planting a church with Jason Ballard who's been here to teach before, who's very young, he's a friend of mine, you know, and from Alpha.

He's a wonderful kind of church planter in downtown Vancouver BC and Darrell is planting with Jason and a team right in the center of the city preaching once a month. Can you imagine the gift of having somebody like that?

So all that to say, I just want you to be around him. He's teaching from Daniel. I specifically said, would you address the upcoming election and just get us ready not at a political level, but at a spiritual level and an emotional level.

As we move into the weeks to come, you were here. I said to him like through the 60s and the 70s, social unrest is not new to you. And you have such a robust biblical theology of history and politics.

You just pastor us and get and posture us and get us ready for the coming few weeks. So here is Darrell. Please just let him minister to you. Please give a warm virtual clap. Whatever welcome to Darrell Johnson from Vancouver BC.

2020 has been a hard year for all of us, but in the midst of it, there have been science of grace. And for me, a chief sign of grace has been the Lord bringing me into relationship with John Mark.

I will long remember the conversations John, you and I had on that airplane ride from Vancouver to Edmonton and then in the hotel lobby before you took off to fly back from Edmonton.

I'm grateful for our growing friendship. And I wish that I could be there with you in person. And greetings to the members of Bridgetown.

We in Vancouver have been praying for you, especially as we watch the news of things happening in Portland. And in praying that you've been given grace and wisdom and strength to understand what it is you need to be doing at that time.

I look forward to the day when in John's invitation, I get to come and spend time with you in Bridgetown.

If you're like me, you know how easy it is to lose perspective, especially in times like these. When it feels like everything around us is changing, when it feels like we're on the verge of chaos.

Every day we're barbed-barred by images of unrest and upheaval and turmoil, not knowing for sure which voices are speaking the truth.

All of it coming on top of the change is taking place in our own personal lives, generating deep anxiety if not outright fear in our souls.

All of it posing questions like, what in the world is going on? Where is it all going? And what are we supposed to do right now?

Perspective. We stand in need, desperate need of perspective.

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