I thought it might be helpful way back when when I prepared this to take you to a

period in the history of our church in which we were about to be blown to smithereens.

It was 1993 and 94 and I don't I won't go into any details.

I don't want to hurt anybody.

I want to bring up any garbage, but it was horrible.

And 230 people left our church, and it began to settle down.

We were flat for three years, zero growth for three years.

And it was a time in the wilderness and of great mourning and sadness.

And during those days, the question was, who are we?

What has happened? There was a great immorality what has happened to us what it has the worship we've been doing been real if if if

this kind of immorality could be happening while we're worshiping, who are we?

And we took a year and a half to talk through, pray through, cry through our identity as a church corporately worshiping.

And things changed dramatically.

The first 10 years of Bethlehem of my existence here and the next 15 years are like night and day stylistically.

Not that that was the key.

It just changed.

During those days, we were just... you talk about worship wars in churches? And I just went to

the Lord, I don't know how to keep this church together, how to keep it on the same page. This thing

could blow up. It's been around for 120 years. I don't want it to be destroyed on my watch.

And I presented what I'm about to present to you these 11 points of what unites us in worship.

And I believe the Lord used it to hold us together.

What you'll notice is that there is very little stylistically in these, which you might get

...