Honoring 30 years for Pastor Gary

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] joshua chapter 16 is where we are tonight joshua 16 and um we will um be sailing through chapter 16 17 18 and 19 i don't know if we'll get through all of them tonight but yes just make a quick announcement hello hi just one quick announcement sure about the women's ministry my announcement tonight is that you're not going to teach why not why not when why would you cheer about that too tonight we're going to honor the lord for his faithfulness and for blessing gary with 30 years of ministry here at cornerstone chapel [Applause] what in the world is all of this [Applause] [Music] all right so i have known nothing about this and you were you were with me by my side the last two days while i've been studying for tonight you could save it for next week but you and i are gonna sit here together and we need to look up at the screens because your friends have some things that they want to share with you okay 30 years ago pastor gary and others came here to plant this church to the glory of god and i want to say congratulations on the anniversary you did not know you could not do it and you came simply preaching the gospel teaching the word and god has made the difference in people's lives keep it up to the glory of god until the trumpet sounds and the archangel shouts and boosh we're out of here to the glory of god it is an honor to be sitting at your desk to be able to get your pulpit and wish you a very very happy 30 years of ministry god bless you congratulations for 30 years of ministry milestones remarkable just wanted to express my appreciation thank you for the trust and the friendship god bless you my friend i'm so proud of you i'm honored to call you friend and i'm blessed by the work that god is doing through you everywhere i go i talk about you you don't realize years are probably burning but i'm talking about you in a great way i think this is the best kept secret on the east coast this church and the work that god is doing through you oh i pray that god will give you 30 more congratulations on 30 years of faithfully serving the lord in your private life in your family life and in your ministry and i'm looking forward to the great things that the lord has in store god bless hey gary this is kirk cameron and i just want to congratulate you on 30 years of ministry so thankful for your faithful preaching of the gospel gary congratulations brother listen all that we are called to do as ministers and for that matter as believers is to be found faithful it's the greatest attribute of any servant of the lord and gary you have proven to be faithful and so i'm rejoicing with you calvary chapel chino hills is rejoicing with you and your fine church and we love you brother and congratulations hi i'm former vice president mike pence and i'm karen pence and we just wanted to add our voices to a chorus of people saying congratulations to pastor gary hamrick on 30 years of ministry you've made such an impact here at cornerstone and we ourselves have enjoyed checking in online over the course of the last year and so appreciate that you're a workman approved rightly able to handle the word of truth but you've also been a great champion of religious liberty and for that we are all grateful so to pastor gary hamrick for mike and karen pence congratulations on 30 years of ministry changing lives from here at cornerstone so proud of you dad thank you so much for all you've done these 30 years and we look forward to what the lord has in store love you we love you both congratulations on 30 years congratulations dad we love you and we're so proud of you happy 30 years happy dirty happy 30 i love you papa [Applause] this is so dad the donuts aren't for baptisms they're for you tonight all of them just a dozen go easy i don't usually get surprised this is like i'm totally surprised did any of you know about this no okay all right we've been trying to lay low with it but really we just wanted to take a moment from us kids just just to share how much we love and appreciate you um who was just quick question first who was the the coolest person from that video though that i know i want you to say it you want me to say kurt cameron yes because other than my dad kirk cameron is my hero um but dad i'm gonna pass it over to lindsay first and we just wanted to share with with you how much we love you and mom and for the awesome parents that you've been over these well 28 years for me but um how you just loved us shepherded the church so i'll let lindsay share first happy 30 years dad um it's just been great to see the good thing that the lord has done in the 30 years and i want to thank you for your faithfulness not only to the ministry and to cornerstone but to our family um i don't know if you know not a lot of pastors kids end up too well and you have cared for us collectively and individually you've spent time with us you've loved us you've been faithful to our family and i'm just thankful for you not as my pastor but as my dad and so happy 30 years i am so nervous right now you i i do not like keeping secrets and i've had to keep this and so it's uh it's been a long time coming but um i've grown up in the church my whole life obviously and um for the past 31 years um growing up as a pastor's kid and as the oldest there have been times of just tremendous weight pressure expectation especially through awkward middle school years it i would see sometimes as this is a curse i wouldn't be so happy that you were a pastor but the lord spoke to me and all that weight and pressure had just been lifted because i was hearing that from the enemy or from people but i never had that weight from you or mom there was never any expectation there was never any just like a burden you were always dead to me first and you are my pastor um but i will always see you as my dad as like lindsay said and you're one of the reasons i've wanted to pursue ministry you're my hero and i would not change the past 31 years um just looking back all the memories so i'm i'm proud of you someone when tony clark was talking it that hit me because i'm i'm proud of you too and mom in the background as the backbone you and you were doing ministry and you're doing your job she was there so both of you together just a perfect package the lord blessed us and so it's i'm just so thankful and i'm happy for you guys and i love you i love you too yeah [Applause] so i i think it was important for not just you mom and dad to hear from us but i just thought it was gonna be awesome for uh you all here tonight just to hear um from us kids i'm austin by the way it's my younger sister lindsey tyler and we're we all serve on staff here in some capacity and it's not because dad made us and it's not because we were pressured into it um it's because we genuinely genuinely love you and we love the lord and we love the church and um and it's important for you to know um you know we we love our parents and you see us around here at church and and we weren't coerced into being you know part of the family business we genuinely love mom and dad and their prayer for us growing up was not would you serve the lord in full-time ministry it was just that we would grow up and know and love jesus and and we grew up to know and love jesus by god's grace but also because of their example and the people that you see here at church mom and dad are the same at home there's no you know there's nothing duplicitous there's um there's not you know dad's not one way here at church and one way at home um the same you know weird dad jokes you hear here are the same jokes at home and so if you don't see me laugh from the front row it's because dad yeah we've heard we've heard it all and it's because our parents mom and dad are the same way at home that they are here and so seeing your example of how you both um you know like tyler said you never pressured any of us to do ministry you never i don't remember you ever asking me hey you're going to be a you're going to be a pastor or you're going to join staff it was just you by your example your love for one another your love for the lord by watching you both we fell in love with the lord and we fell in love with the church um and so we love you both and we thank you for your marriage and your example to us um and for loving us and for um for mom we love you and how like tyler said you dad would be here at church and you'd be at home reading the bible with us and teaching us to love jesus so we love you mom and and this is as much for dad this is for you as well honoring you and and your ministry here over the past 30 years so we love you both um just a couple of questions because it's important like the like there's some there's some questions that i think that some of us are just curious to know so i'm just gonna list off a couple and by the way we are still the goal is still to end a little early because we do have donuts um so that part is true um but just a couple of questions that i think will be fun for everyone to hear um and then we got a couple of pictures to show review a little bit of the history of of the church so that'll be fun um 30 years of ministry here how how old are you now it changes every year how old am i 58. okay i was 28 when when i first started pastoring cornerstone that was a long long time ago yeah um on a serious note and i didn't come up with these questions some of the staff came up with these questions um so um so don't fire me fire them um mom dad what's the biggest lesson that the lord i'm sorry someone's texting me dad mom what's the biggest lesson that the lord has taught you over the last 30 years in ministry in general yeah i'd say in general okay he is faithful no matter what no matter what it in a in a personal level or in ministry level god is faithful because there's times um you know after you've been married for 30 um four years is that right that's right yeah okay so anybody you've been married for 34 years i know you've had a time where you've wanted to to say okay lord enough you know to quit in ministry there's been years where you've we've wanted to quit but god is so faithful so that's what i've learned every single day god is faithful to me god is faithful to gary god is faithful to us god is faithful to our church he's faithful to our children no matter what god is faithful [Applause] i don't you haven't you you probably haven't learned too much have you learned a lesson i really learned very much i've just been showing up for 30 years and figuring the god will do the rest i i i don't normally get so tongue-tied i am completely tongue-tied i am totally caught off guard so i'm going to just go with her answer maybe i can have that was a great answer yeah no i said that's how you feel too yes it is of course lindsay what question you want to ask all right how do you go balancing ministry in the family because i honestly don't remember you just did it but it was great we had i think all of us three can say we literally had the best childhood the best parents you guys think he's the best pastor but he's the best dad and he truly is but don't you remember me like working on my sermon during your soccer practice and i'd look up and wink at you and just kind of like hey i'm here but you were there yeah i think that's what i remember the most you got grumpy on family vacations i did not yeah honey just a little bit of vacation when you guys were in the back seat you mean just like when am i gonna get there so i have this great i have this great man we used to have this uh van this blue van and every sunday we used to live in um sterling when uh the kids were just born we didn't move to leesburg until lindsay was five months old so we would climb in the van did we have car seats back back then uh yes i'm sure yes we did we had car seats but because i forgot to buckle tyler in and one it rolled in the back no that doesn't matter for tonight no gary put tyler in the in the car it doesn't matter for tonight buckled him in but forgot to strap him in the car seat so as he turned a sharp corner tyler fell on the floor in the car seat they just roll on the back seat yeah that's why explains a lot that's why but i loved sundays because we were all together we'd have to get up no we weren't you were well i would go with you when the kids were just work really well to terry's credit because what you're leaving out though is this is one of the things that people don't realize about pastors wives and this isn't just for me this is for all the pastors on staff here is that the pastors end up coming to church on sundays and then the wives drive separately with the kids because the wives have to get the kids together by her by herself the wives have to do that the moms have to do that all by themselves so maybe early on like when we first started the church tyler was one just one and um and so i think we all came the three of us came together but then as you start having kids you know so they started showing up at the house um then you know you were you were left alone it's a very you know people don't always understand how um alone pastors wives can feel i had them yeah i know but i mean i mean just just getting the kids together all on your own getting to church all on your own but you know what i have to say you can you guys can pray for me now look back to the story of the van it was my favorite day was sunday because we'd hop in the van all of us together get mcdonald's on the way home i remember on monday morning our van would be full of leftover uh happy meals and french fries because i would spend all day in the van and going to mcdonald's together i remember going to where what used to be but right now it's red hot and blue that used to be a bob's big boy and we would go in town after church on sunday and we'd let the kids wreck the place just eat as much as you want and it was just trashed all over the table all right tyler's got a question that dodge minivan was nasty yeah it was and it did smell like big macs here's a good one just a funny one if you weren't a pastor what do you think you would have done for a living what do you guys think oh i know a journalist a game show host a game show host or on a sitcom would be like a dream but that's not reality it would have been a doctor probably a doctor well i went i did i'd well okay so this is you think you're a doctor like you're a doctor [Applause] i don't want to make false statements but i kind of am without the license all right but anyway i so i always did want to be a doctor but then i found out in high school i didn't work very smart that part of my brain the linguistic side works you got to be you got to be smart to be well then you can't be one but anyway so i decided that makes sense that makes two of us the wording the linguistic side of my brain worked so then i went the journalism route and i went with communications and then ended up the lord applied it here by a little door i still get to be a doctor at home it's true we anything but we're sick with like dad what's this what's this thank you thank you lindsay lindsay's the only one yeah it's true and lizzy's the only one who gives me credit for being a doctor all right last question um for you mom and dad and this specifically is about the church cornerstone what are some of your favorite memories over the last 30 years okay i have mine there's a few that come to my mind but go ahead mine are the camps the summer camps because i loved either being a camp counselor or being in the kitchen those are my favorite memories of being you know with my kids at camp or um and i think that's a good segue into some of the pictures we should review okay we can answer this first well hold on what what you got nick so oh brother is that you that was that camera so this is dr gary at camp at summer camp i was asked to do that i i thought you begged to do it i mean i doubt it this this is a tyler we had a we had a sing-off and tyler challenged me to a sing-off no nothing else oh yeah you do oh yeah you did all right i can't lie i did not do that on my own he didn't do it on his own i can't lie i put him too okay listen this is church no lying wow but this is i mean this is part of you know who dad is as well as mom and dad loved to come to youth summer camp and be there just to serve and hang out did you set that answer up no oh no that's i love it okay all right so mom you you like the summer camps those are your favorite memories what about you dad so yeah that's summer camp yeah um so i know this is gonna sound like super spiritual but my favorite memories of cornerstone is watching people walk the aisle to get saved [Applause] yeah there there have been times where like especially on like easter and christmas when i give an invitation because i know that there's unchurched people here and like dozens of people will walk forward that you guys don't know that sometimes i'll between services i'll be in my back office and i'm just a wreck i'm just a wreck and i've and i've asked the lord let me always be a wreck you know i don't i don't ever want to get to the place from like oh yep a bunch of people got saved today you know that then i should be done but i i will i will end on a funny story i used to tell this story at every orientation class all the pastors can recite this from heart but i haven't told the story for years and it's when we were at simpson middle school one of my favorite stories for the first seven years of our church we we rented simpson middle school just down the road here and we had a faithful crew of people in those early days who would load everything out of a trailer and set up church and then at the end of the day load it all back into the trailer and there was this one guy who got saved and he his family um his last name was giovanadzo and his family actually had ties to the mafia in new york and he but he got saved but he still had this way about him right and um and so there was a trailer and and everything had to be packed perfectly at the end of service or it wouldn't fit in the trailer and there was a schematic on the inside of the trailer this is how everything goes you know nursery equipment back in the day we had hymnals we had you know drum kit we had all this stuff that uh and toys and all this stuff had to go in the trailer for church for next week and somebody didn't pack it in right and there was a rocking chair a wooden rocking chair for the nursery that couldn't get in the trailer and dominic worked construction he made our tree yeah he made our tree outside and so he said he goes i'll take care of this that's what he says and he went to his truck and he had a jigsaw and he plugged it in the side of the school and he cut the rocking chair in half it was just a hot day we were all tired and and he's just like i'll take care of that and he saw the rocking chair in half put both pieces in the back of the trailer slammed the door and we were all like it's fine it's all fine it's all fine and i just i consider it was like that happened yesterday and i just you know marvel at what the lord has done over the last 30 years from the days when you know we were almost killed by the mafia to uh to what he's done today because he really does get the glory for it all all right quick quick couple pictures i want to just go through and review and we'll wrap things up here yeah you remember that oh yeah that's actually at my uncle's church in thurmont maryland when he pastored the uh thurman united methodist church we were staying in the parking lot there what year oh gosh probably the year we got married 87 like 50 55. hey hey hey i think 88. you weren't even a thought let's put it that way yeah so that's at simpson middle school um that's shannon she still goes here with with her husband tom um the the elderly gentleman with the hat his back to us um those were the kinsers they um he lived to be almost a hundred if i remember um but he he and his wife is since going on to be with the lord just roll just roll through a couple more nick yeah that was at the old building so this is military guys were young and innocent yeah still are young and innocent that was one of the first church picnics here on the property before we built our building love the style yeah welcome to the 90s yeah so that was at simpson middle school and uh that was our worship team and uh yeah man some faithful people who just remember the lady who made that cross and then there was another man she made the that's the fabric cross on the right hand side of the screen and then in the center there's a man who made the wooden cross and that was the early days that was our church i don't i can't recognize people from the back of their heads but those were the early days at simpson middle school when life was just black and white and i used to wear a suit i used to wear a suit because that's what everybody used to wear and then i started dressing down when everybody else dressed down that's when we first bought the property where we are right now and uh look at the two boys right there underneath the sign yeah and that's the we took a picture right after the building was built to duplicate that that earlier photo [Applause] um we love you mom and dad and we wanted you to hear from us and um to wrap things up i'm actually going to invite um the board up and um and pastor andy who's a part of that um is gonna say a few words as well and um so uh the board here we call it the timothy council and so i'm gonna invite the timothy council members up and um and pray for you i pray for you both and um so i'm going to toss it over to pastor andy here all right so some of our board is here reagan and mike that are that are going to be here um i've been on staff here for over 20 years and been on the board for probably 15 but um reagan how long have you been on the board since the very beginning since the very beginning so we've had some continuity on our board and just just from a board's perspective and i'll speak from a staff pers perspective as well we've never had a board meeting or a staff meeting where gary led us into a discussion on strategy on how to build the church there was never any vision meetings we never studied research or books or demographics it has always been the following the scriptures from acts 2 42 where we we devote ourselves to studying god's word to worship to fellowship and to prayer and it's been that for 30 years and so as terry has shared you know god has been faithful as gary and terry have shared that it's it's good to honor gary it's it's great to see terry up here as well because she has been serving alongside of him for 30 years as well so i'm glad that they're both up here and so as a representative of the board and of our staff i thought it would be appropriate and just to speak for the board as we pray so let's do that now god we do recognize your faithfulness that's the theme for tonight just how you have been faithful to this church we've never necessarily been concerned about how many people are coming in but we are concerned about the christians the followers that go out of this building and into the world to make a difference and so we're just so thankful for an opportunity that we've all had for the last 30 years to watch that and and to see that and and to see that grow through gary's leadership and and through terry serving as well and so we're we're so thankful for them we're thankful for their family we're thankful for this church and the opportunity that we have to serve you and uh god i just pray you would strengthen our faith tonight as we're just reminded that you are good that you are faithful that you honor your promises that you care about us and that you're going to take care of us and you've been faithful for 30 years to this church through gary and you'll be faithful this church and we pray that this church will be a light to this community for years to come and so we thank you for your blessing upon gary and terry and pray that you would keep them healthy we pray that you would protect them from the enemy pray you would keep them safe so that they could continue to serve you as long as you would have them in your name we pray amen [Applause]

Channel: Cornerstone Chapel - Leesburg, VA

Views: 18,439

Rating: 4.9472141 out of 5

Keywords: Cornerstone Chapel, Calvary Chapel, Gary Hamrick, Biblical sermons, leesburg va, cornerstone chapel leesburg virginia, great sermons by great preachers

Id: Uzb2fb9qHmA

Length: 32min 13sec (1933 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021