Hope Chapel Churches: 50 Years and Counting

before i get started you know there's a woman who's really really important who's not here today and that's julie nazarian and we just love her so much and i i watch this thing develop you know i don't know if you know that while he was away going to seminary he started church in his house before he came here but it was him and her and it's always been the two of them and i just you know sometimes we we overlook the power behind the throne and so i wanted to um give the boss lady a chance to greet you this morning there she is karina came up and gave me this beautiful purple lei and i as you can tell i'm very colorful today so as i told her that's my flip side which means filipino side of things but i uh didn't know my filipino father and i was raised with mexican which father which really means i'm very colorful so uh you can't miss me but i was thinking as uh your ancestor and then i thought wait is that the right word do i have to be dead to be an ancestor i don't know i think i'm just part of this long lineage of people that have brought this church into being for today and what i want to speak and and i'm not speaking um yes i'm watching a little toddler over here just dancing in the lord and i know there's lots of children back in children's church and that there's junior highers high schoolers college age people and about that time you start deciding what am i going to be doing and all i can tell you is to say yes lord yes lord because matthew 28 says go go and teach and so i just want to pray a blessing because you don't have to be one of those youngsters you can be 30 40 50 60 70. well i haven't gotten to 80 yet but i know there's 80 year olds out there because leona carrington's 85. so and god will say go and you don't know where but you say yes lord and the devil will fight you but please say yes lord and then you'll be having one of these moments so let me just pray quickly as your great-great-grandmother and uh say uh father god i pray let your holy spirit come now come now lord come on these people lord that there's ministries in their neighborhoods at work wherever it is they don't have to go across the ocean they don't have to go off into some odd far place but their neighbor next door is just waiting for them to tell about you especially in these crazy times i just pray this blessing upon each person lord in the name of jesus christ amen [Applause] good morning is this on okay i get i i literally will we'll turn it on stand up and turn it off and start talking and do that a lot i um i want to talk to you today i i i want to talk about the title for the message before i get into the message it's important billy caller was up here and he mentioned the book let go of the ring it's by the way in its sixth edition and marc jacobs just gave me uh 500 gigabytes of photos from the past when we started we were so poor we didn't take a lot of pictures other people took pictures we couldn't and uh so there's gonna soon be a seventh edition with more pictures in it but um i grew up in the four square denomination and by the time we started the church there were eighteen hundred four square churches and they gave us a building on manhattan beach boulevard a little building had seven parking spaces had seating for 66 people had uh four eight foot by eight foot sunday school classrooms you can't do much in eight by eight um and uh and and then we came here super straight white wall haircut in those days you know the whole thing and hippie deal was happening and uh first weekend there's like 12 people they're all my friends we got a lady who wasn't walking with the lord to come play the piano for us we had a pulpit that was literally this high i had to look over it and then it had wings and so it was goofy and so the 12 people showed up and there's pews and there and there's two rows two sides you know it'll be like just these two sections so i just went over and sat down on the platform and got everybody sitting the first two rows and we had bible study and um church gets over in less than an hour because i didn't talk like i do today and um we're all outside and so we started church at 10 most churches started at 11 that was the hour on sunday mornings but we figured we're going to beach town people want to go beach in the afternoon let's start early so we started at 10 at 11 um now that was the second sunday the first sunday was just 12 people that was just it the second sunday word got out we grew by 50 there were 18 of us at 11 19 people showed up and i just told them i'm sorry we're done and one guy who ended up in the church comes to me older guy older probably like 40 or really old dude and he and he goes um you know you could at least give these people a cup of coffee and get to know them so we started serving coffee after church i had never i grew up in church since 1950 i'd never ever seen a church a lot of church potlucks stuff like that but serving coffee after the end of a service never so we're we're weird in these ways already we start church at the wrong time we serve coffee and that second week a whole bunch of hippies and bikers and topless dancer named kittens showed up and we become to the pastors in the community hippity hoppity hope the bake sale church we never served a cookie but we're the bake sale church because they didn't know enough to serve coffee and and and just all these things and that was that was the world we lived in but then god breathed on it and things started happening and a little while in uh we were doing church in those days sunday morning was you preached sunday night was evangelistic service i i grew up in this i grew up in the biggest church in oregon is the foursquare church and we had the governor come and we had every movie star that would accept the lord three weeks later would be in our church not knowing anything of the bible and telling us it's kind of stupid and um but so that was sunday night evangelistic service wednesday it was a prayer meeting and and so we were doing that and but but it was all hippies and bikers and this stupid idiot with a suit on and and as time went on there were some people in walteria it's about seven miles away going we have a hard time coming back and we want to at least have sunday night service could you send somebody down here and and and just hold church for us in a house on sunday nights so we sent a guy to richard agosino and rich and i were hanging out at first we didn't trust each other he came in with a bunch of we're all in the navigators thing and the making disciples and he was leading the group and his his members joined our church and dragged him in well then we became friends and we started going to palos verdes and we would walk around the golf course because we didn't have any money every every monday morning about 5 30 we'd go and just walk around the golf course and pray and talk and we knew we're on holy ground because that was very near where dawson trotman started the navigators and all that ministry and so um these people came and said can somebody come and hold church on sunday night we sent richard because he lived down there about two months in on a monday morning richard goes well they want to become their own church they want to call it branch of hope and they go you can't do that i go for one the foursquare has a bylaw you can only have one fourth square church in one town and walter is part of torrance you know what that really means is there's 120 000 people in torrance and 400 of them in a four-square church and the rest of them can go to hell that's right i mean that that logic is there you think about it the second thing was you had to call it by the city name foursquare church you couldn't call it a slogan name and we're already doing that we're already in trouble and now you know he's worse and then he want to call it branch of hope and it's like i don't want people thinking we're doing a denomination we're not into that and so you can't use that name and then he never went to a bible college or a seminary and that was up and so i just told him no and a few weeks later i ran into this friend of mine who i i'm the oldest in my family i've always looked to somebody as my older brother and currently he's sitting right over there his name is mike fay and that's been going on for a long time but before that it was this guy named roy hicks jr and first first person of my age that i ever met who was as serious about jesus as i was and and was cool and and roy gets hold of me and says it's get it's easier to get forgiveness than permission so i went back to rich and said go for it man and then i go to the denomination and we didn't have billy callerwood as a supervisor we had a guy who was a card-carrying pharisee he would make people sign statements this is an area when churches begin to not do sunday night services you had to sign your life away that you would always do a sunday night service he was into that so i go and i go oh doctor such and such i um because everybody was a doctor in those days i go um you know um we did something what'd you do well it's a good thing but but we we broke some bylaws well what did you do well i mean we didn't mean to cause trouble what did you do and i kept i kept this up for like four or five minutes and then i told him what we did and he goes well you know my daughter and i go yeah he goes she's 20 years old i am hoping she gets married i can't tell her who to get married to i hope she gives me grandchildren i can't tell her when to have grandchildren or where to have them and i can't tell her what to name them you guys just gave birth and that's a good thing and that set in motion the title of this and by the way if you want to know more about this just look for myname.net on the internet because i got a lot of stuff up there i i make a podcast i'll write a blog i'll kind of jump but the title is hope chapel churches not hope chapel hermosa beach hope chapel churches 50 years and county because i i heard michael nazarian on that video talk about the next 50 years i heard alan talking about the next 50 years today so it's 50 years in county but it's not hope chapel hermosa beach it's hope chapel churches let me tell you a little bit about hope chapel churches because by the time i left this place i was the 30th person that we had sent out the door to go plant a church from the church that i had started and and today the story it it looks like this there's a guy who i hope is sitting in the audience if not it'd be the next service named bill gross and i was up here preaching one night and he was standing at the back door with two friends and and and it was young and cocky and and and and they're sitting there and i know they're making fun of what i'm saying and um i've been known to take people on in an audience like that but i waited and as i walked out the ball the door the holy spirit came over me and i just turned and i pointed my finger right in his face and i go if you weren't such a smart alec that's probably not the word i used god could use you to do something really strong and i walked away and i never heard this story i i i went and preached for bill i did a whole lot of things with bill but it was 30 years later that he said when you did that to me that's what broke the ice and then he ends up working with you leading worship and then you left and you end up leading the worship and then the church sends them out to start a church in torrance and then they send them out to go to north carolina and start church and cary north carolina and then he starts sending people out and as of like a week ago i found out that there's i used to think there's 175 churches in africa because of hope chapel cary north carolina there's over 400 of them and they're all over latin america and i had no idea and i i worked for this group called exponential i work with them for them part-time and when we came up the same thing that was happening in the rest of the thing that was happening in the rest of the church world was bigger is better and this whole um supersizing the church uh the walmartizing of the church the whole what we call the seeker driven movement we we tailor our message to those people rather than tailor it to this book and it watered down the church and during the time that these huge churches were getting huge christianity was shrinking in america the numbers are way down in the last four decades so we're paddling upstream all of our life in our denomination outside of our denomination i hook up with this group called exponential they've been looking for 10 churches that were a local congregation turned into a movement of churches and they and they couldn't find ten and and they bumped into southern baptists who had already done this like years before and they had found and they had actually written a book about one church that turned into a movement of churches and you're sitting in it and so they connected with me at first we didn't get along but now we do and and so it's it it's given you folks this is what i want to say and all of those other hope chapel churches out there around the world it's given you a voice to speak and basically this message we need to get back to this book and how we do church is about this book and i'm straying away from my notes and i tend to do this so i'll do the sermon really quick at the end but when i was in college i was a punk and we had a professor who actually had come on to one of the girls and we tried to go to the administration and they just did this and that wasn't good and he was pastoring some little church in glendale california and he was teaching the school and one day he gets up and he's come pompous guy and he tells us that under no circumstances should you ever ask anyone to leave a church well paul gives eight good reasons in first corinthians and you're stupid and i'm 19 years old and i know that and so i make this thing i'm going to go home and read the book of acts go to the dorm or wherever and read the book of acts every day the whole thing for my whole second year of college now it's about a month in so i didn't make the whole year and i and and at the minimum i would read it five times the whole thing it takes like 35 minutes and i take notes and i'm gonna show you guys how to build a big church because that's what you see in acts chapter two right big church overnight and then i got confused and the more i read it the worse it got because it starts big and then it dribbles and what's that all about and then as i as i kept reading it and reading it reading it i realized this is a church in immaturity in acts chapter 2. it's mature by the time we get to acts chapter 14 where where paul gets stoned and left for dead and when it says left for dead they actually thought they killed him by the way and then the disciples gathered around them it doesn't say they prayed but they must have because he revived and they sneaked back into all the places that they went and they point elders from among their disciples and they turned them over to the holy spirit in whom they'd put their trust no seminary no hierarchy no email no reports they can write letters which is a high-tech deal a lot of people didn't do that in their whole life in those days they can write letters and take about five six months to get there and about five six months to get the return they didn't have zoom and these guys were carpenters or leather workers or butchers or whatever the heck they were they weren't paid they're in some scruffy little village the government hates them it's all underground and so i i i begin to realize what because because god put his foot on what was going on in jerusalem jesus had said what we're going to talk about in the sermon go and they stayed and so nine years after jesus uttered those words you hit acts chapter 8 verse 1 where because saul of tarsus is breathing threats against the church all except the apostles who jesus told to go they courageously stayed in jerusalem in disobedience to jesus and all of the rest of them took off and everywhere they went they went preaching the gospel that got them in trouble and some of them went to antioch and started a church among jews only it says in acts 11 however some preach the gospel to gentiles also the guys in jerusalem freak out sent a guy named barnabas who's a jew who grew up in a gentile community go find out if this is okay he sends the word back a okay and then the rest goes on from there so here's what you see is the church starts out in immature disobedience to jesus full of the holy spirit loving god and not going anywhere and then the lord forces them to go and then the church begins to come into maturity and when it starts out it's all about addition it's just getting bigger and bigger you look at the first five chapters of acts it keeps getting bigger in jerusalem judea but when when when you get to the end of the book it's multiplied it moved from addition to multiplication and and it's it's spreading everywhere and if that hadn't happened you know i wouldn't be sitting here today i i pretty well could say if acts chapter 8 verse 1 hadn't happened we wouldn't even know each other it's it's there so this is about hope chapel churches i told you the story bill gross this is a guy who's not in hope chapel he's actually another denomination uh he's he's like one of my spiritual son's name is myron pierce got out of jail in 2002 after eight years 27 years old uh started planting churches and planting businesses he's a serial entrepreneur he lives in omaha north north omaha nebraska one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the whole united states for an african-american man because people are killing each other so fast pastors like 300 people uh they by by the time i met him they've planted eight churches or so and uh we start zooming all the time and i'm kind of discipling him and and he has this deal that that we live in a place where people live on welfare they need a good example you you need a job or or a business if you don't have a business our job will teach you how to start a business so they do things like we we go in and pressure wash the floors of automotive garages in the middle of the night and you know to teach guys sub raise money and and and then covet hit and one of his businesses the first business he started is a facebook marketing business and myron says i absolutely did not know what to do when covet hit i i was in the lockdown i didn't know what to do in the lockdown i went to my staff and they said we're just going to do what you do and he said that actually confused me what i do you make disciples and you run this facebook deal we're going to link the two together so then they started realizing they could they could zero in on a zip code and start running ads on facebook get people to watch myron thing on sunday and then he'll start to interact with them on zoom he figures out which one person to disciple to become the pastor and they start a church on the ground in that zip code and so by six months into zoom you know after when's when when covet hit and everybody went zoom church attendance went to the moon and then dropped right back to below what it was before we started well myron popped from 300 people to 6 000 people but then here's the good news they shrink back to 2500. and the churches that they planted are all over the middle west all in very poor urban communities and they're in chicago and they're now in new jersey and they're in harare zimbabwe and they're in kampala uganda which is the native land of alan i mean good night i get a call from myron one day he goes jesus wants to start a church in in london where were we in london because he'd come there with me on a trip and i go i don't know but i found the rail map the night before just found it in junk i was cleaning out and he goes i got lost in london i was at the at the south end of london at the end of a train line and the town begins with a b what's that town because i met a guy there and so i get my map out there's only one town it's called brixton so today there's there's a there's a this is mission church in brixton london is that cool that's how this works okay i i got i got names here i i talked about bill i could talk about uh ryan delameter who's who's generated church in indonesia but they started five churches in southern california beach towns like um they're they're in in costa mesa they're in laguna beach they're in dana point they're in san clemente they're in san diego and they start them in coffee shops you got to have a job and most privately owned not starbucks coffee shops close around 5 30 in the afternoon so they just have sunday morning church on a weeknight and you got to have a job so there's no money involved and they're reaching all kinds of young surf kids real crazy oh yeah and a few rich attorneys along the way um there's aryan bolt in mongolia who has now gone into korea and inner mongolia which is in china and and and we sparked that there's soreka who actually comes from a church planting church in sri lanka that i hooked up with 25 29 years ago and there's actually more there there's 2 000 people in that church they have 2100 churches in southeast asia uh in south asia from that one congregation soreka moved to london to take an i.t job and and we connected and you know he's from that church so he started a church in his house next thing you know there's 45 of them that's when i started showing up now covet hit and they exploded with growth this is going on over and over and over around the world and so i just want to take you through some scriptures really quickly and i hope you have a bible because i really like it when people have a bible when i talk and it says here in first corinthians chapter 3 verses 6 to 8. and i'm reading all of this from the new king james version of the bible it says i planted apollos watered but god gave the increase then it goes on says that neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters but god who gives the increase now he who plants and who waters are one they're one with each other they're in unity and each one will receive his own reward according to his labor i like to read that this way i planted zach watered but god gave the increase and neither ralph or zack are anything but god who gives the increase and one day those two guys will get their reward and instead of saying zack i could say aaron suzuki i could say john honnell i guess i got cappelliella i could say aryan bolt i could say bj mongol like you know it's this is a god thing but here's the deal when i was a pastor of this church i stupidly believed that god put a special calling on hope chapel hermosa beach to plant churches that is a lie god put a calling on all churches to plant churches that's right that is the truth it's in here you if you read it closely it's here and and and here's what we know because because of exponential because this nuclear engineer quit designing nuclear submarines and decided to do something for jesus 11 years ago 4 of churches in america had ever planted a church you guys have planted a string that's over 2600 of them [Music] but only four churches four percent of their plant and half of them were church splits because of this group exponential talking about what i'm talking about today seven percent last uh can proudly say we planted a church with intent we plan church we do what billy caldwell would talked about today that's that's not it makes you special because you obeyed it doesn't make you special because there's a special assignment it makes the future 50 years special if you obey not because god gave you a special assignment am i getting anywhere yeah and so the next scripture i want you to look at is in second timothy chapter two the first uh few verses first three verses i call this part from friendship to the ends of the earth because it works through friendship it doesn't work through a program it doesn't work through schooling it works through relationships jesus made disciples he didn't run school paul made disciples most important phrase i think in the book of acts is the words paul and paul and silas paul and timothy paul and you know it's are we are we making disciples but see that's not a pastor thing that's a christian thing are you making disciples well how do you make a disciple or you buddy up to somebody someone who doesn't know the lord and then you let him know you're a christian and you don't preach at them and then when they start whining about something you say something like well you know i pray every night because i'm believing jesus could i have your permission to pray for you tonight nobody says no to that ever and once they say yes to it no matter if they say that i don't believe in god whatever they just start looking up you're going to do it or not and now he's got them it takes time but that's disciple making and then after that what do you do well you get together and you hang out and you read the bible you know you read the chapter i'll read the chapter we'll we'll go on internet and search out words we don't understand and we'll get together and i don't want to hear i want to hear what you had to say about it i don't have to preach at you i want to hear what you learned it works really easy these days wikipedia is a super tool it's very accurate when it gets to biblical stuff it's amazing because a lot of christian guys are inputting that i use that very well but here's what it says in second timothy you therefore my son be strong in the grace that is in christ jesus and the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses commit these to faithful men and women who will be able to teach others also there's four generations there there's paul there's timothy there's faithful men and there's those people that they teach so i could read this this way you therefore zach my son the weirdness that goes on of he thinks i mentored him and i think he's smarter than me is unbelievable it's just like we we both kind of you know i just i just love this man to pieces i am so proud of you because of him it's amazing to me what he's done but then he'll sit around and say well you know ralph mentored me and tell all these things i remember from ralph and it's like but here's the deal if timothy i've been to ephesus where timothy led over 200 microchurches not many churches but autonomous churches and because timothy was faithful there's no churches in ephesus today it's turkey it's muslim but because timothy was faithful the gospel kept on going because zach was faithful to teach faithful men who are able to teach others also the gospel has gone around the world from this place that's why this is not called hope chapel 50 years and counting it's called hope chapel churches 50 years and counting and a whole lot of it and i'm going to keep doing this it has to do with that individual over there and the next 50 years have to do with whoever he's saying this to we go from there i have no idea of the time am i okay got 10 minutes good you know the first time that he preached after we made the big announcement hour and 45 minutes in every single service and you may not know this but he got the name long play nazarian out of that and so i got 10 more minutes at least so it says in matthew chapter 28 verses 17 to 20 some really important things and you really need to know this because one of the problems that we have with the so-called great commission is that it's it's not complete whenever people quote it they don't complete they don't give you the whole reference because it doesn't start in verse 18. that's always it the great commission matthew chapter 28 18 to 20. it starts in verse 17. and it says when they saw him they worshipped him but some doubted well actually it starts in verse 16 it's talking about the eleven you know judas did his deal the eleven they ate with him thomas poked his whole finger in the hole in his side and some doubted do any of you doubt from time to time i do church i'm involved in right now is meets on saturday afternoons on zoom we're all over the country and one of the things that's happening is my faith is being reinforced by my friend mike fay who taught here for years a thing about astronomy and and how it relates what we're learning about the universe reinforces these passages of scripture to me genesis 1 john 1 and romans 1. in the beginning god you know in the beginning was the word the word was with god he spoke it into being the heavens declare the glory of god romans you know and and i've always been well ever since he turned me on to astronomy been searching for answers that i because if i can't believe those three chapters in the bible i can't believe any of it but there's times that i have doubts about what i believe i think we all do what i think is really important is that jesus is telling doubting people to go out and take the gospel to the whole rest of the world so there's room for us that's cool and then it says he came and he spoke to them saying all authority has been given to me in other words this is not come to church and see the show this is not oh if you open your heart and let jesus into your heart this is the god of the universe saying get with it stupid people and and and then he says all authority's been given me in heaven and earth and then he says go but if you read it in the original language he says as you go he doesn't say go as soon as you hear the word go and make disciples you think of some missionary going to some other country that's not what he's saying at all because it says go therefore and make disciples of all the nations there's two words there we don't understand and they don't come across right in our english bibles and they don't come across right in most sermons the first one is the word go which is literally as you go in other words where you go as you go where are you going tomorrow because that's what it's talking about where will you be on tuesday afternoon at three o'clock it's talking about that and then he says make disciples he doesn't say make converts he doesn't say make christians he says doesn't make church goers you know we we invented this i didn't somebody else did this odd term called unchurched people and so in america for the last four years so years the whole deal was to reach unchurched people what's the goal we'll get them in church it's not to make a disciple it's to get an unchurched person into a church so the church can get big and the pastor can get fame something's wrong with that one so he goes on and he says bap make disciples of all the nations and the word there is ethne and it doesn't mean what most of us think it means my wife is half filipino half welsh half norwegian and half east asian i am irish and she says i have the gift of blarney so it doesn't mean that it means people groups you know who surfs manhattan versus who surfs hermosa who are the big wave riders in hawaii who are the skaters who are the people that used to live in in in lawndale but real estate's gotten too expensive and they've had to move inland you know who are the people in austin texas that jimmy calhoun ministers to who we would call disabled here's jimmy played with jimi hendrix played with john lennon he's talking to me one day and he says yeah we're at this comedy club in la and and michael wanted to go there and i told michael this and michael that and two we're both friends with mike faye and i go what do you mean michael and he goes oh mick and they go i don't i'm mick who because i'm thinking of our little saturday afternoon church he goes oh mick jagger i took him to this comedy club and you know it's like who are the leftover aging messed up half brain dead rockers in the world because they're an ethne they're a people group when we when we first started it was hippies and bikers later on this was a church full of carpenters and aerospace engineers because that was going on in el segundo at the time different people groups they got to be reached in different ways and and so here's the deal churches we tend to all look like us we all tend to look like the pastor in fact i was taught that in school you're going to reach people who look like you about 10 years younger than you or 10 years old older than you it's easy so i worked really hard at trying to always reach 12 year old kids my whole life i want to i want to talk so a 12 year old kid can can understand complicated stuff and i can make it funny if i can sometimes today it works sometimes it doesn't but i i was decades into kaneohe the hope chapel kaneohe before we ever realized we're not doing anything for the older people in our church and my gosh we're their powerhouse it was crazy once we started to tap into those people but then there is the racial thing there was the kid who started a church in a skate park next door in kailua town for where we're at in hawaii there there there are all kinds of people groups today there's people who a a tattoo parlor that they hang out in is a church without god because they identify around you know these identity groups are the ethnic of the world we've got to get to them and then the last thing i want you to look at is i just want to talk about this you don't need to turn there but acts chapter 2 verses 41 to it tells about the church gathered daily in the temple and and and in the houses and they and they met for for apostles teaching fellowship breaking bread prayer praising god they were giving generously to each other and their neighbors liked them and the lord was adding daily to their numbers such as be saved i i this is how we built mini church was around the two scriptures i'm talking about right now is is this this scripture we we decided this is the temple and we're going to do it in houses because they did it in houses and then we and i did a teaching called church architecture where we split up what works best in in a house what works best in the temple and we built off that and then about six months ago i had a realization by the time you get to acts 5 they're all over judea that means that some people are they're not going to the temple once a week because it's like a 13 or 14 mile walk at least so that most it's homes this is why some people who don't hate zoom are actually able to launch zoomed churches and as they're doing it almost every church i know it's effective has got many churches but they got zoom mini churches because some people are shut in whatever and pretty soon the last one i heard some guy in stockholm joined a zoom church in southern california it's it's crazy it but it's doable but then it says in ephesians chapter 4 and this one i do want to read that he jesus himself gave some to be apostles some to be prophets some evangelists some pastors and some teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of christ till we all come to unity in faith which means we don't argue with other people over their doctrine you know when i got into exponential i'm hooked up with every kind of doctrinal stripe you could believe and you know what i think what i think is right but i'm smart enough to know that it can't all be right and but i'm not smart enough to know where it's wrong so i just have to humble myself a little bit and go you know what you're wrong but i love you and then it talks about that we come to measure of the fullness of christ because this is not about hope chapel this is not about church this is not about the gospel this is about the lord of the universe and his strayed people reconciled to him that's what this is about it's about honoring you but it says here that he gave some people leadership gifts to be apostles those are if you're an innovator and you like to plant businesses and stuff you probably have an apostolic spiritual gift that you have worked out in a secular sense and you need to start thinking about how can that work inside the church it there there are some who are prophets this man sitting right here and bob allen is the most abrasive piece of sandpaper that ever walked through these doors and there were people who that guy's rebellious he's this he's no he's a prophet that's right there was a night where wave your your hand the guy in the white t-shirt right here with a v-neck yeah you wipe your hand right there right there this guy comes up to me is about this tall literally he's got a guitar strapped over his back like johnny cash long hair obviously living on the road and he comes up to me and goes you know god told me i'm supposed to take over this church and i'm going to be the pastor from now on during the greeting time he goes back and he sits in that chair where you are and right in front of him is this guy and the night before he had pulled the same stun at calvary chapel costa mesa in their concert and bob in those days didn't walk with a cane he was into judo he ties this guy up in a knot and marches him out the door and then the night he stands up this is like two weeks after john the baptist was sitting over here and told and told us that he he was the father of jesus by the immaculate conception but this guy stands up to take over and bob is in front of him and he turns around and he's like this far from his nose and he goes hi remember me from last night i think we should walk out the door together game over right there are some people who are evangelists probably more evangelist than anybody else when i came up as a pastor the the burden that i carried was called billy graham wonderful man did wonderful things but everybody thought that was evangelism forty thousand people in the stadium ah evangelism is a cup of coffee and hanging out and listen to him moan and groan and bring the lord into it and you probably are one i am not you know these people get on the airplane and wins away at jesus in a two-hour flight i get on the airplane and open my book so they won't even talk to me and if they say hello or whatever i go and then there comes pastors and i'm not one of those either i think zach actually is i think zach's a little bit of a prophet and but he's a pastor but i am not take two aspirins and call me next week you know in our church in the big church in hawaii we don't do pastoral counseling there's none of that you go to mini church or we'll refer you to somebody you can go pay 135 an hour to talk to because many church there's pastors in many church and i don't mean the leader of the mini church i mean the people who got the pastoral gift and they'll hold your hand and they'll walk through hell with you but you want to come sit in an office and talk to somebody for 45 minutes that you don't even know no we're not doing that game and then i left that church and we started a little church called hope honolulu in a movie theater and we we decided the city is our uh campus and we tried to get public school we couldn't because you know why hope chapel and new hope and the people who learned from us had filled every single one of 650 public schools in the state with churches by the time we left everyone and some of them had three small churches meaning concurrently in school it was crazy good it was really good but we started hope chapel honolulu we met in the kahala mall movie theaters our baptisteries where hunakai street meets the ocean um we we have we advertise we have a two billion dollar church campus there's this hill in kakaako park where we hold worship nights there are all these houses and apartments we've got real estate running out our ears we just don't have to pay for any of it but here's what we don't have is a phone because if we have a phone we actually rented a little space that we could use for training meetings in the middle of the week but we're not putting the reception in there to answer the phone and get a paycheck because that money's going to africa and so we brag you know what there's no no church phone and and so here's how you know if you're a member of the church if you know somebody who knows my phone number you're probably a member of the church if you don't you're a spectator and you're welcome here just be sure you put money in the bucket on the way out the door because at some point you got to separate the adults from the children you got to separate the sheep from the goats are you one of us are you doing this or are you just coming here to watch are you just coming here because zach is a really good bible teacher or because alan is just incredible with worship and you just want to enjoy that and then go and do your little thing because this has always been about hope chapel churches have always been about just be doers of the word not hearers only and that's what i want to leave you with and what i really want to say is you got 50 years ahead of you at least and michael said it in in the video we don't know what form it will be we don't know if we'll be on this corner in 50 years we don't know i mean persecution could come we could be a bunch of underground house churches i used to go to china a lot i can't go near there last time i did a seminar in china we did it in tokyo and i had a whole bunch of investment bankers who are church punters come to to to you know and and bring my friend from the ghetto of of north omaha and he became the star of the show it's really crazy he's super rich chinese in his hotel lobby in tokyo and and my friend myron with all of his because he he he won't conform to now they're making me famous i'm going to wear a suit and whatever he looks like he looks like who he is and you know the studs and the tattoos and all that is going to be the way it is doers of the word these people in china are endangering their lives their livelihood they're being doers of the word and it never gets when you're 80 you're not too old to make friends with the person next door it's up to us and i just like to pray and then jack's going to come we're going to have communion so if i didn't go too long father i just thank you for getting to come here from time to time and see what you continue to do in this place and lord we really in the scope of things had very little to do with all this we sowed the seeds and zach's been watering ever since you've been given the increase and it's pretty cool what you've done i just i think each one of us would just say you got to thank you that i got to be part of this thing you're doing and uh but god i know my time is not up i know when it is up it'll be a glorious day but it's not up yet and and lord help me to see what's right in front of me help me to see the ethnic that are around me help me to to to see what's going on around me as i go where i go when i go if it's to get my hair cut it's to go to work to go out and play racquetball i go where i go and you said as i go help me to be that person lord help me to be the the bible tells us all to do the work of an evangelist help me to to be a person who's much more open to making friends with people who look and act and think differently than me and to introduce them to you to be a reconciler who's been reconciled to you and be a reconcile our friend get my friends to know my other friend jesus or help us to do that and and to do it until you come for us lord i pray your continued blessing it's obvious that it's here but i pray for more of it on this church as as the next 50 years unfold in jesus name amen

Channel: Hope Chapel Hermosa Beach

Views: 73

Rating: 0 out of 5

Keywords: pastor, hope chapel, Hermosa Beach, sermon, church, service

Id: ZSPCbDAfcMc

Length: 53min 10sec (3190 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021