Paul Johnson
It is a real honor to get to introduce our speaker tonight, or today. Darryn Scheske is someone who has become a real friend and as vice chair of the board I’ve gotten to know Darryn in a really personal way in a lot of different episodes of his life. I’ve been there in the early morning when I’m getting up to do prayer walks and he’s journaling and looking at scripture. I’ve been at the 21 Days of Prayer where it’s a room just filled with people praising God and worshiping and praying and just hundreds of students that gather there. He’s an excellent speaker. He is a church planter. All of those things are great but here’s the, here’s what I wanna tell ya, is Darryn is someone who is devoted to God and out of that devotion to God it flows over in his family and a lot of his family’s here. Get to know them. You will see that characteristic in his life. He’s devoted to his church. I’ve been there where people are teaming all around him and he’s just lock, locked in on one person listening to the issues and challenges that they face. He’s devoted to applying scripture to his life and changing his life and changing his church because it’s changing his life. And I don’t know if you know many people that are that way but he is a person who is that way and in every area of his life I see someone who’s seeking to be a man of God and I count it a privilege to follow after him. So, before you get out of your chair I’m gonna ask everyone to extend a right hand towards Darryn right now and pray because we want the man of God to bring the message we need to hear. Father, son, holy spirit, we invite you now to work through your servant. A man devoted to you who loves you and we pray that we would have ears to hear and apply what we hear in our lives. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus, amen. Welcome Darryn Scheske.

Darryn Scheske
All right, now that that’s over, hello everybody, great to see you. So glad that you made it. So glad that you’re here. I am honored. I mean, Paul, that was the best introduction I’ve ever heard for anybody let alone me and my whole life so thank you. President Jenkins, I just wanna honor you as the pastor of this church and the president of Converge and I love you so dearly. He is my pastor for 20 years now. I wanna say he is the same in private as he is in public. He’s the same man, a man of love and faithfulness and humility and compassion and you love every pastor in this room. I know that and every person. Yeah. So, I just thank God for you and for your wife, Trina and you’re one of the greatest gifts to this movement and I also wanna thank Brian Weber. He is the regional president of this region. We’re in his home country and this guy is a humble man of God who loves pastors. Can we give it up for Brian just for a second? I love him. And my wife, Loree is here and we’ve been married for what? It’s gonna be 36 years in just a few weeks, so that’s amazing. She stayed with me and we’ve got a bunch of kids and four grandsons. Four grand boys, my son is here and he has four grand boys under the age of six. It’s the WWE everyday.

Hey listen, listen, listen, don’t kill your kids though, better ones are coming. I tell ya, it’s, it is amazing. They’re great. We’re having the best time of our lives with them and hey, I wanna know if there’s any church planters in the room. Any church planters here? All right, I see you. Come on, give it up for the church planters. I salute you. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, pastor, friend, husband, but one of the things I love the most is being called a church planter. I am still, I’m still a church planter. I’m old and I’m still a church planter. Loree and I, pastor, we planted this church in Indianapolis in the summer of 2000 in July when everybody wants to go to a brand new church. They’re just dying to go to a brand new church at the Holiday Inn that has no musicians and no technology except for the keyboard that the pastor programmed himself with his guitar and he plays it and it’s just sort of, you know like the guy with the symbol in his hands, between his knees, and the bass drum on his back, and he preaches too. So, he can do it all. That’s really exciting. It’s a great strategy for launching a church and I did that at the Holiday Inn because it was so strategic, you know? Because if you have kids we’ve got some hotel rooms that we can, you can put your kids with strangers and leave them there. It’s an amazing creative strategy. It works, works really well.

All that to say I may have the record in Converge to this day of a launch day that had zero people show up. That is statistically impossible everybody and that actually happened. We came to the night and I’d done the work and I’d been going through the community knocking on doors, we did a mailer and everything. We had the party, everything was set up. The kids were cleaned up, we were all there and nobody came and about 7:30 that night the kids are going, daddy, where are the people? And I’m like, shut up. You know, I don’t wanna talk about it. About 8:30 this Christian couple we knew came by to check and see how it went and when they found out nobody had come they said, maybe this is not for you. Oo. It was brutal. It was absolutely brutal and it was a total failure as far as launches go.

And I just went to my little office which was in a walk in closet in my apartment. I don’t know where you guys had your offices when you planted churches, mine was in my apartment and I was mad at God. I locked myself in the closet and I had it out with God. I’d worked so hard and nobody came and it made no sense and I’m sitting there and I didn’t even feel like a pastor anymore. I felt like this guy. I’m just an unemployed guy in a closet. That sad guy right there is how I felt. I don’t know if anybody’s ever felt in ministry like the things you planned, it didn’t work out, yeah, that was in the early days of digital cameras by the way, total failure.

And you know what? That was the best thing that ever could have happened in my life. I look back now and it was the best thing. In the silence of that closet God just said to me a little whisper, he said, what if I brought you here to fail? And I had never considered that as a possibility. Doesn’t that sound like exactly something God would say? So, I just got this impression, God just kinda said, look I brought you here for this, what if you stopped trying to plant a church and just pastor the people I’m putting in front of you? And um, I was like, I got saved all over again in that closet. I said Lord, if you brought me here to fail, all right, I surrender and I just told my wife that day. We’re gonna buy a house and we’re gonna stay here and she thought I was crazy but in the process of buying that house, there was a mortgage broker, a real estate agent, a homeowner’s insurance agent, they didn’t know Jesus and I just pastored the people God put in front of me. And so on February the 4th, 2001 in our living room with 17 people including the real estate agent, the homeowner’s insurance agent, and… Their families, their kids, there were 17 of us including the kids, gotta count the kids. No pregnant women, we’d have called it 18 but we were, we were looking for everybody but it was 17 people and off we went.

And I’d like to say the church just took off. It didn’t take off. It was a slow, long, sometimes terribly slow slog, you know? Discouraging journey. I just tell you all that to say failure has been a part of the journey all the way along. I have failed, I failed so many times as a church planter, as a pastor and I just think it’s God’s tool. I mean, at this age I still fail so much. One of my recent big failures happened in this city, well Washington DC anyway, just a few years ago. I was invited to the White House to be honored for being a uniter in my city and so I show up there on the White House South Gate, 6:30 in the morning we had to gather with all the other people who were receiving an honor that day and they’re all important people. I’m just trying to fit in and look like I belong and no one was talking to me except this Catholic bishop. He walks over to me and he engages me in conversation. Nice, kind older man, polite and then he leans over and he says, your fly is open. And I’m like, oh is that how it’s gonna go today? And then I thought this Catholic bishop was actually my friend. I mean, thank God for him ’cause if it was not for him I’d be standing in front of the President of the United States with my fly open. Total failure. I’m still failing. I fail all the time and I guess in the words of pastor John K. Jenkins, I’m still here, I’m still here, I’m still here. I came to remind you of that.

You’ve heard this before that failure really isn’t fatal and failure’s how you grow. There’s some muscle bound guy in this room somewhere who pushes himself to failure every single day. That’s how he got there. And God uses failure in our life that exact same way but we hate to fail. I just say that ’cause at the start of a conference I remember being in this place and in these types of environments struggling, feeling like I was accomplishing nothing. And I came to tell you today, just one word, it’s not on your shoulders. This thing is not on your shoulders. Turn to your neighbor and tell ’em right now, it’s not on your shoulders. It ain’t on your shoulders. Turn to your second choice, tell them the same thing. It’s not on your shoulders.

Now, that sounds so simple but that’s exactly what Jesus promised. Jesus promised this and you know by the way the older I get the more I believe this with everything in my heart, like we’re trained, we’re taught how to grow churches and build churches but nobody formed us for what the building would actually cost. We’re given strategies and systems and conferences and metrics and almost none of it addresses the person that’s supposed to hold it all together. And here’s what I’ve discovered that God is not primarily interested in what you’re building he is far more interested in who you’re becoming while you build it. I say it all the time that who you’re becoming is more important than what you’re doing and that is the gospel. That’s not some consolation for no progress. That’s the gospel. That’s the most clarifying truth that I know about what God is up to in our lives that who we are becoming is more important than what we’re doing.

Isn’t that what Jesus said when he called his leader? In Matthew chapter 16, you know the verse. “Blessed are you, Simon.” He calls him Simon, that’s his name, son of Jonah. “For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood.” Like you can’t humanly come up with this? It’s not human wisdom? This is not humanly possible? This is a God thing. This is God going to do it. You’re not going to figure this out on your own. You’re not gonna be able to strategize your way through this. It’s something God’s gonna reveal to you from heaven. So, he says, “Blessed are you Simon, son of John.” Or “Son of Jonah,” right? “‘Cause this has not been revealed to you by flesh and blood but by my father in heaven and I tell you that you are Peter.” All right, stop right there. Peter, he calls him the rock before he’s the rock. He’s Peter, pebble, little, and he calls him a rock. He sees who he’s gonna become and he calls him that today. He can see who you’re becoming and he’s gonna rename you right now for who you’re gonna, he gives you a new name before you even do the thing that would qualify you for the new name. Come on somebody, praise God for that. I get excited about that. He calls him the rock, who you’re becoming is more important than what you’re doing right now. And he says, I tell you, you are Peter and upon this rock, who’s gonna build the church? Who’s gonna build the church? He says, I will build the church. I will build, that’s the gospel right there. He says, I will build, it’s not your work. You’re not gonna save you. You’re not gonna get the job done. This is my work that I’m gonna do and I tell you, Peter, that the gates of hell will not overcome the church that I build, not the church you build but the church he builds. Come on, somebody. I’m encouraging somebody right now that Jesus said, I’ll build the church. I’m gonna do some things in you and if Jesus is gonna build the church you know what my role is? Is to cooperate with him. And join him in what he is doing. And guess what, guess what, guess what? He’s going to change me as much as he’s going to, as the church is gonna change the world. That is the truth right there.

The older I get the more I realize that Jesus is going to build that church and the failures and all the things that he’s doing in my soul are part of the process and he’s going to change me as much as the church is supposed to change the world. So, that’s why I thank God for this movement. That’s why I thank God for brothers and sisters. I thank God for Converge and all these people who’ve been with me at different phases of the journey when I was still just sephus, basically. Trying to be the rock and I wasn’t a rock at all but I had people in my life. I thank God for the humble, beautiful brothers, sisters, people in this room that I’m looking at right now. Some of you, we have been through the fire together. Through the ups and the downs. By the way, if you are a pastor and you don’t have a tribe you oughta be part of this tribe. You don’t have to leave your tribe to be part of this but we would love to have you be a part of this because we’re not a denomination. We’re more of an association of churches. Like, nobody, there’s no centralized government governing the churches. Every church governs themselves but we realize that we’re better together. That’s what Converge actually means by the way. Did you know that? Converge means come together, like do it now, come together because we’re actually better together.

So, let me give you a little update about this family that we’re a part of. There are currently 1800 plus, it’s everyday, but there are 1800 or so churches in this movement that should not even, it shouldn’t even work. Do you understand the diversity of this movement? It’s not about skin color either. It’s a diverse movement. We all love Jesus but man, we have some strong opinions. But we came together. You know 40% of the pastors in this movement are not Anglo pastors. That’s incredible. There’s nothing like that in all of America. This is an incredibly diverse movement. And we think differently, we believe differently in some things but we came together to start churches and to strengthen pastors and to send more global workers out to change the world. Stuff we could never do on our own by ourselves.

And so this great family is organized into 10 regions all across the country and each one has a regional president and they shepherd and pastor that region. And then we come together in this national coalition of regional presidents and some pastors together in a national board that pastor Jenkins, President Jenkins leads with an incredible vision right now to flip this whole thing upside down and let the national serve the regions and the regions serve the local church. So, the regions lead and the local church is the point of the spear and we’re just, we’re just coming along behind with resources and aligning some vision and building relationships serving the local church.

I love this movement. I came into this, I didn’t know anything about the BGC, Swedish, I didn’t know nothing about that but I came into this group ’cause I felt there was a church in my heart and 24 years ago in 1999, 24, that’s not right, 27, 27 years ago I was in the former, the worship, the other church, what do you call it? The Ministry Center, back then it was the first Baptist Church of Glenarden and we were there for the first church planting conference and I was there and two brothers came up on that stage and they had planted in 10 years 43 churches. 2 guys, 43 churches. Paul Johnson and his brother Steve and I was just blown away. It was incredible. And these guys were innovators and they’d come up with these systems for, what does it take to plant churches? And it was incredible. They had systems of spiritual development. They had systems for recruitment and assessment and training and coaching, I mean a system for everything. It was so successful that a young researcher named Ed Stetser at the time, he said this is the Apple of church planting. Apple meaning like Apple, Apple, Steve Jobs Apple. And so, they came together and by the way, these systems, guess what? They are at the heart of every church planting movement across America today. These two guys who planted these 43 churches and they said, we’re here today at this conference to say 43 is where we’ve been but they unveiled a 10X vision to say over the next, over these next years we wanna plant 442 churches. The audacity of that and they said, we’re not gonna do it, Jesus is gonna do it. Would you guys like to help and I’m like, I’m in. I’m gonna sign up on the spot. I’ll do it. I wanna be a part of this and can I show you what God did? So, from that conference til now there have been 934 churches planted… Come on everybody, give God praise for that. That’s hundreds of thousands of people, lost people who have been found. Because Jesus will build his church. I just wanna honor Paul and stephe and get that book, it’ll tell you the whole story. It’s an incredible story. I thank God for how you let Jesus build his church through you guys.

So, here’s the exciting part. Of those 934 churches there were 615 that were planted from 2000 until 2020 but watch this, in the last few years, since 2020 there have been 319 churches planted. Look at the acceleration. Look at that. Look at that in the middle of a down economy. In the middle of COVID when all the, people leaving the church by the millions and look at Jesus building his church. Look at the rate of, 73%, that’s almost double the rate of church planting in the previous 20 years. The last two decades. So, come on somebody, Jesus is alive and well and he reigns and the gates of hell and COVID could not stop him. And I feel like we’re just getting started. I feel like it’s just the beginning because God has supernaturally blessed us for this moment. Like in the last five years, blessing. It’s just incredible what God has done.

Jesus is building his church, from these last, just in the last few years, from 2020 to now 2026, what God has done blessing the movement financially, like in the first 20 years if you guys go back and look at 2020, or 2000 to 2020 the investment, the best we could do for that first 20 years was to invest about four million dollars into evangelism and church planting for the first 20 years but in these last few years, you know and you look at back then, everybody was trying to figure out, how are we gonna figure this out? Church planters kind of having to come up with their funds and regions having to come up with funds. It wasn’t a lot but, but now look what happened. And by the way that inflection point was a major failure moment. It was a financial crisis. It was one that nearly killed Converge and the leaders could do nothing but literally get on our knees and pray and humble ourselves and seek God and it looked like it was over but I wanna say, God still reigns everybody. God still reigns ’cause one of the miracles God did in that whole moment was to bring along an incredible partner in the Wesley Investment Foundation. And by the grace of God this incredible partnership, they saw that they could be better and we could be better and we’ve been able in the last few years to invest 9.4 million into our regions just in the last few years. And the rate of, the rate of giving out into mission, well I don’t even understand the percentage. I don’t. So, I’m not a financial guy but that’s what, that’s what the computer said. It’s a stunning acceleration and by the grace of God we are positioned to do this every year going forward. I mean, this is what, this is why, you can’t do this by yourself. You need partners and you need people coming together. That’s why we say we’re better together. I just wanna honor Craig and Norwood Davis and the entire team at WIF, Greg, I love you guys and thank you for being a part of Converge. And I just wanna invite you to consider, you want a real return on investment? You can invest and get a great return in this life but when you invest in WIF you are, all of the money is going into the advancing of the kingdom of God. You oughta check it out. That’s my little pitch for today.

But, we’re excited about the future. We’re excited about the future and where this is going. Our regions have been resourced like never before and the churches are being given resources. We’re building relationships. We’re sending more people out into these places all over the world. Unreached people groups and we’re strengthening pastors like never before. We’re strengthening marriages of pastors. We are investing like we’ve never, to help pastors get healthy and to stay in the game longer and to have real friends and to have mentors and we’re dreaming about reaching places that we’ve never been to before because look, God doesn’t give us that money just to feel secure. He gives it to us so that we can do something with it and steward it.

So, we’ve identified, not we at national, but the regional leaders have identified 200 places all over the country that we call under reached. Like, there are some churches there but there’s not nearly enough churches for the need in those places. And I just asked leaders around the country this last six months. Tell me what keeps you up at night. What are you praying for in your area of the country? And so, the leaders in the northeast are talking about the Suni college towns. I don’t know if you know about this but all of these towns all over upstate New York, 64 campuses, half a million college students between Albany and Syracuse not one Converge church. We’re praying for that. We’ve got Morgantown, West Virginia and Huntsville, Alabama, there’s a whole, Huntsville is where NASA is everybody and there’s all these young people moving there. It’s a tech hub. 50,000 college students in that area and we’re saying, God send us a leader to plant a Converge, ’cause there’s no Converge church there. We’re praying about New Orleans. 13 universities, booming job market, God knows we need a church in New Orleans everybody. Somebody’s gotta be called there. We’re ready to resource that person. The city of Spokane, Washington. We got the leaders up there in the northwest. They have a booming church planting movement. It’s not a prediction, it’s what’s happening right now. 1 church has already planted 5 there. There’s another one that’s in Boise that’s already planted their church. They’ve planted 3 more churches and they’ve got communities all over the northwest and it’s happening right now. That we’re seeing new churches planted. In fact, they’re dreaming about Montana and Idaho and Oregon and hey, remote Alaska everybody. Never made a conference pitch speech before in the history of America. Remote Alaska. There’s not a city with a population center. It’s not a tech hub. Winters are brutal. It’s enormous and no Converge church and I don’t think any church conference has ever put this on the map before but we have leaders that are praying for remote Alaska because Jesus didn’t say go to the best demographics. He didn’t say just go to the places where there’s this huge opportunity to grow a big church. Apparently God has put Alaska on the hearts of some people in this movement to plant a church. If that’s you here at First Baptist Church of Glenarden we would like to talk to you.

We’re dreaming about churches in southern California from Santa Barbara all the way to LA and from Orange County all the way down to San Diego. Just an incredible opportunity and our dream there is not just to start churches but to restart churches and to, to revitalize the ones that the enemy thought were finished and done. We’re praying for new churches in Austin and San Antonio. Texas is growing. One of the fastest growing places in the country. We wanna be there. Places like Oklahoma. Places like Las Vegas, everybody. Don’t you think we oughta have a church in Las Vegas? 65,000 college students who don’t know Jesus. We’ve got a leader in the Dakotas and he’s praying for North Dakota. Come on somebody, that’s a calling right there. North Dakota doesn’t make the conference highlight reels but Jesus didn’t say go to the glamorous places. He says, go where there’s a plentiful one. God has already got a plan for those places. How about Albuquerque, New Mexico? Don’t you just love to say that word? I do, Albuquerque, it’s fun to say. And it’s the new age capital of America and we need a church there.

So, we’re praying about these places and I believe with all of my heart that God has put it on the hearts of some pastors in this movement already to become sending churches. To be a part of this. To say, we’re gonna help and we’re going to prepare healthy church planters to be trained and resourced and coached and assessed and all of that and send them out to these undersaturated places to reach the gospel. And in those locations I’ve just shared there are 10s of millions of people who don’t know Jesus. And Jesus said this, what did he say? You know this pastors, the harvest is… Yeah, but it’s the what? It’s the laborers that are few. So, we gotta ask the lord and he sent us the resources and he’s given us the vision now we’re saying, Lord send us the workers for the harvest field. Send somebody to southern California. Or send somebody to remote Alaska, lord. Send somebody to Oklahoma City or to Las Vegas or New Orleans or to Albuquerque, you know? Send somebody, let that kinda, I hope that gets into your heart over these next few days that God didn’t just call us to celebrate 170 years but he’s called us to go forward and take the gospel to places where it’s never been heard before and we’re just simply saying, Lord, lead us to the people you’re saving. Now come on good baptists, you believe that, right? We don’t have, this isn’t our church. It’s not our mission. God, lead us to the people you’re already saving so you can build your church. That’s why I say the greatest years of our movement are right out in front of us. They’re right ahead. I have every reason to be enthusiastic about this. Isn’t that what Paul said? Come on everybody, read it with me. This is what the apostle Paul said. He says, “I have every reason to be enthusiastic about what I’ve done.” No, he said, “By what all Christ Jesus has done through me in my service to God. Yet I dare not boast about anything.” What’s this? “Except what Christ has done through me bringing the Gentiles to God by my message and by the way I worked among them.” Isn’t that incredible? They were convinced by my incredible lights and sound and lasers. No. “They were convinced by the power of miraculous signs and wonders and by the power of the Spirit of God.” I think we’re gonna see more of that in the next generation. “And in this way I have fully presented the good news of Christ from Jerusalem all the way to…” Hard word. Um, Albuquerque. Something far away and he says, “My ambition was always to preach the good news where the name of Christ has never been heard.” I wanna shout out all of you global workers who are here from all over the world who have that same heart and you said, God send me to, not just America, but places far away where they’ve never heard about Jesus before.

You guys said, I don’t wanna go where everybody else is going. Leave America to them but I wanna go to remote Alaska. Or I wanna go to some afar place and I want to spread the gospel. Paul said, I’ve just been following the plan spoken about in scripture. Where it says, “Those who have never been told about him will see and those who have never heard of him will understand.” Oh God, can you let that just break your heart just a little bit? God raise up some pastors and some church planters and some gospel workers who lay awake at night, just thinking about, God use my life. Let me be a part of what you’re doing in the world.

I say that because it’s easy to be discouraged right now. A lot of pastors are discouraged. I read the same stuff as you and pastors dropping out because it’s difficult. It’s discouraging, you read about the state of the church and the cultural drift and the misguided deconstructionists and all of the doubting and all of the scandal and all of the church disenchantment and church hurt and all of that and you know, you’re discouraged and you’re thinking about, do I still wanna do this? I know the problems that you’re facing. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed. I know about the financial pressure that seems unbearable at times. Talk to me everybody, I know. Ever feel like you’re failing on every front? I have failed at almost everything I did the first time and sometimes more times. I failed in, you know launch day attendance, zero, and I’m still here. Attendance trending like at Gideon’s revival and I’m still here. Stupid leadership failures and I’m still here.

I mean, some of you know this story. I’ve told it before. I was doing this funeral one time. You know, I’m the pastor, I’m doing this big funeral, important funeral, there’s the, there’s hundreds of people, big procession. There’s the hearse with the body or the person and then there’s me in the pastor’s car and then there’s the family in the limo behind me and then a trail, hundreds of cars and motorcycles and we’re driving in this thing kinda slow keeping everybody together and I get this call in the car about a surprise pregnancy. Apparently our church was birthing another church that I didn’t know anything about and I was upset and I got upset and I got discouraged and I got kinda into that conversation, got really intense and while I’m doing this I’m looking, like why is this guy driving in front of me so slow? Good Lord, like what’s your problem? And I laid on the horn and I stomp the gas and I just whipped out, have you ever accelerated with some attitude everybody, like… And I just blew past and my wife was sitting there. She goes, what are you doing? You are the pastor and then all of a sudden I woke up and I’m like, oh my lord, God and I’m just like doing the humble, put the blinker on… It was a total failure and you know when you do stupid stuff like that you over exaggerate it in your mind like, I have ruined this whole funeral and then five minutes later, I’ve ruined the whole church. 10 minutes later, I brought down the entire kingdom of God worldwide. I am the worst. I’m still here everybody. Come on, pastor Jenkins, I’m still here.

You know what those failures did? Those failures just humbled me and they moved me forward everybody. God used all of that to do the work in me to support what God was gonna build through me. Listen to your older brother for just a second some of you. This thing’s not on your shoulders. It feels like it sometimes but it’s not on your shoulders. Come on, Jesus said, let me just fire you up with this, Jesus said, the kingdom of God, it’s here right now. You gotta change the way you think. You’re not thinking about the right way. Believe that the kingdom of God is here right now. In other words, God is reigning right now in the middle of all the problems, the discouragement, the government… And people listening were like, what are you talking about Jesus? The Romans are in charge. And Jesus was like, yeah but God is here right now. He’s on the throne right now. He’s completely in charge right now. He’s running the show right now. He is the lord right now. That shouldn’t have been new news to Israel because all the way through, all the way through the Bible you see versus like say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” Say among the nation, “The Lord reigns.” And Israel forgot that.

But you know, held captive in Egypt, God still reigns. Every crushing defeat, every humiliation, God still reigns. The day evil carries out it’s worst and devastation God still reigns and he’s still got a plan. I wanna tell you we still have a message that the world needs to hear right now. People need to know that we have met God and he has changed our lives and he is reigning over every situation right now. Like, there’s no circumstance, there’s no situation that’s beyond hope. Even if the situation is death itself, we still have a God who rose up out of that grave and defeated death. There is hope beyond the grave and there’s, we say this, but do you believe that there’s no prison too strong? There’s no addiction too great. There’s no problem too hard. How many of you believe there’s no sickness or no disease too hard? Or paralyzed in your body, paralyzed with fear, possessed by evil, God still reigns and when the world is coming apart and there’s wars and rumors of wars and the leaders are dropping out and the leaders are going crazy and you feel like you’re failing, you gotta say it with me today. Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” The Lord still reigns. He’s still on the throne and Jesus said, I will build my church and even hell itself won’t stand against it. Am I encouraging somebody right now? Am I encouraging you right now that God still reigns? He’s building your church. He’s building the church and it’s not on your shoulders.

It’s not about what’s happening right now because I’ll tell you this, who you’re becoming, what God is doing through wherever you are is more important than what’s happening right now. Who you’re becoming is more important. Jesus is building you and he’s building your church and the Lord still reigns and he’s not changed everybody. He is the same God today. He’s the same God yesterday and he’s the same God tomorrow and I came here today to say it’s not on your shoulders. You guys receive this today. Come on, give God praise everybody. Come on, let’s stand to our feet. Let’s just praise him. Give God praise.