God's Crosscultural Kingdom - Apr 19, 2026

Good morning. Welcome to Wilmington Community Evangelical Church. We're always happy to It's great to see you here. And I hope you are enjoying the spring, all the flowers and the trees, without having to deal with allergy. I have lived in the US for 20 years, and I lived in 3 different states— Arizona, Missouri, and Delaware. And everywhere I go, allergy seems to follow me. In the US, I never had the problem in China. But I guess I cannot complain too much because it's only a seasonal allergy, not a year long. So there is relief for the most part of the year. So thank God for that. Okay, now here is the question. Does anybody remember what's our mission statement for this church?

And you do too.

Michael, go ahead.

Empowering people to serve God in a cross-cultural community through transformed living.

Very good. We can give you a prize later. So empowering people to serve God in a cross-cultural community through transformed living. And I think Pastor Paul is going Paul is going to preach through the lenses— sorry, through the lenses of those 4 different components, and he'll be preaching from the book of Ephesians, several passages in different chapters. But I want to speak from the cross-cultural elements. Michael and Wendy used to run this cross-cultural couples fellowship. So as the name indicates, it's a fellowship for couples who are from different cultural backgrounds. Most of the couples are Chinese wives and American husbands, with a few exceptions. And the idea was to help those couples to overcome cultural barriers and other challenges to have better marriage. And Forrest and I, my husband Forrest and I, we attended for a while and then we stopped going because we think we have pretty good marriage. And even though we are from different cultural backgrounds, but we actually have a lot in common. And in fact, we have probably less difference with each other than we do with other people from the same cultural background. I don't know whether we just assimilated with each other over time, or we were able to make compromises, so we achieved this equilibrium or something. But anyway, as I think more about our marriage, and I more and more realize the fact that we are both Christians really plays a very important role in our marriage, in the quality and the beauty and the stability of our marriage. And because we know we not only answer to each other, but we answer to a higher order and higher authority, we need to answer to God. You know, despite all the differences we have, you know, in the different aspects of life, we do share one common identity, and that is Christianity. We are all children of God. And so I thank God very much for my husband, for Easter, my marriage, and for that common identity. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace, for your Son Jesus Christ. Through him, we can be reconciled with each other and with you. Your kingdom is a cross-cultural kingdom. You welcome all nations. You desire everyone to be saved. Lord, help us to live out our heavenly identity to be peacemakers on earth. To spread your good news of salvation so more people will get to know you and follow you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Good morning. Would you please rise as we begin our time of worship? Um, this first song is Blessed Be Your Name, and it's actually my son Titus's favorite song. And they're not here yet this morning, but we'll sing it— we'll sing it later at home. Um, he loves to walk around the house saying, "Bless the name of the Lord, bless the name of the Lord," getting us to play the song for him. But hearing him say that is just so beautiful, and it's just a reminder of what this song says, that no matter what happens in our lives, that we, um, can bless the name of the Lord and that he is worthy of our honor and our praise, and, um, that the blessings he gives us, we can pour back to him.

Blessed be your name in the land that is plentiful, where your streams of abundance flow. Blessed be your name. Blessed be your name when I'm found in the desert place. Though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be your name.

Every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say, blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your glorious name.

And blessed be your name. When the sun's shining down on me, when the world's all as it should be, blessed be your name. And blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering. Though there's pain in the offering, blessed be your name.

Every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise. And when the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say, blessed be the name of the Lord. Lord, blessed be your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be your glorious name. You give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name. Oh, you give and take You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name. And blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your glorious name. Oh, blessed be the name of the Lord. —of the Lord. Blessed be your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your glorious name. Amen.

Sing, you give life.

You give life. You are love.

You bring light to the darkness.—

you give hope, you restore every heart that is broken.

And great are you, Lord.

You give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope. You restore every heart that is broken.

And great are you, Lord. And it's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise to you, Holy. Great are you.

Lord, you give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, you restore every heart that is broken.

And great are you, Lord. Sing, it's your breath. And it's your breath in our lungs. And so we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs. And so we pour out our praise to you only. Great are you, Lord. Great are you, Lord.

Lord, you are great.

We are glad to gather in your name today.— to praise you and sing that you are great. Sing, all the earth.

And all the earth will shout your praise.

Our hearts will cry, these bones will sing. Great are you, Lord.

And all the earth will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry, these bones will sing.

Great are you, Lord.

And all the earth will shout your praise. And our hearts will cry, these bones will sing.

Great are you, Lord. And it's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise to you, oh. It's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise to you only. Great are you, Lord. Great are you, Lord.

Thank you for the cross, Lord. Thank you for the price. You paid, bearing all my sin and shame.

In love you came and gave amazing grace.

Thank you for this love, Lord. Thank you for The nail-pierced hands. Wash me in your cleansing flow. Now all I know, your forgiveness and embrace.

Worthy is the Lamb.

Seated on the throne, we crown you now with many crowns. You reign victorious.

I am lifted up.

Jesus, Son of God, the darling of heaven, crucified. Worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the Lamb.

Thank you for the cross.

Thank you for the cross, Lord. Thank you for the price you paid, bearing all my sin and shame. In love you came and gave amazing grace. And thank you for this love, Lord. Thank you for the nail-pierced hands. Wash me in your cleansing —glow. Now all I know, your forgiveness and embrace.

Worthy is the Lamb seated on the throne. We crown you now with many crowns.

You reign victorious.

I am lifted up. Jesus, Son of God.

The darling of heaven crucified. Worthy is the Lamb.

Worthy is the Lamb. Oh, worthy Worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the Lamb. Jesus, Lamb of God, worthy is your name. Jesus, you're the Lamb of God, worthy is your name. Oh, Jesus, Lamb of God, worthy is your name. Jesus, you are the Lamb of God. Worthy is your name. Sing worthy. Worthy is your name.

Lord, we sing worthy is your name. We declare that you are the Lamb who is seated on the throne. And we are expectant of what we're going to learn this morning as we dive into your word, as we seek you, and as we find you. In your name we pray. Amen. May I greet those around you?

Good morning. Paul asked me to share a testimony this morning. I'm not doing the scripture reading. Yeah, I thought I'd share quickly maybe what my call to missions was back when I was doing missionary work. But back in 2012, I started going to Virginia Tech which I don't know if you saw the news, but there was a skydiver landed on the scoreboard yesterday at the spring game. But that's not why I came up here to talk about. But so 2012, I started going to Virginia Tech and I entered their Corps of Cadets program. And so in my mind, I was going to go through these 4 years and then enter the military. I was studying economics and political science. So in my mind, that was like a good combo for the military or go into public service in some way afterwards. But in 2014, my parents got stationed in the Middle East in Bahrain, which is a very small island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. And during this time, I went to go visit them while they were there, and the island has like nothing to do on it. And so my mom took me to do a tour of the Grand Mosque on the island. It's a huge building. It's very beautiful and ornate. And the tour guide's very polite, but he's saying things like, "Oh, yes, you know, we Muslims, we respect Jesus so much, but, you know, we believe he's just a prophet. He wasn't the Son of God." And so I'm like, "Well, I obviously believe that Jesus is the Son of God." But at the time, I didn't really know how to defend it from Scripture. Oops. And so I started to look at a an apologetics website called CARM, C-A-R-M dot org, if you're curious, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. And it has all these great resources for it, like different world religions. And so I started studying this, and so Islam in particular really captured my interest. And so fast forward another 2 years, so I'm a senior, and I don't really know what I'm going to do after graduating. I It seems like every opportunity that I had to pursue the military, God just kept putting walls up. So it'd be small things like the— because I was raised as a military kid, they had my entire medical records from the time I was a baby, and they disqualified me from serving as an officer because of childhood asthma. It's like, are you kidding me? Like, I PT every day. Like, childhood asthma? But the more I pursued this dream, the more God kept just seemed to say, "No, no, no, like that's not your path." And so it finally, senior year, I just kind of sat down and I surrendered it and I said, "Okay, God, I don't know what you have for me, but I'm not going to pursue this anymore and I'm waiting on you at this point." And so I was involved with a campus ministry called Cru and it was my second semester of my senior year, they're going down to Panama City Beach, Florida for Spring Break. And the moment they announced that trip at their weekly gathering, God said, "You need to go on that trip. You need to go on that trip. It's really knocking on my heart." I'm like, "Okay, God, okay." So that was like the last night to sign up, and so I signed up and then go down there, and we're getting trained to do evangelism while we're on the beach. And God's pressing on my heart the whole time we're doing this training. He's like, "You're going to share the gospel with Muslims on the beach." Like, okay, God. And then the day that we're headed down to the beach after we've done our training, God's like, you're going to share the gospel with Muslims today. Like, okay, God, like, I get it. Like, it's coming. And so we get down there on the beach, and I, even as a senior, I had never really done this kind of like initiative evangelism before, where you just go and like talk to people and share the gospel with them. And so I had a freshman teaching me how to do initiative evangelism as a senior. It was kind of a humbling moment. But we get down there on the beach, and he shares with the group, and he's like, "Okay, you're going to be in charge of the next one." Like, "Okay, okay." We get down there, and there's a group of guys who are there. They're clearly Arab, and so I had a sinking suspicion. I was like, "These are probably going to be the guys." And the Holy Spirit immediately tugged on my heart, "Go talk to them. Go talk to them. I want you to share the gospel with them." I'm looking at them like, "Not today, God." So I just walked past them. I'm like, uh, I'm not feeling it, but the Lord, He's tugging on my shoulder the whole time. And so I turn around and I'm like, okay, God, did I walk towards this group? And this guy from— I learned later from Saudi Arabia— he just approached me while I was walking toward them. It didn't make much sense, but we had these like little spiritual surveys we were doing, and through that process I was able to share the gospel gospel with him. It's the first time he'd ever heard it before. And later on, I think like 2 days later, I talked to another student from Saudi Arabia here visiting on spring break, and kind of the same thing. We went through spiritual survey with them and I shared the gospel with them. First time he had heard it. No decisions that week. But it was after that second, second person in particular, all this interest that I had kind of in this apologetics is turn into a passion. I was like, these people, they think Jesus is a prophet. Like, they got to know his life itself. Like, it's too little that they think he's just a holy man. Like, they got to know that he's the Son of God. And so I went in the span of 3 days from not knowing what I was doing after graduating to, let's go save the Muslim world. And so I got in touch with the leaders, and I said, hey, this is what God's doing in my heart. And they're like, where did you come from? Like, So out of left field. But it was funny because my region was— again, it was like God's timing. They had extended the deadline for students to apply to go on their international internship for just that week. And so I was able to apply and then I headed overseas. But I'll save the rest of my stories overseas for another time. But I guess my big lesson is, hey, when God puts something on your heart, you know, go for it. Step out in faith. But thank you.

Okay, we actually are reading from several passages, so to save us the disagreement on the reading speed, I'll do the reading today. Alright. God has now revealed to us the mystery of his will regarding Christ, which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: at the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth. The mystery made known to me by revelation, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has has now been revealed, in that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church. For we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should. Thank you.

Thank you, Yuna. Well, I don't know if you saw what was in common between those two— those four passages, but they all have the word mystery in them. So we are going to get into it today. There are 4 mentions of mystery in the book of Ephesians, which is a series that we're doing right now. And what I was doing as I was working on this, I realized that our mission statement also has 4 parts. And the 4 parts of our mission statement match or line up with the 4 mysteries. And so that's what we're going to talk about in a minute. But I just wanted to share with you how 2 years ago, almost to the week, I was being interviewed for this role as the pastor of the English ministry. And there were 20 elders and deacons all around this, a bunch of the movable tables that they'd set up downstairs in Room 103. And so they went one at a time around the room, and we came to Elder Xu Xiang. We call him Xiang Xi in English, right? Xiang Xi. I'm not used to saying Elder Xiangxi asked his question. He said, "Would you change our mission statement? And if you would, what would you change about it?" And do you remember what I said? I said, "I wouldn't change a single word." So in other words, I accept the exact mission that you have. And so I wanted to look at that right now. Just now, Yuna reminded us But I don't know if you all heard Michael, who was involved in writing it. So Michael's got it more memorized than most of us. But you weren't shouting it out, so you might not have seen it. It says, empowering people to serve God in a cross-cultural community through transformed living. So I've arranged those on the page so you can see the four parts. And we'll connect those to each of the mysteries in a minute. I said I wouldn't change a word, but we're going to see during this message there is— we need to go a little bit deeper to understand what is it talking about. And maybe we will want to do some kind of a redrafting at some point in the future. We can talk about that later. Now Ephesians, we didn't get a chance really to introduce it properly last week. We had chapter 1 from Elder Tan, but what I wanted to remind, if you didn't And if you aren't aware, the theologians will all gush about the book of Ephesians, saying things like, "Ephesians is the crown of Paul's letters." And I've quoted John Calvin here. I hesitated to do that. I don't like to quote theologians as if I'm aligning myself with them, which I am not, because there's a lot of other superlatives that are mentioned about the book. But it mentions the 4 times this word mystery, and I wanted to— assure you that mysteries doesn't mean that we can't understand it. It really is aligned with the idea of a hidden wisdom. A mystery is hidden wisdom, something that's sublime, something that we have to contemplate to fully understand. These are mysteries that have been revealed, but we still takes a while to get it. That is what we're going to see in these 4 passages. So I wanted to And we're going to review a shorter version of the 4 that we just read, and I'm calling this one the cosmic mystery, cosmic meaning the heaven and earth being united in one under the authority of Christ. God has now revealed to us the mystery of His will. At the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth. Now, He's actually already doing that. It's not like we're going to be all under the devil's authority and then some sudden one day will be under Christ's authority. No, he's already doing it. It's like Adam and Eve were in the garden and they were supposed to spread it out over the whole earth. And so Jesus now has established his authority and it's spreading out over the whole earth. So this is the first mystery that's mentioned, and it reminds me of the— all the way back to the book of Genesis when God made us in his image. What did he say? Go fill the earth. Right? Reproduce. Fill the earth and subdue it, rule over it. And in the next chapter too, when He made them, put Adam and Eve in the garden, what did He have them do? Eat fruit all day? No. What was He going to do in there? They had to keep and guard, guard and keep the garden, to tend it, take care of it, cultivate it. So they had a job to do. But what happened is, we all know, there's this fall and things went wrong for a while. They went sideways for many, many years. But when Jesus came, it's like a reboot. Does anybody remember Windows 3.1? There used to be the operating system on your personal computers that every once in a while it just went haywire. It just would— you'd have this little icon on the screen and it just meant you had to turn it off and start it over again. And you probably don't remember that, most of you, but ya, we have really good computers now. So God rebooted the universe when he brought Jesus to make all things new and to wipe away every tear. Now in the next chapter it talks about this bringing together of the Jews and the Gentiles, and in the beginning of chapter 3 he summarizes that saying, "This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the the promise of Christ Jesus. So again, we don't really appreciate it because we've never lived in a world where only the Jews had God and nobody else did. But if you could imagine what it was like to be— to go, like, let's say you wanted to go to Jerusalem. We're tourists, okay? We're going to go to Jerusalem and we're going to go in and see what's happening and maybe take in a worship service. And you get to the gate and they say, "No, you can't come in here." And he said, "Well, do I have to buy a ticket? Ticket won't work. I'll change my clothes." "Nope, that won't work either." "What could I do?" "Well, you could go get circumcised over there." No, that was a joke.

You're out.

We don't appreciate what that was like, but they appreciated it. And that was this mystery that God was somehow going to overcome this barrier between His people that had been designated His people and His, His temple and His laws going to be opened up to the whole world. The Jews were proud of themselves, and they had, as you remember from the story of Jonah, when he had a chance to proclaim the word to other nations, he didn't want to go, right? But God, through Jesus, has destroyed the barrier that is between us. He's overcome the pride that divides nations. And in his kingdom, it says, every tribe, every nation, and every tongue. Now, the third mystery we see in chapter 5 when he's talking about this marriage that Yuna just described. I'm so envious. We could all have— we could all grow in our marriages. I hope you're still growing in your marriage, right? Even if you don't go to that fellowship. But the wedding, the marriage relationship is shown right here in Ephesians as a mystery, not just a mystery of how a husband and wife can actually get along, but what? Of Christ and the church. Now, I'd heard that many, many years ago that, "Oh, there's this mystery." You hear it at weddings. At weddings, the pastor will say, "Yes, a wedding is like Christ and the church," but it doesn't grab you, but it grabbed me many years later when it really is talking about Christ and me. It's each of us as individuals that are getting married to God. Are you married to God? We talk about having a personal relationship, but what the mystery is that this so-called personal relationship with God the Father is one— is a marriage, is like a marriage. It's not It's not the same exactly, but it's like a marriage. And the best part about it is we can be naked and not ashamed, just like in the garden. And being naked before God doesn't mean that we take off our clothes. It means that our hearts are not hiding. Remember, Adam and Eve had to run away when God come walking into the garden. Let's go away, right? But we don't have to do that. Because this— what Christ has done for us is to heal that relationship so that we can be intimate in our thoughts with God. Reminds me of how Ruth was the stranger when she went into the nation of Israel, and she was just as poor as can be, and yet she's noticed by the landowner. And it's this great story. If you haven't read it, you find R-U-T-H. It's in the earlier part of the Bible. And read it. It's very short, touching love story of how this woman is taken in, and that is how God has taken us in even though Ruth didn't seem to have anything to offer. And the last is in the last chapter of Ephesians where Paul talks about making known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador. Now, this is not a mystery God is revealing to us. This is a mystery God is revealing through us to other people. And part of the mystery is how come it works. First of all, why would he entrust us to teach his word to others instead of doing it directly? Because we are earthen vessels, right, after all. But also that people will listen and that that process of sharing the gospel really builds our community together. And that we are his representatives like ambassadors. So this is the fourth mystery, which I call missional. So there we have cosmic, corporate, personal, and missional. So now I know in the Chinese youth group, at least, the youth love a test. They love to be tested. Why? Because they're really good and smart and bright and quick, and they always get really good scores, so they love a test. So are you ready? Do you still have your youthful curiosity and interest in being tested? I know Matthew's getting ready. He's right here in the second row. All right, the question is this: we got the four mysteries and the four parts of the mission statement. Which is which? So I want to ask, which one of these aligns with the cosmic mystery? Joining heaven and earth, do you think? Bringing the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. Anybody? This is the hardest because there's 4 possibilities, multiple choice. Which element is the cosmic— lines up with— Thy will on earth be done as it is in heaven. Be done on earth. That helps us get there. Serve God. Serve God. That's what I put. What do you think? They're all kind of connected, right? They are all connected. So this is what I put down. I had to think about it too. To serve God, when we're thinking, when we zoom out a little bit, it takes a lot of form. What we do as we serve is different for each person, but what we're doing is part of what God is doing at bringing his kingdom all over the earth. We're just one little part of it. So I am lining up— serving God is this part of this cosmic mystery which we find in Ephesians 1. Now, which one is the cross-cultural community? I'm sorry, that was the easy one. Which is the corporate? Which is the corporate part, the corporate mystery. That would be the cross-cultural ministry. This is the Jews and Gentiles come together. What is it for us? Do we have Jews and Gentiles here? Are there any Jews here? There might be one or two former Jews. One? But what do we have? So we don't have Jew and Gentile, but what do we have instead? I'm sorry? We have Greeks and non-Greeks, right? I'm Greek and everybody else isn't. No, we have— I finally got a laugh out of you guys. Just a little too early or too cold to laugh, I guess. So we have Chinese and non-Chinese, right? We don't have enough Greeks to call ourselves a group in this group. So we have much better than most churches, right? We're more naturally cross— this comes easy for us, this part. So we are pretty good at it. And then what would be the personal mystery, the individual relationship with God part? This is the one that I'm saying that because we have this relationship with God, we're his wife. So we're always on the move. We're being transformed. I'm sorry? Someone had a thought? So hopefully through that relationship, we have children, right? We're going to have— a good relationship with God, and that is how we are transformed in our living. And then the last one is easy because there's only one more left. When we empower people, we're empowering others, right? We're empowering each other, and that is our mission. That is the mystery of the gospel that we reveal through our lives, even though we don't always do a great job. But in— with that record, that the scripture we just read, we pray for God's blessing, the Spirit to guide us and to be successful. So here is the summary: we empower people missionally, we serve them cosmically— that sounds silly, doesn't it— in a cross-cultural community corporately, and through transformed living personally. Can you see how those line up. So when we put this together, we see these four aspects of our mission are all contained in this pinnacle revelation in the book of Ephesians, and it's a picture of the New Covenant in action. So I'd like to give a pat on the back to Xiang and Michael. And Michael told me also Pastor Daniel, PD, was— and Dwight was involved, and several of you in drafting that some years ago. Do you remember how many years ago that was? 5? Before COVID So good job, right? You didn't realize when at the time that those— that that was such a broad and really well-written. So I can't take any credit for it and I won't. All right. So what is the application for all of these 4 points? And it's pretty— it's pretty interesting when we look at this Understanding that God is at work bringing together, Christianizing the whole world, that we're just a part of it. It's sometimes called bringing shalom, bringing peace, or restoring the world to the way that he intended it when it was just us in the garden. So we're a part of that. Now I wanted to call your attention to the story of Joseph. And do you remember how Joseph just got knocked to the ground over and over. He got put in the pit, right? And then he got sold as a slave, and then he got put into prison. And yet you can see in Joseph, he knows that God is at work. He seems to have this, this inner knowledge or confidence and never forgot that he is loved and that God is still providential, in control. And so if we could have that kind of confidence in God that he is, he is at work, that he is a winner, and that his purpose then becomes our purpose, that it's meaningful even if we do something small, it's part of something that's very big. And it's not just us building our own thing, it's part of what he's doing, and so it doesn't have to be very burdensome. And if we live that way, I imagine, did you see, is it called, which one is the Joseph story that DreamWorks did, the movie that he made about? What was it called? Something about color dreams. Yeah, that was a good one too. There's a lot of movie and play versions about Joseph. But you can imagine he's a very magnetic sort of contagious personality. It's like if you meet— if you're not jealous of him, you love him. And he very quickly— the Pharaoh met him first time, what did he do? "I want you to be my prime minister." And so that we could have the so-called contagious Christianity, and that's what I hope to see us doing in this part of our mission, to serve cheerfully and with confidence. Now we're really good at this cross-cultural part. So I don't need to give you any advice on it. You could give me advice. But what I just want to point out, one part of it, which is that God has already dissolved the differences. He's already put us all on spiritually on the same footing regardless of if you're Greek or Chinese or something else. So we don't have to try that hard is what I'm saying is we just kind of let it happen. And therefore, again, we're all very good at it, but we're spiritually provided for. We just kind of inherit something that's already there. And therefore, we can be curious about other people instead of being resentful of them. And we don't have to be isolated from them. We can be hospitable and just get to know people. So we want to be more like Abraham, not like Jonah. Abraham, do you remember, he lived there was no Israel when he went into the Promised Land. At the time, it was still the land of Canaan. So he had to get a lot around— he had to get along with a lot of rough characters. But he did a great job of it, and you can read all about it in the book of Genesis. So this, uh, this is very powerful. And you know, when Jesus says, if you love each other, then the whole world will know that he is God's Son. And to think of that as individuals loving each other. But if you think of different ethnicities loving each other, or cultures loving each other, that also speaks very powerfully. So we want to see more evangelism. So we think if we want more evangelism, we have to be more clever about the way we talk about God, better apologetics. And that won't hurt. Right, James? Did it hurt to do apologetics? No, it won't hurt, but it may not be enough to put it over. In some cases, we need to go the extra mile and demonstrate, model what love looks like. And so the last one here is— oh yeah, and so this is where we're going. It's not just the cultures that we're bridging, but also male and female and slave or free. Slave or free is different economic strata. So we could have upper class, middle class, lower class, and we can all get along. And I think the church does that pretty well, in America anyway, that allows us to all mix up. And you've seen this before, I've shown it in previous sermons, but this is like one of my favorite metaphors, is the rock tumbler. Who's actually used a rock tumbler before? Raise your hand. So you put in these like really rough rocks, like right out of the ground, and you put them in there for like 24 hours or something. And they come out and they're these smooth, beautiful stones. And all the colors come out and they get polished and the quality of the stone shows through. And it's really beautiful. And that's the good news. What's the bad news? While they're rubbing it up against each other, you wouldn't want to be one of those stones getting your rough edges banged off, would you? So we rub into each other. That's sort of the mechanism for how cross-cultural community works. So moving on, it's not the last one, it's the second to last. Our relationship with God. I'm looking for us to think about this marital aspect, or nuptial, which is a fancy word for marital, and to feel like in our prayer life, do we have to have quality of prayer? Should we read a prayer out of a book? Maybe. Key element is to just not hide like Adam and Eve hiding in a bush, to be honest before him. As soon as we do that, of course, we're going to confess our shortcomings. We all know you can't hide them. So that is the beginning of building that relationship. And then people who do that, they become more patient with other people because they've got that foundation, and they become more forgiving and less anxious. They're speaking to myself now. They have a sense of safety. In Chinese, we say, "Anquan gan," right? Anquan gan. Where do you get anquan gan? Where do you get a sense of safety? From your spouse? Well, that would be nice, but that's never going to be enough. As Eunice said, we have this other power beyond that. That gives us that sense of safety, and therefore we don't have to be anxious. So this is our transformed living and ongoing transforming. So last one now is the mission to empower other people. I like this word empower because sometimes when you talk about we should spread the word and we should sort of drag people into the church even if they don't want, even though they don't want to be. Right? Just go find someone on the beach and, "Come on, come over to my church and don't go over there anymore." And of course, there's nothing wrong with that. But if we imagine what we're really helping people a lot, we're empowering them, we're giving them such a great gift. It's not a transaction, we're investing something in them, then we can be bold. And who was more bold in the Bible to present God's word? Who do you think were the most bold, the boldest guys— I almost said dude, but that's not appropriate. You don't have Bible dudes, you have Bible heroes. You guys are not laughing at anything. I got a smile out of Tommy. Who were the most bold characters in the Bible? Matthew? Paul? Absolutely right, Paul. Absolutely. He was so bold that he got whipped and chained and he got shipwrecked and everything. He got himself in trouble plenty of times, but he was bold because he knew what he was giving was such a great gift. And so that's what we can do. Now, going back to the beginning, remember Elder Xiang? He asked me, would I change anything in The mission statement, well, I just told you it's like perfect recapitulation of the book of Ephesians. So what could be better, right? Well, I have a thought. And that is from a book called The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. He's a Catholic business consultant. And he does what he calls organizational health. He helps organizations be more healthy. And he wrote this book, I forget, 15 years ago? And he basically said that mission statements are obsolete. They're passé because they don't work. And so what he's done is something similar, but he's recast them as something else, which is to put your ideas from your mission statement in the form of the answers to 4 questions. And they are: Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? And how do we succeed? So if we were to take our mission statement and put it into this Lencioni structure, it looks like this. Why do we exist? To serve God. How do we behave? Cross-culturally. What do we do? Transformed living. And how do we succeed? By empowering others. Can you, can you see that? Does that make sense? So that gives— having the question with the answer together, it kind of gives a little bit of clarity, doesn't it? Now, I wanted to wrap up here, but there is a fifth question that Lencioni does in his— when he gets an organization, he's trying to help them, he's a consultant. He gets them clear on what their mission is with these four questions, and then he says, "What is the most important thing that your organization is doing or needs to do right now?" So I want you to think about this for a minute. I'm going to take maybe 15 seconds. So now that we know what is— why we're here, what are we doing, and how do we succeed, what's the next step? What is our priority? And that will help bring us together as a church and help us to move forward. So let's think about it. Now I want you to go home and think about that too. That'll be your homework. And you come back and next week if you have any thoughts or during the week, I appreciate it if you would share them with me. But I want to share the thing that's most important right now as far as I know. Based on the interview from 2 years ago, which is that out of those 20 elders and deacons sitting around the table, I would say 40% of them asked the same basic question. Do you remember what it was? It was, "What are you going to do about the youth? How are you going to change the apparent reality that, you know, 85% of our WCC graduates, even the ones that stay in Delaware, don't become part of our church anymore. That's a head-scratcher. That doesn't— that's not right. Shouldn't happen. And it makes us feel that we're not doing something right. So what's the most important thing right now? It is to become a church that our next generation calls their own. That they feel, "This is our church," instead of saying, "Oh, that's my dad's or my granddad's church." I'm suggesting that our priority right now, given those 4 points of our mission statement, is how can we become a church that our next generation calls their own? And I'm not imposing this. This is what I'm distilling out of my 2 years here, what's most important to our people. And I know that because you know who comes to our English ministry? We get a lot of people whose native tongue is Mandarin and they sit with us. Why would anyone— they have a Mandarin service over there. Why are they going to come and sit over here? One reason, because their kids are here. And I've seen so many, like, I hate to name names because I'll get— there were several couples that while their kids were still in high school, they would come to English ministry fellowship. As soon as their kid graduated, they went back to the Mandarin. And I'm not complaining. I'm— I am not complaining. What's the opposite? I'm praising them for loving their kids, for committed to their kids, for showing up for their kids by coming to the English ministry, even though they prefer the Mandarin, in order to solve this. And so what I'm trying to say is there's a lot of passion and love and commitment and energy that's going into this. And the first breakfast I had when I came was also with Xiang and Michael. And we're headed out of the breakfast and Xiang said, "Don't worry." I said, "I wasn't worried." He said, "Don't worry, you're gonna notice. You're gonna do the math someday and you're gonna notice that the English congregation can't support a pastor or certainly can't support two pastors, so you're going to get nervous. I said, "Why would I get nervous?" He said, "We know it, but we as a full church, mainly the Mandarin congregation, is totally committed to the English ministry because we know and we care about the next generation." So what I'm trying to say is that we're already fully behind this, I believe, but I'd still like to know any other ideas. Now, how— there's sort of some sub-things about how we get there. And this, again, I want your ideas. But I came up with 3 that I think we need. If we want to be a next generation call-it-their-own kind of church, we need to develop spaces. And good news is we're already doing that. We already have a budget for that. We're having that— that's underway. So that's good news. But we can't just stay still. So in November, you're gonna have a chance to vote as a congregation on whether we want to go forward. Now, I hope the design— if it's not a good design, maybe we could put it off a year. But we have to develop something, spaces, in order to have some sort of innovation or development going on. And but, but while we do that, we can't just go into debt and borrow a bunch of money and build something that nobody, that nobody wants either. So we have to steward Resources wisely while we take necessary risk, not unnecessary risk. So how many stories— if you go online, you just church, church disaster stories, a lot of them start with big buildings and they build and they borrow. And so we're going to have to be a lot more careful than that. And the third thing is to maintain unity and teamwork as we navigate change. So we can't not change. But if we change and everybody doesn't like it and they leave, that wasn't very good navigation, was it? So just to use one example, we have some young families in our church now and they're sitting in the back. And the kids are going to be a little restless and make some noise. And so that's a— okay, that's a growing pain. So what are we going to do? We can just have them go to another room and we can pipe in the message that way. Or we can have the kids come up front and then we can do something for the kids and then have them go out. Or we have people that are bothered by the kids sit in the front. I have two whole rows that are completely empty. Or we can put up a little glass wall. Or we can put up half a glass wall. Or we can stuff handkerchiefs in the kids' mouths.

Ah, laughter.

One of those will work. So we don't know what's going to be the— what we're going to do yet, but we're going to talk about it and we'll get back to you. You have an idea, Esther? I see her raising her hand back there. So we want it main— it's such a beautiful thing that we have. I've been a part or been to visit a lot of churches, and there's not a lot of churches that— it's one that we have the unity, but also the co-workers. You should see, because I'm here all week or a lot of days in the week, and you should see the number of people that are in and out. Of this building that are working on it, doing the gardens, that are helping and really giving of their time so generously and lovingly. So we want to maintain the teamwork and the unity, steward our resources, but we got to all have the— our eyes on this same goal and therefore to be a little bit innovative. And so this time it really is the end. I want to tell you a very short story about two guitar companies. One is Martin and the other is Taylor. And if you look at their logos, you'll see the Martin Guitar Company was established in 1833, which is a big deal, and they even put it right in their logo. But Taylor doesn't have their year of establishment in their logo because they were established in 1974. And if 30 years ago Martin was the number one guitar company by far with like 90% market shares, the premium. Everybody had to have a Martin if you're a guitar player. But today it's flipped, and anybody who's a good guitar player has a Taylor, and only a few old guys have Martins anymore. What happened was— and if I'll tell you, very, very, very short version is Martin had a good thing going and they just kept making the same design. But Taylor came up and they said, you know, I I think we can make a guitar that's even better. And so they did 3 things. They did more, but they put— you see that, those little buttons up there? They put the microphone or the pickup inside the box so that you don't have to install it separately or put a microphone. You just turn the dial. It was a great innovation. Also, they put a little cut right there where you can use your fingers farther up the neck because they cut a hole or cut a curve wave right into the body of the guitar. People laughed at him. That's ugly. But it was useful. And so guitar players started to like it. And the third thing was inside the box. You can't see it. But the way they arranged the ribs within the box allowed for the sound waves to be more resonant. And so they just kept working on it instead of innovating. And so I feel like if we want to fulfill our goal then we need to be more like Taylor guitars and less like Martin guitars in due time. It's not going to happen all at once. So let's end there, and I hope that will stimulate some lively conversation, and I'm very interested in all of your ideas. So Father, we want to say thank you for your word, thank you for your promises, and I especially thank you for this church and for all of the love and effort and hard work, all the prayers, the energy, the resources, and the wisdom that was poured into it by all of the elders, the deacons, the pastor's staff, the congregation, and the volunteers, the Sunday school teachers, the donors, and the families year after year, 45 years, and all that they've built and purchased and prepared. We're thankful and we praise you for being part of that. And we also praise you as we look forward the next 45 years, confident that what you have begun, you will finish. But also, we don't know what it's going to look like. So Father, just trust you that all that's been done today will be even more beautiful if we can only live to see it. We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. Guys, as we sing this song of worship, it's called Christ Be Magnified, and this song is so beautiful just in the way it talks about the entirety of the world and creation singing one unified song in praise to Christ. Let's sing that together.

We'd hear Christ be magnified. Were the whole earth echoing his imminence, his name would burst from sea and sky, from rivers to the mountains. Mountain tops, so we'd hear Christ be magnified. And oh, Christ be magnified, let his praise arise. Christ be magnified in me. Oh, Christ be magnified From the altar of my life, Christ be magnified in me. When every creature finds its inmost its melody, and every human heart its native cry. Oh, then in one enraptured hymn of praise we'll sing, Christ be magnified. And oh, Christ be magnified. Be magnified. Let his praise arise. Christ be magnified in me. Oh, Christ be magnified from the altar of my life. Christ be magnified in me. I won't bow to idols. I'll stand strong and worship you. And if it puts me in the fire, I'll rejoice 'cause you're there too. I won't be formed by feelings. I hold fast to what is true. And if the cross brings transformation, then I'll be crucified with you. 'Cause death is just the doorway into resurrection life. And if I join you in your sufferings, then I'll join you when you rise. And when you return in glory, With all the angels and the saints, my heart will still be singing and my song will be the same. Oh, Christ be magnified, let his praise arise. Christ be magnified in me. Oh, Christ be magnified from the altar of my life. Christ be magnified in me. Christ be magnified in me.

Good morning, everybody. Are we— do we have any visitors here today? Because if so, we have something for you. You just need to raise your hand and Dwight in the back will bring you something we have for you. Okay, if not, go on to the next slide. We have the prayer circle each week on Wednesday nights, and so our next opportunity will be this coming Wednesday at 7:30. So the details are in the bulletin. If you don't know how to get to the bulletin, let me know and we'll make sure you get to that. We have it on the website down below, wccchurchcenter.com. You can navigate through that to get to the website, to the bulletin. We're having a blood drive next weekend, and I'm sure there's still spots available. Stacy's shaking her head. If you would like to donate blood, then Stacy's in the back and she can get you set up for that. Don't leave me there by myself, it's kind of lonely laying there giving blood. Great, great. Okay, Jonathan Forrester, we need some ladies to give blood too. Okay, and then Stacy. Yes. Okay, I have a colleague and he lost his entire— oh, he lost his large intestine and all, and this guy has to have blood transfusions periodically. So, you know, he— yeah, it's really important for a lot of people and there always seems to be a shortage of blood. I wanted to put a bug in your ear for Memorial Day weekend. We have an exciting weekend, exciting weekend retreat then going from Saturday Saturday to Monday. Our speaker is Reverend Dr. Andrew Lee from Wheaton College, and he also has been a pastor for many years in Chinese churches. Uh, he's pastored large Chinese churches in both Chicago and New York, but now he's at Wheaton College, and his sermon series will be Treasures of the Heart, based on that passage from Matthew and also, I think, Luke Luke, for where your treasures are, there will your heart be also. So matters of the heart. So look forward to you being able to come and join us at the retreat. I think the sign-up sheet is in the bulletin this week. I didn't check that, but I know I sent the information, so I can't imagine it not being there. If not, we'll definitely have a link for you in the email that goes out. So I just don't I don't remember if it was in the email. I didn't check. So that's it for now. If you would, Xiang, can you come forward? Sorry, first the benediction. The doxology. We sing these last words just to remember why we're here. We're here to do what the song says. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Praise him, all creatures here below.

Praise him above, ye heavenly host.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Thank you, Paul, for— Pastor Paul, for dissecting the mission statement for WCEC to reflect the profound vision of Apostle Paul for a dear church in his heart, the church in Philippi— uh, Ephesians. And also we know that is the church really the model for us to pursue after. Let's receive the benediction. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of our Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit— fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and forever. Forevermore.

Please be seated.