BECCA REYNOLDS:

It is a real good life. And I'm going to tell you something right now, that is not just for kids. I'm a kid at heart. I love listening to our kids' album. So, I want to invite you to go to Spotify and do the very same thing. Good morning, and welcome to Valley Creek Church. We are one church that meets at multiple campuses. Where are those campuses? Well, we've got Gainesville, and we've got Denton, and we've got Lewisville, we've got Flower Mound, and all of you on our online campus all over the world. And when we do those campuses, we get ready to carry the hope of Jesus to thousands of locations. My name is Becca, and I get to serve as the executive pastor here, and I am so glad that you are here. If you are with us at any of our campuses for the first time, I've been praying for you this week. And I want you to know that it is not a coincidence that you are here. You are here for a reason and for a purpose, and we're so glad that you're here because we are right in the middle of our summer series. It's a series called 60 Days of Overcoming. And we're learning that just like the people of Scripture, they had some things to overcome. Well, we can overcome in Jesus' name, too. And Jesus Himself was an overcomer. How was He an overcomer? You know what? He was able to walk in restful movement. That's how Jesus lived, in restful movement. And we want to overcome this busy, crazy, chaotic life and do the same. So, what we've done here at Valley Creek is we've rearranged. We've taken two weeks of the year, and we've done things a little bit different. We've decided that we are going to celebrate and that we are going to rest. And that's what this weekend is kicking off. It's a celebration week that we're going into rest. Rest, what does that mean? Well, it means that for the upcoming week, we're going to shut down all of our campuses. We're going to shut down our offices, our staff, our leaders, and our serve team. They're all going to take a time of much-needed rest. And I hope that you will find a way of doing the same thing. But before we rest, we want to celebrate. It's a discipline that we practice here. Celebration. Seeing the goodness of God. Calling attention, paying attention to what God does that is good. And so today, we are going to have a celebration day. And it's going to look a little bit different. You see, normally at all of your campuses, you would have your own worship teams up ready to lead you in worship. But today, we brought together some people from our worship teams from all of our campuses so that we can be in one accord and we can sing out the same songs. We're going to worship together. We're going to pray together. We're going to have communion together. And we're going to be doing this at the same time across all of our campuses. So, let's start with some celebrations. What do you have to celebrate? Well, we've got a kid's album to celebrate. We've got Valley Creek College to celebrate. We also have our reading plan. I hope you picked one up. I've been seeing so many new things of revelation from God as we've gone through the Old Testament. So, that's worth celebrating. And we also have some things that have happened so far, like our creative camp. That was worth celebrating. We had almost 100 people going and carrying the hope of Jesus on mission trips. That's worth celebrating. What about you? What do you have to celebrate? I'm going to give you a chance to think about that and then share it. We're going to take two minutes. And I want you to turn to the person next to you and ask them, "Hey, what do you have to celebrate in your life?" And you celebrate with them. And listen, if you're here today and you're not able to celebrate because you're in a hard season, can I encourage you to ask that person, "Man, would you just pray for me? Because I know God's good, but right now I'm struggling to see it." So, we're going to take two minutes. That's two minutes. And we're going to turn to the person and say, "What are you celebrating so we can celebrate the goodness of God together?" Two minutes. On the clock. Here we go. I love a good celebration. I love a good party. And you guys are celebrating each other so well. And I'll tell you what the enemy wants to do. The enemy wants to steal the spirit of celebration from us. He wants to take it away. But when the enemy tries to steal that spirit of celebration, what are we going to say? We're going to say no. No. In all things, no. Because we are overcomers. We are more than conquerors. There's a Scripture in Romans 8 that we've been looking at together. So, let's really unite our voices. Every campus. Come on, Gainesville, I want to hear you all. Denton, Lewisville, I want to hear you all the way here in Flower Mound. We're going to say the Scripture together so that we can declare the goodness of God. Read it together with me. Here we go. "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." So, come on, let's call on heaven together today.

JASON HILLIER:

So, we just worship You, Jesus. You're worthy of our song, our praise, our heart, our church. We celebrate Your abundant goodness. We joyfully sing of Your righteousness. We celebrate the goodness of God today. Thank You, Jesus. All right. Go ahead and take your seats. Find your seats for me. Oh man, God is just so good. God is so good. You're so kind to us. So, we celebrate Him on this celebration weekend because celebration is a spiritual practice. It's a spiritual discipline. What is that? That's doing what I can do now so I can do what I can't do later. Doing what I want to do now, celebrating the goodness of God so I can have things like peace in the midst of the storm later. I celebrate the goodness of God now so that I can have joy in the hardships later. I do it right now. I make it a normal practice of my life. And in fact, in the Old Testament, God told the Israelites to celebrate a festival unto Him multiple times a year. So, that's what we choose to do as a church. We take multiple times per year to just take time to celebrate. And I think that as we think about spiritual practices, we think about all the things like reading the Scripture s and prayer and meditation, and we often forget it is very much a practice of the kingdom of God to celebrate the goodness of God. What is celebration? Celebration is just paying attention and calling attention to the goodness of God. Celebration just says, I'm going to look around, I'm going to see God's goodness, and I'm going to call it out all over my life and over my family and over our church. And that's why we take this time in the summertime. We take one more time at the beginning of the year to do this celebration and rest combination. Next week, we're going to have no services on our physical campuses. And so, my encouragement to you is to keep this celebration heart, this restful movement, like going all week long, all through your life. Begin to practice, pay attention, and call attention to the goodness of God. Celebration just says, I'm going to pay more attention to what is right about God than what's wrong in the world. See, grumbling is really the opposite of that. Grumbling is paying attention, calling attention to the brokenness of the world. Celebration is the antidote. And so, as we spend time as a people celebrating all the goodness of God, we're like fighting back against the grumbling spirit. So, my encouragement to you is, any place inside of you that's like, "Man, I've been noticing a lot of what's wrong with the world, what's wrong with my life, what didn't play out, what didn't work out, and how it's not going my way." Today, we fight against that in Jesus' name by practicing celebration as a people. Today, we say things like, "Rejoice in the Lord always." I'll say it again. Rejoice. We say things like, "The joy of the Lord is my strength." We say things like the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy through the Holy Spirit. We declare and we pay attention to the goodness of God, and it's all over our lives and all over our church. And so, may we truly fight against the grumbling spirit inside of us. If you think to yourself, "Well, I don't have much to celebrate," we do as a people, and no matter what you have going on in your life, Jesus is all around us. The Holy Spirit, for those of us – Jesus, He dwells within us. The goodness of God is available to us. We live in this open heaven reality. You know what's a great thing to celebrate? That we have access to the kingdom of God now, not just then. Like, access to Jesus now, not just in the future. You know what's a great thing to celebrate? For those that are in Christ, you are the beloved sons and daughters in whom He is well pleased. That's a celebration. That's worthy of declaring, thank You, Jesus. And so, no matter what is happening in your life today, today, we're practicing celebration. We're doing what we can do now so that we can really have joy in the midst of our sorrows, troubles, storms later. And we're declaring the goodness of God all over our life and all over our church. May you live with that prodigal father kind of spirit. What's that? The spirit that says, "Hey everybody, my son is home. Let's celebrate. Look at what's happened. Look what God has done. May we not have the older brother syndrome. Oh man, I never got mine. Oh man, I feel like I'm a slave to this. I feel like I was doing it for nobody else paying attention to me." May we fight against that grumbling spirit, and may we instead grab hold of the practice of celebration. God is so good. We have so much to celebrate in Jesus' name. So, one of the things that we're going to celebrate right off the bat is something you might have heard about this week. We made one of the biggest announcements ever for our church. It's the very first major announcement of Mission Move, Create the Future. Some of you got to be here when this video was played and this announcement was made. But one more time, here's our very first big announcement of Mission Move, Create the Future from Pastor John. Go ahead and check this out.

JOHN STICKL: 

Hey. Hey, are you listening? Because I am so excited to give you our first update on Mission Move, Create the Future. You see, a few months ago, as a church, we started Mission Move, Create the Future. We said we wanted to take a next step so somebody else can take theirs and create a future that doesn't exist over the next five years. We said there's five things that we want to do together as a church. We want to create a prayer center, a sacred space where people can meet with God. We want to create a training center, a place where we can raise up leaders who are able to create the future. We want to create an Argyle campus, a university campus, and the Seven Continents Strategy, where we find great people doing great things on each continent, leaders of movements of hope and resource, and partner with them. And so, we set out on this journey together. The biggest thing that we've ever done, and I invited you to come with faith, with hope, with love, and you responded beautifully. And we said there's three things that each person we were invited to do. One is just to say, "This is my church," because you can't create a future you're not committed to. And the second thing was just to give sacrificially above and beyond what you give because to do all this takes $50 million. We have 25 million saved up, and so we needed 25 million more. And then, to commit to taking one next step each year over the next five years so we become the kind of people that can steward this future that we're creating. So, we started, and we started moving forward by faith, and we've been working diligently behind the scenes. And so, today I am so excited to announce to you that we have officially closed on our training center. We have been able to purchase an almost 40,000-square-foot building on four acres less than one mile down the road from our Flower Mound Campus. We are so excited about this building that will be the home of VC College and the Valley Creek Leadership Experience. We are so grateful that we were able to purchase this building from our friends at Trietsch United Methodist Church. We are so grateful for their church, for their team, and for their willingness to allow us to purchase this facility from them that stays a win-win. So, the resources and the facility both get to stay in the kingdom as we both get to advance the things that God has called and created each of our churches to do. And we are so excited for this facility because it's going to allow us to do everything that we've been dreaming about. This facility will have a chapel and it will have classrooms and learning labs and a cafe and hangout space and state-of-the-art cutting-edge training-center, and it will offer places, spaces, environments, and opportunities for VC College to have its first-ever home as we launch this new reality and this new initiative as we move into the future. And so, over the next year or so, we're going to be renovating and remodeling. This building will look completely different by the time it's done. We are so excited for the vision we have, the resources God has provided, and the opportunity that is in front of us. And guys, this is amazing. Like, we're literally creating a future that doesn't exist. And God in His goodness prepared a building for us less than a mile down the road. So, eventually our VC College students will be able to literally walk down the road and walk right to the prayer center. So, the prayer center will literally be a part, if you will, of a college campus. And they will be able to literally walk to the Flower Mound Campus to our offices to engage with our staff. And so, all of a sudden, there is this incredible movement and opportunity and breakthrough that God saw coming that literally saves us years of building time and a significant amount of resources and cost because we are already able to start with a fully built and established building and property. And so, I am so excited and so grateful. I also want to show you we have officially landed on our VC College look. This is our academic look. This is our institutional look. This is our spirit look, the beauty and the fullness and the vibrancy of VC College representing who we are and what we're doing. We already have more than 35 students registered for this fall for VC College's first year. God is moving, and I am so grateful. You see, of that 25 million that we need, more than 4 million has already been given. And so, as we keep giving, we keep moving, and we keep trusting God and taking next steps, God's going to keep bringing breakthroughs and provisions and supernatural movements because he's just waiting for people to create a future that doesn't exist. Can you see it? Can you see it? I think now we're starting to see it. And so, I'm so grateful for you. I'm so proud of you. Let's keep moving. Let's keep going. I may or may not have another update or two. That's right here that I will be able to share with you very shortly because we only share updates when we know it is what it is and it's done and resolved that we can say it. So, there are a couple more things that are coming because God is moving, and together we're creating a future that doesn't currently exist, and we're starting to be able to see it. Jesus, thank You for this training center. Thank You for VC College. We want to create the future with You.

JASON HILLIER: 

Oh, come on. What if we just give God a shout of praise for that? Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, God. Listen, that's a super fun announcement. It's super exciting. I want to remind everybody, when you're part of a church for any season of time, as we move forward, you move forward. As we advance, you advance. As we take hold of the vision that God has for us, you're included in that. You're not an outsider. We are a family on a mission. And so, that's a super exciting big announcement about the training center. But I also want to update you on some of the things that we've been praying for. We've had some declarations of "Let there be." You might remember this slide here that we've been talking about the different things that we're declaring over these five years. I'm going to give you an update kind of on each one, and then we're going to spend some time praying through that. So, let there be $50 million, the resources we need to do what God has called us to do. Well, I'm happy to tell you, even beyond the video you just saw, we're actually up to a total of 30 million given so far, 25 plus five, so that's incredible. The other 20 of that is in this house because it has been committed to, and I'm believing by faith that God is going to release generosity all across. Our church families continue to do that. Five strategic partners. We're actually making movement on those partners. We're meeting people across the globe. We're making friends. We're sending out mission teams. There is a framework that we're looking for those ministry partners. So, we are making movement on that. It's super exciting. We'll announce the first one when we know who the next one is in the series of a total of seven, right? Five fresh ones, and then Koshy and Joyce in India, and then us here in North America. So, five partners we're looking for. 25 new staff. We have eight of those since the year started, which is super exciting. Somewhere in the range of about 10% of our staff. So, it's amazing that God has already given us so many people from within this house being raised up as leaders with spirit and wisdom. Eight new staff members. So, we're excited for that. 250 new leaders. I'm happy to tell you we are actively adding leaders. Even though it's not marked there, we're going to mark it about two times per year.

So, we'll give it a full update on how many it's been, but they are happening right now. Some of you are those leaders. We're super excited for your next season, super excited for your launch in the fall or whenever you're going to launch, and leading. So, that's happening in real time. 100 new VC College students, man, we're up to 35 plus. The reason we want to leave this an open-ended one is because applications are still open and available. You can apply for this fall. So, what does that mean for us as a church family? Well, who do you know? Who do you want to have a conversation with? It's amazing when you say the words, "I see in you," how that can unlock something in someone. So, I challenge everybody in our church. What's one young adult you can have the conversation with? They could be a transfer student. They could be looking. They could be considering their options. They might be a great fit for VC College. And 2,000 new people reached. We've reached no one. No, I'm just kidding. We've reached lots of people, and some of you are those people, and you're listening to this right now. And here's what I want to say to you. We're so glad you're here, and we're so glad you're part of what God is doing. And so, if you've come here since the backside of the mission moved to create the future announcement, you should have been here when church. We're so glad you're here right now. Let's actually create the future together. So, same thing. We'll update that on a regular basis as we kind of do the count and realize, okay, how many people have been reached across our church? But here's what I'm going to ask you to do. Everybody stand up with me. All the campuses, everybody stand up with me because we want to pray prayers of gratitude through each one of these. We got a lot to be thankful for. God is moving. Hope is on the move in our church family. So, I want to encourage you to lift your voices. Wherever you're at, begin to pray prayers of gratitude, starting with God's generosity to our church. Thank You, Lord, for the generosity of our church and our people. Thank God for His provision. Come on, raise your voice right now. Thank God for His provision in our church and in your life. You provide for us, Jesus. You're good to us, Jesus. You resource what You call us to, and You're doing that right now. Thank You, God, for the generosity of so many across our church family. We thank You for Your generous spirits. Thank You, God, for those five strategic partners. We know that they're out there right now. They're working in ways that we can't see, but we're going to meet them. You have them appointed for us at an anointed time to meet them, so we pray for each one of them. We bless them in the name of Jesus. We bless their ministries. Who are those partners going to be? God, would You reveal more to us? But thank You that You're working on behalf of those partners. The 25 new staff, we bless the eight that have already started and so many more that are to come. What if you just raise your voice and pray for those new staff members? Maybe you know a few of them by name. Who are they? Pray that they would have an amazing breakthrough as they start here on the Valley Creek staff, as they're getting started on this calling of their life, that they would just be so filled with spirit and wisdom, and we're thankful, God, that there are more to come. We believed You for the provision of new staff members. Thank You, Jesus, for that. For all of our new leaders in the house, God, thank You. You're raising up new leaders. Man, thank God for the leaders we have and the leaders he's raising up inside of our church. Thank You, God, for each one of those 250 new leaders that's joining us for their next steps, that they are so filled with life and hope that they are really becoming everything You called them to be as a leader. For our new VC College students, begin to thank God for the next generation and for all those that are going to step into BC College in the fall. Prayers of gratitude for each one of them, for their journey, and for VC College as a resource. Thank You, God, for our students. Thank You, God, for men and women who are going to be so different than the world around them. They're going to be people of character. They're going to be people who they are and who You are, what they're created to do. They have an identity, God. Thank You for our VC College students. And then, Lord, we just finish out by just thanking You that we're reaching new people, and they're being baptized, and they're saying Jesus is the Lord, and they're stepping into a new season of following. And so, Lord, will You continue to help us reach those new people? Thank You for all the people in our spaces that are brand new to the Valley Creek family. We bless them in the name of Jesus. We're thankful that they're here. We declare over them that the best of their life is yet to come. Why? Because they're being reached for the kingdom, and they're stepping forward in faith, and they're part of this church family. So, all these things, Jesus, we pray with a confidence, with a gratitude, in the name of Jesus, we pray.

ERIC SOMMERHAUSER: 

So, can you hear Him? Can you hear the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the Good Shepherd calling Himself, calling you back to Himself? See, I know that that's what God is doing this morning with us across all of our campuses, across our entire church. He's calling us back to Himself through celebration, through prayer, and through communion. So, why don't you go ahead and find your seat? What we're going to do is we're going to have all of our teams across all of our campuses begin to actually distribute the elements of communion. And communion is for anyone who has placed their trust in the finished work of Jesus. It's for anyone that's placed their trust in the finished work of Jesus. And communion is a practice that Jesus has given His disciples. And the one thing that He speaks about communion is He says, "Anytime you do this, every time you partake of this, here is my one ask, that you remember me." It's like Jesus is saying, in the chaos, in the busyness, in the craziness, in the grief, in the realities, in the fun, in the good vacation, in the bad vacation, in the no vacation, Jesus is saying, you can come back to me anytime and every time. Because it's like with communion, we get reminded of these things that we so easily forget. Like, this life of being a disciple of Jesus, of being a Christian, of being a follower of Jesus, has a lot more to do with Jesus's obedience than my obedience. It has a lot more to do with what Jesus has done for me than what I have to do for Him. And here's the thing with communion. It's serious, but it is not somber. Communion is serious, but it is not somber, because we realize what communion means, right? This means that Jesus's body was broken, so mine doesn't have to be. Jesus's blood was poured out so mine doesn't have to be. See, communion means so much to us as followers of Jesus. Because communion means that the sins that I couldn't seem to scratch off are the ones that He says have been removed as far as the East is from the West. The old self of me that I couldn't get rid of, He said, "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." It's through this that fear of man and fear of death, we say, "Where is your victory? Where is your sting?" It's in communion that we realize, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." See, communion is a celebration. In communion, we realize that God is good, that Jesus has forgiven me, that I am loved, and that everything is possible. It's a celebration to enjoy communion. And do you know what our part is in communion? To just receive it, to take it in, to by faith consume the goodness of the life of Jesus. And so, that's what we're going to do. We're going to celebrate the goodness of Jesus. We're going to pay attention and call attention to the shed blood and the broken body of Jesus. See, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, it says that He took the bread and He gave thanks, and He broke it. And He said, "This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." So, let's take the bread together. And in the same way, He said, "This is the blood of a new covenant, which is for the forgiveness of sins." He said, "Drink this in remembrance of me." Let's drink together. So, pray with me. Jesus, thank You that You paid the cost, that there was a joy that was set before You. And because You paid the cost, we get to celebrate Your broken body so that we could be made whole, Your shed blood so that we could live abundant life now, Jesus. We celebrate everything You did to pay for that. And so, I just pray over us, may we take ahold of the joy that's been set before us. May we, like little children, come before You with joy and gladness and say, "Thank You, Jesus, for everything You've done and everything that You are. You are our righteousness, our holiness, and You are the reason we can say we are loved. It's in Jesus' name we pray and celebrate. Amen."

BECCA REYNOLDS: 

I cannot think of a better declaration for us to walk into next week with. Right where I am, I will praise You. Right where I am is an altar. And so, I want to wrap this up. I just want to celebrate something. I thought God just gave me a word for every campus super briefly. Gainesville, I celebrate your unity. It is in unity that together you are carrying hope to County Denton. Newtown, I want to celebrate the spirit that you have. You have a spirit of passion that you are killing it with everywhere in Denton. I celebrate that. Lewisville, I celebrate within you. I celebrate within you that intentionality of a get-up spirit. When things knock you down, you don't stay down. You get up. People of integrity, I celebrate that. Flower Mound, I celebrate the fact that you are people of humility. You live in an area where the title that runs rampant, but you are people that come under and an opposite spirit. You lift up and you love, and I see it, and I celebrate it online. I celebrate that you are leaders in a technological space where evil wants to penetrate those sound waves and those internet waves. You are leading the way of carrying the hope of Jesus. So, Valley Creek Church, well done. I celebrate you. This is church. This is church. It looks a little different today, and that's okay because this is what church is. Not a thing we do or a place we go. It's a people that we are, and so I'm so grateful that you decided to come and meet with the family of God today. If you can't prepare to give your tithes and offerings, you can do that in the boxes as you go at all of our campuses or online. What a way to celebrate the goodness of God in your life by making that commitment. Now I want to remind you that we are on a rest. So, next Sunday, we will not gather together in person. Don't forget that, but before you leave today, don't rush off. There are games. There's food. There're all kinds of things in all of our campus atrium. So, go and enjoy that. But man, let's celebrate God all through the week, and let's start by making our declarations today. You know what they are as we go. Say them with me. God is good. Jesus has forgiven me. I am loved, and everything is possible. Have a restful week.