Remember When

Cliff takes a walk around the courtyard and lobby of the Sunrise Worship Center, telling stories of God's faithfulness.

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Video Link: https://youtu.be/KzQiRABVARk

Transcript

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Well, good morning, friends. It is a beautiful Monday morning here at Sunrise Community Church. And I am glad to have you joining me outside, out here in concrete jungle nature. But uh here we are outside on the campus of sunrise. Welcome to the Backshed Bible study. Okay, here we are together. I'm gonna take you with me. Actually, I'm gonna start it uh today right here as we are looking back behind me. Uh this is uh uh right out front of the worship center, but I am looking up towards the uh Kern Memorial Haven, uh which is in the background, uh, which is a uh a place we put in uh we put it in place here about two years ago, and it is a place of remembrance. It's a place where right up there uh we've set some benches under the uh oak trees, and you can go up there and spend a little bit of time. It's dedicated to the memory, uh to the memory of Gene Kern and his wife Eleanor, who's still with us, and uh great place to talk about um the legacy of sunrise, places where we've seen God at work. And so today's episode here of Backshed is all about remembering the past and celebrating the things that God has done. And I'm gonna be asking you all along the way uh to celebrate along with me, to uh tell some stories, ways that you've seen God work at sunrise, and uh, and hopefully with this, we'll uh we'll make some memories together uh today, or at least call upon some memories together. So I'm gonna head in, uh grab the camera here, turn it around, and get out of the sun for now, and uh actually get the uh get everything set up so that I'll be able to see you all um right here this morning as well. So thank you for your patience in my uh fun live shot that we got to do here this morning. Uh Alyssa, good morning. Thank you for joining me here. Um it is it's fun to be outside. I love being in the breezeway here, where there truly is a breeze today, right here in the breeze way. So, how fun is that? As I uh get some things set up here today, what I want to do is um uh bring up uh all of our Facebook feeds so that I'll be able to see your comments come in my direction in real time. Because um, like I say, today I thought this was kind of a little bit of a spontaneous thing, but I want to celebrate um just cool stuff that God has done here at Sunrise. And this might mean um that we we take our little setup and go uh walk around a little bit. We'll see. Wi-Fi coverage is what determines where we can and can't be on campus. Um, but you know, I I'm thinking it was just two years ago when we were here, it was it was October of uh boy, what was that? 24, and uh if this is 26, and we were celebrating Sunrise's 50th anniversary, and what a cool celebration that was. That was when we got to officially dedicate the Kernhaven that I showed you there at the beginning, and it was such a special moment. Recently, someone sent me a picture of that day when we were doing the dedication, uh, the moment when um I got to personally show Eleanor Kern the plaque that was up there at the Haven that told uh the story of Sunrise and uh and oh it didn't tell the story of Sunrise, but it talked about the Kern family uh planting the church back in 74. So really cool to um look through the history of what happened, that they would come all the way from uh uh I think they were in South Dakota at the time. He was Canadian, a young Canadian guy in his, I believe in his young 40s, and uh came out here to to plant this church in uh this part of town. I'm going to, we're because I can do this, I'm gonna turn the camera around for a moment and and see if I can um give you a little perspective because when we when we when we look and I'm on I'm on tripod today, so it makes things kind of entertaining. Let's let's move right out here. Yeah, there we go. Looking out over the parking lot, um that you can see, but what I'm going to focus on as I kind of turn over here is if we're to kind of look behind me here, um, straight back that way is where the sunrise mall is. And when they planted, went to plant the church back in 74, the the mall was hopping. It was no different than that big one, that galleria up in Roseville uh is today. That's kind of how the mall, the sunrise mall was. People were flocking from all over the area um to to go shop there. There was uh kind of right off that direction, uh, there was a drive-in movie theater, and you could see it from our campus if you get up higher. I was up on the roof the other day, and you could see right at the drive the drive-in uh theater from up on the roof. And uh pretty cool. And so people come all around. And the North American Baptist Conference, the the NorCal Association of North American Baptists, uh, which is what our church is a part of, um, uh there were a couple of big churches that were a part of the NorCal Association. Uh one of them was the First Baptist Church in Elk Grove, and uh it's current, it's uh today it's Creekside uh Church in Elk Grove, and the other was Quail Lakes Baptist Church down in Stockton. And they um were a part of the NorCal Association's vision of planting a church in this area, and that's like I said, they found Gene Kern and they came out here, a Bible study was started, and then um a meeting over in the Grange Hall, the Farrox Grange Hall. Pretty Yeah. So what I'm discovering is that I've got to be careful how far away I get from uh uh I have to be careful how far away from the Wi-Fi that I get. So um so I just got a little bit of a distance from the Wi-Fi and it did not get happy, and I noticed that Zoom decided to stop working uh for a minute there. So, you know, I'll I'll probably stick a little closer in. So that's a little bit of the history. Uh Gene served here for 20 years. And what's what's really cool is I'm where I'm standing right now, and I'll and I'll do a little bit of uh turn this this way for us. But as as we look over here at our worship center, you know, this lobby that's right behind me has only been in place. Um, boy, I'm gonna say it was built maybe back in 2012, uh right around there. So 14 years ago, um, that they built this lobby. Um before that, it was just kind of a small lobby entrance. But I think about legacy when I think about this place. And I remember uh visiting Sunrise many times back in the day when you'd uh come to Sunrise. A lot of you wouldn't know this, but um, as I pan over here to look towards the entrance, as you look down this entrance right here, the parking uh setup was completely different. And so there was a drive-in uh area that came along. You can see right there where Tracy's car and well, that was a driveway, and then parking was out there in what would be the middle of our road. They remodeled all that when they built this uh lobby edition on. And uh, and as they as they added this whole thing, uh, it created this meeting space, this place where uh the idea was that people could connect in that space. Um, but to go back to it, I remember this building being in place before the lobby was here. And and why I bring this up is I would come visit Sunrise because I had met them uh through Hume Lake and got to know a lot of their students. And one student in particular that I got to know back in 1995, 96, uh, was Matt Bach. And and Matt was had grown up in this church and gone to the youth ministry here. I met him as a high schooler. Um, but I remember coming to his wedding here at Sunrise when the lobby was just a small lobby and they uh they did the whole thing there in the worship center. And and God used, has worked in Matt's life, used Sunrise in Matt's life, um to uh to launch him into ministry. And um, if you don't know Matt, you might know his parents, and uh they came to Sunrise here for years, and they uh anyway, so they're uh but uh oh, I was gonna tell you is that Matt's uh ended up leading our Israel uh tour this last year because uh um Luke was not able to go due to uh all those kinds of things. So uh I love I I'm coming back to see all of your comments about when I when I dropped the signal. That was Zoom, dropping the signal, a frustrating little Zoom thing. Um fortunately, I heard it talking to me and it said it was starting to re-record everything. So we'll go back afterwards and we'll cut that out. But let's fast forward here to the um late 90s. Gene Kern was ready to go plant a new church out at Pleasant Grove and out in the senior community. The church went for about a year without a pastor uh at that time. And then they brought in Rich Sherman. And uh Rich was a very different person than Gene. Gene was really known for, you know, how do I say it? Gene was kind of a gentle giant in so many ways. He was very strong, um, very uh in some ways authoritative, but extremely gentle and loving compassion. There's the word I'm looking for. He was a very compassionate man. He loved people deeply. He loved people individually. Uh he was known for if if you visited Sunrise on a Sunday morning, Gene, there's a good chance Gene would be visiting you in your living room in the next couple of days and getting to know people individually. And and it was said that one of Gene's greatest frustrations was that the church was growing so much that Gene was um not able to not able to get to know everybody, that that it was getting so big. And it was in the thousands uh back then at that time, kind of in the heyday, if you want to use that word. I don't like to, but um, but that kind of explains it. And so Gene was frustrated. He said, I I just this church is growing beyond what I am uh capable of leading, almost of knowing everybody. So um, so as Gene moved on, Rich Sherman came in, and Rich was a great guy, a great friend. It's kind of like your grandpa, but Rich knows the word like nobody else and had a command of the word and could um speak very spontaneously. Uh, if you ever looked at Rich's notes on a Sunday morning, first off, he never used them. Um sometimes Rich wouldn't know what he was going to speak on on Friday, uh, and yet would uh Sunday produce a full sermon. So pretty, pretty wild um history there. But as I stand here in this spot, okay, um, my mind immediately comes to, I wanted to celebrate a couple of cool memories. My mind comes to Bethlehem Village. Okay, when I started at Sunrise back in 2014, I kept hearing about this thing they called B V. And I thought, Bella Vista, that's the high school down the street. No, it's Bethlehem Village, the big annual um uh celebration that would go on here where they would transform our campus and this entire area over here into the streets of Bethlehem. And and we'd probably have at least 75 people, maybe a hundred, uh, that were a part of our church that would volunteer to make Bethlehem Village happen. It would happen over multiple nights. Uh, the parking lot would be full. Uh, at its at its peak, we were seeing five or six thousand people show up to come to Bethlehem Village. And and as they'd roam through um the halls, and I'll I'll try to get a little bit of a more uh panning shot of campus here. We'll move closer to Wi-Fi, which Wi-Fi will uh, which everybody will appreciate that, right? Um but as um Bethlehem Village would happen over here. I mean, I remember we would have animals in here. There would be donkeys and goats and all of that, and and you'd be able to go up and pet the animals, you'd see Joseph and Mary, and um just uh be able to take pictures with them. That was our annual tradition was getting our family in there with Joseph and Mary to take a picture with them. And uh, and at the end, you walk out through this hallway, uh, where we are right here, and you would get your uh warm cookies and hot cocoa. So um fun tradition that happened here. Bethlehem Village is one of my favorite. I'm looking for you all to drop some comments in here, and I gotta get over here where I'm gonna I'm gonna hold the computer today. Maybe that's my my way of uh being able to roam a little. Candace says you went there um when you were in high school. Hey, look at that. You're young. Bethlehem Village was wonderful. It made Christmas come alive. Um, yeah, it wasn't now they didn't do the drive-thru. I always thought about that might be a cool way to do it, but um, but our our team never was up for that. Um let's see here. Um I don't I've got an interesting thing to do. All right. Wow. All right, so I'm sorry, I'm seeing a uh um uh some strange things. Let's see here. Sorry, I shouldn't have text checked my text messages. All right, let's see. Heidi, it's one of the few things that drew you uh that would draw you to sunrise. Okay, yeah, very cool. I love it. Uh let's think. Okay, do we wanna let's go roaming around a little bit. Let's go. Do you want to go inside with me? Let's go inside for a second. We're gonna we're gonna head over here, and as uh as we head over here, see this is what you gotta love live because you you never know how it's gonna pan out. But I'm going to open this lobby door if I can. Let's see here. There we are. And this is kind of a fun one that's happening over here behind me. Um now you might over there see our dear friend Hamid that is uh hanging out back there cleaning up. But the other thing that's happening in the background here, we're gonna come on in here a little bit, is we have a whole team that is gathered over there in our South Lobby area, and they are getting ready to put, they are putting together a going away party, a celebration of her retirement, uh, for Julie Palmer, who worked with us in our business office here at the church for the last nine years, over nine years. So you might see some activity kind of over my shoulder right over there. There they are. And they're putting together a uh big party we're gonna have tomorrow for our staff to be able to celebrate uh Julie and everything she did uh here at Sunrise. So pretty fun stuff. As I'm standing here in the lobby, it it brings back a uh a really cool memory I have from the year that we were doing Bethlehem Village. And I don't know if any of you remember this, but I'm sure some of you will. And it was pouring rain that week. And I remember we were looking at potentially having to cancel Bethlehem Village. And we got a whole group of us together, people that were part of the planning process. I think this was maybe 2018, somewhere in there. And uh and we made a spontaneous decision, not a spontaneous, but we made an executive decision that we were going to move Bethlehem Village inside, indoors. And so it was a uh in a matter of a week, we changed the entire setup. We we did not bring the animals indoors, uh, but everything else was able to come indoors, and uh uh we set up all the booths out in the uh in the worship center in there and um until boy, just a lot of things. It was really cool. And I think about that. Like first off, uh when I think about that, I think about all the volunteers that it takes to make something happen. And and some key volunteers, Roland Perry was one of them, were a part of saying, Yep, let's do this, let's let's change things around so that people will continue. And we still had a couple thousand people come through those doors uh back at that time. I think about so many celebrations that ended up happening in this room right here. I think about connections, people that I've met, and and so on. So uh real fun there. Uh but I'm gonna see if the Wi-Fi will let me do this, but I have such fun memories of coming in here and uh uh let's see if we can. I'm just gonna put this thing right here in the middle of the of the room there, and the people are gonna be in the background. But I love uh boy, when I come to this little spot right here, and I'm carrying my computer so that I can actually uh see what you're seeing, but when I get to this spot, I totally think about um Christmas Eve because I would always uh on Christmas Eve, I usually stand right here. We set up a little um camera setup right here. We run a live, you know, pre-broadcast before Christmas Eve service, which is always um a ton of fun. And and everybody's walking in um to this room, and and then there, of course, is the giant Christmas tree that is is set up right here in the uh in the middle that we used to have. That was that was a lot of fun. So um, and again, another great place for people to um just connect and and I think about that Christmas tree. So many families is like there's our tradition as we take a picture, our family Christmas picture right there in front. Uh I'm gonna turn this around here for a second. We're gonna come back over here, and thank you for um bearing with me. We're we're coming over here to the to the questions, question marks. I don't know if you know what these are or not, but uh we'll see how good the hey look at that. That looks pretty good. It looks like we're still um connected. These are uh if you're into video games, you might know Mario Brothers. These are um off of that, and you can uh can you hear the sound? Doing doing doing anyway. Um these are symbolic of a series that's getting ready to happen in our apologetics class. And Pastor Kord, yes, they are Mario blocks, thank you very much. Candace. And uh and Court is putting together a uh an apologetics series that has a lot of like you ask your questions, we'll answer those, and so people can stick their uh oh, there are some questions in here already. I'm tempted. Should we let's look at one of the questions? This is gonna be the whole for instance. All right, it says um, ooh, this is so these are the kinds of questions they're going to address in their series. It says, What about God not punishing children for their father's sin? God remembers third and fourth generation, Achan's family punished, and David, Bathsheba's child, could be seen as a contradiction in God's word. And so they take they're gonna take tough questions and they're gonna answer those. I love it. There you go. The Mario blocks. That's what it's about. You've got questions, we're gonna look at answers. All right. Um, now we're gonna move our way back over here. And we'll give you a little more. You can see the action going on over there behind my shoulder, which is lots of fun. Um, as we round this off here, I thought this would be really um what else? Oh, okay. Let's wander. We're gonna we're gonna go into the um hallway back here. It's a little dark, so bear with me. I know I have a light switch. There's a light switch right there. Okay, there we go. Light switches there. And as we come on over here, I'm gonna move our restroom sign so that um you can you can see right here. So in this hallway, if you guys haven't stopped in this hallway lately, please do because you're gonna see it's I I it's kind of a wall of fame in some some ways. Um let's let's see if I can focus in a little better here. But um uh we we want people to know who the various missionaries are that are supported by Sunrise Community Church. People that um when you attend the church, when you give to sunrise, a portion of what you give, about 8%, uh 7 to 8 percent, goes to sending missionaries around the world um to spread the word of God. And so right here over my left shoulder is the Carlstrom family. They're in Madagascar. Um they are fairly new missionaries to Sunrise within the last year, and uh they just their oldest son, Braden, that's Braden. And uh he just went off to college. His parents brought him back over here to the U.S. And uh and their other girls, JC and Jolie, ended up staying back in Madagascar while their parents brought Braden to go to college. And then you can see the Chapelles, Jason and Monsieur Chapelle, um, that are right over here over my right shoulder to your left, and they are over in the Philippines. Jason's kind of one of our homegrown ones. He's uh been a part of Sunrise Forever, was in uh the youth ministry when I was um uh running the youth ministry here. So, Jason and Melissa, you could pray for them. So uh, but check out the missionary hallway sometime. It's totally worth it. Let's light it up here. Now you can really see it here. There you go. Let's we can go along our wall of fame there. You can see the Petersons and the Waltz, and and you just keep on going down there. Brad Dakis with Pacific Justice and Brad and Laurel Jenkins, and we just keep on going down here. And who look at that, Juliana. All right, yep. So that's our missionary hallway right there. Nathan Grappels. So many. The Clarks that are a part of that, they were here not too long ago. The Buttons, John and Angie Button, and they are in Tanzania. They're supported by Sunrise, and so many more. So there you go. Let's see here. Let's see. I'm gonna pause for a second here while uh while I jump back on here to see any comments. Let's see. Candace says, yeah, what about boy, and great questions to wrestle with. Yep, I love it. I love it. So this is um this is my walk about here at sunrise today. I just wanted to take you all with me and to see some of the things that uh, yeah, you know, sometimes you just want to pause and um maybe create kind of some some monuments, places that uh places where you've seen God work and then return to those places and celebrate what God's working. I um was uh Sunday morning, and uh I stopped here at this table right here and got to talk to somebody who um going through a lot of crazy stuff, husband um almost dead, and they were ready to to pronounce him dead, and he came back to life, you know, and celebrating the fact that he's with her one more day. We got to have that conversation right here in that spot. So, you know, seeing places like this reminds me to to uh to pray for people. Um there are a lot of struggles, a lot of hurts that uh are in different people's lives, right? A lot of conversations, and sometimes we need to remember to uh that the people that walk in here and they they stop by this counter right here and they get the mug and and sunrise welcomes them in here, but you just don't know what's going on in their lives. You don't know the things that um that they're struggling with, the things that are are happening in their lives, and you can um remember to be praying for them. So um great memories, and all right, good things to uh to talk about. We're gonna go back outside because I keep getting some awkward looks from the people that are setting up the party over here. And here we go. All right, so there you have it, my friends. We're back outside. Um I want to thank you for uh coming along on a little tour with me around sunrise today, uh, around the area where I can get the Wi-Fi hotspot. But uh I think the message of today is simple. It is don't don't forget. Remember, don't forget um the things that God has done, the places where he's done that, and sometimes just return to those places and celebrate. Return to those places and remember the great work that God has done. So with that, um I'm gonna pray. We're gonna close it off. Lord, you are so good, and I thank you for uh all the things that you've been doing. May you uh just be honored in our lives, be honored at sunrise. Uh, we celebrate the great work that you've done, and may you keep doing it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, friends. So there you have it. I uh um that is my spontaneous tour around sunrise this morning for you. I hope you've enjoyed it. Um, and uh and I hope you'll celebrate different places, even just here on campus, where where God has done something cool. So um someday I'll tell a story about putting a pile of rocks somewhere, but that's for another day. So uh thanks for joining me today. God bless you, and I will not be seeing you next week because I'm gonna be uh on a trip out to Colorado. And uh, and so it's Labor Day, Labor Day weekend. So take advantage of uh hopefully some holiday for you, a little time off. I'm gonna be taking it, and uh we'll be back two weeks from today, right here, probably hopefully in the back shed. We'll see. God bless you, everybody. Take care, see you next time.