Pastor Wayne Cordeiro, Pastor Jon Burgess
September 10, 2017 - W1737

PASTOR WAYNE: Today we celebrate 22 years—Happy anniversary, everyone! We look at all the beautiful things God has done over these past 22 years but we can never forget our humble beginnings back in 1995 when Dan Shima and I started praying about a church.

Our first church service was actually at Ala Moana Park. We had about seven people there, three were homeless. We had a fabulous time.

We would gather anybody we could. We’d start some dinners to get people to check the church out. People would come, they weren’t necessarily Christians.   They were just hungry. They would come out for dinner and during the week, I would lead them to Christ.

I led someone to Christ when he was waiting for the bus. One by one, people came to Christ. That’s how New Hope began. It started out with individual people being redeemed. That’s it. It was an individual thing. That’s why we often say God has never called us to build big buildings. He called us to build big people. That happens one by one.

When we got enough money, we rented a little teeny office upstairs on Beretania Street. We couldn’t afford downstairs. It was too expensive. So we rented upstairs. We had to cart everything to church at Stevenson Intermediate.

We didn’t have a truck or van so everybody used their trunks and back of cars and put everything that we could in. Everybody just donated their things and their time.

Because of volunteerism, people would get involved. If we needed coffee, we’d say, “We need 20 coffee makers.” “Okay. How many of you have coffee makers at home, raise your hand. Okay. Next Sunday, bring your coffee makers, make some coffee, serve it, wash it out and do it again next week.” Everyone was involved. Everybody had a gift.

We would encourage people when you wipe the tables, don’t wipe with a washcloth. Wipe them with your heart. When you hand out bulletins, hand them out with your heart.

Some people said, “We don’t have coffee makers or brooms.” But they said, “We can greet people.”

When you came to New Hope, there would be a gauntlet you would have to come through and people would hug you. That’s how it was. By the time you went into church, you felt so loved. We became known as the church that will hug everything within 10 feet. When we started, we didn’t have much, but our hearts were big and we were willing to do whatever needed to be done.

Someone donated a used copy machine to us. It was heavy and we had to get it up the stairs to our second floor office. We had to get this thing up but we didn’t know how to do it. So I crawled underneath the copy machine and put it on my back and crawled up the stairs.   It leaked all over my back and ruined my shirt. When I got up to the top, I remember thinking, “Lord, I’ll do anything so that we can get this church strong one day.”

I look back and I think, “Look at all the people that give their hearts so that this church can be strong today.” Not only this, but we began planting churches again and again.

We would grow to about 6,000, 7000, and we couldn’t fit any more, so we would send a church out. We would find the best leader, say Dave Barr. Dave would have fishing rights. You can take anybody you want from this church and go start one over in Kaneohe. He would take a bunch and they would have a great church. I’d say, Mike Palompo, you have fishing rights, you take some people out there to Mililani side, and Glenn, you go take some to Kapolei side. We just started splitting up the church.

The funny thing was the more we gave to the community, the more the Lord brought in. You can’t out give the Lord. More people were being saved. Today I think it’s over 125,000 people who have received Jesus for the first time through this church.

How many of you are grateful that we have a great past? Aren’t you thankful for that foundation? 150 churches around the world were birthed out of this womb right here.

I am very grateful for our past but I’m thinking, all of these pastors, whether it’s a Dave Barr or Mike Palompo or all of the others, 99.9% of them came from right here. I look at the staff, whether it’s John Danna and his wife or Pat McFall or others in Hawaii Kai and all of the leaders, so many of them came right from here. We could’ve hired somebody through a consulting firm or other churches, but the majority—we had the best leaders right under our noses. What God was saying is that when you start a church, everything you need will be right here.

We started in Hilo in 1994. We were talking to people about looking for a piece of land. We looked everywhere but couldn’t find one.

One day, a man that lived close by came to us. We didn’t go to him. He said, “I’m getting old. I don’t have children. I don’t have a wife. I have 20 acres of land,” he said, “and I would sell that to you for $200,000.” I said, “Sold!”

Then we had a contractor, ”Oh, Wayne, for the amount of buildings you want to build, you’re going to have to have tons and tons and mountains of gravel and rock.”

I said, “Well, how much is that gonna cost?”

He says, “More than what you paid for the land.”

I said, “Oh, no!”

We started digging, getting ready, and we hit something. We went down under a little more and we found that under our property in Hilo was a rock quarry. We brought in a rock crusher. For three months, eight hours a day we were crushing rock. All of the gravel, all the rock we needed was right under our soil. We had no idea.

I’d look at all of that and I look at what God has done here, and I think…everything that we needed we have and it’s all within us. Our leaders, the people that God wants to be involved, are all right here. A lot of times we don’t even realize it, but there’s gold in our own back yard. There’s diamonds in our own minds. There’s gifts in our own hearts. There are books yet to be written.

When we are able to mine that out, everything this generation needs will be found right here. It’s in potential form. The counseling, the inspiration, the encouragement, the teachers, the mentors, the disciplers, the small group leaders, everything this community and this generation needs lies within us.

As I look at the past, I’m so grateful, but I want to look at the future because the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. God who was faithful yesterday will be faithful today, and the God who’s faithful today will be faithful tomorrow. Our future is rich.

The pastors after Jon will be right here, and the leaders for the other churches that may be planted are all right here. They may be in potential form or yet to be born or may be some of these kids that were hip hopping up here. Our next journey will be to mine out all the gifts. Don’t look for problems. Look for potential.

There’s a song that goes, “When others see a shepherd boy, God may see a king,” speaking of David. If we just look at each other as just normal people, let’s just maintain. If we can see what God sees, we can see a king. We can see a discipler. We can see a pastor, a mayor, a governor. We begin to see things.

I wonder what God sees in you. Do you think God sees just a normal person, or does God see someone with great potential that can change lives and move mountains? If we’ll begin to see each other with God’s eyes, everything will change.

Toward the end of his life, Beethoven, who composed many magnificent symphonies became deaf. Because he couldn’t hear and his piano was out of tune, everything sounded terrible. He would keep playing though, with joyful tears down his cheeks. Why? Because he didn’t hear the sound the piano made, he heard the sound the piano should make.

I’m asking us in this next season to see what God is saying, to hear what God is hearing, to look as God would look at people. When we do, everything this next generation needs will be right here. If we see it the way God sees it, you watch. “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans not for your calamity, but for your welfare in order that you might have a future and a hope.”

God has a future and a hope. See as He sees, hear as He hears, and you watch, you wait, you’ll see the magnificent things that God has in store for this place.

PASTOR JON: As we celebrate, New Hope’s legacy will be remembered for the songs and chorus and the planting of churches and raising up of leaders. Our senior pastor has authored books that have ministered to countless people in the body of Christ.

When I came to intern under Pastor Wayne Cordeiro 15 years ago, he gave me a lot of tools for the ministry God was calling me to. The most important is this journal I have right in my hand.

I’m not sure why I have a Quicksilver sticker on there. I think I was hoping I could surf. Some things happen. Some things don’t. Some things have not come to pass yet but one dream has come true. That I would be able to stand before you 15 years later as a campus pastor.

The longer that I’m alive, the more I realize there is nothing more important than sitting at His feet on a daily basis and doing S.O.A.P.  Pastor Wayne devised this simple tool to call people back to the Word of God. Over 500,000 of these journals have been sold since we started keeping track.                                                                                                                              Scripture: what word the Holy Spirit will bring to you.                                                                          Observation: write out what you think the Holy Spirit is saying to you.                                     Application: where the rubber meets the road.                                                                                             Prayer: where you invite the Holy Spirit to make this true in your life.

The journal is digital as well. The YouVersion app is where you can get all kinds of journal reading, the Life Journal plan is on the YouVersion app. Over a million people have downloaded the Life Journal S.O.A.P. journal app.

We have our own app (enewhope.org) on Apple and other app stores. Not only can you get this Life Journal version on your phone, you can get sermons that we preach here as well as our different TV and radio resources that we have. You can let us know how we can be praying for you. And it’s free. All of these things are literally right at your fingertips.

To drive the point home, you will get your own bar of S.O.A.P. on the way out. This is handmade goat milk soap from a family in Oregon who follows us online and consider themselves part of the New Hope movement. They donated all of this soap to us. It is the number one seller on Costco online. They gave this to us so we could give everybody their own bar of soap on our anniversary weekend.

I want to challenge you: Finish strong. Finish 2017 well. Get yourself a journal. Start yourself a group. See what God will do. Any breakthrough that you’re seeking in your marriage, your finances, in your home in your business, it starts by getting into the word of God, and it will be a bridge to breakthrough in every area of your life. Why is it important? We have an entire generation that needs to know God is real.

Let me close with these verses: “We will not hide them [God’s works] from their descendants, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done … so that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare to them, their children, that they might set their hope in God but not forget the works of God but keep His commandments.” (Psalm 78: 4, 6-7)

How do we make sure the next generation gets that? One journal at a time. Let’s sit down and hear what God wants to say to us today.