# Ready for Leadership

Sermon transcript from Cross Church El Mirage.
Series: Rooted and Ready
Date: September 6, 2026
Watch: https://crosschurchcares.com/el-mirage/episodes/ready-for-leadership

## Summary

Are you ready to step into leadership? What does it mean to truly lead like Jesus? How can your unique story transform others? Join us as we explore the call to be intentional, relatable, and impactful leaders in our communities. Let's dive in together!

## Transcript

Hey, good morning, Cross Church. How's 
 everybody doing? 
 >> Good. My name is Timothy O' Conor. I 
 know everybody knows me pretty much by 
 TJ that's in this room, but uh since 
 we're in church, it's a biblical name. 
 We're going to go by Timothy today. 
 So, I did want to tell you a little bit 
 about myself, but instead of getting 
 into, you know, the personal stuff 
 specifically, I kind of wanted to talk 
 to you about how I got on this stage. 
 And it starts about three and a half 
 years ago 
 when I started dating my currently now 
 wife. and she was about 2,000 miles away 
 from me in South Carolina. 
 And we had our first very first date in 
 North Carolina in a small city called 
 Bryson City. And that very first date 
 when we actually left and went out into 
 the world, we went to church. Yeah. It's 
 crazy, right? We went to a small 
 Southern Baptist church. We walked in 
 the door. There was about 16 17 people 
 in the room and they kind of looked at 
 like us like we were a little crazy, you 
 know, like who are these people that 
 come on top of our uh or in our church 
 in the top of this mountain just 
 randomly walking in. But everybody was 
 extremely 
 nice and welcoming. And we hadn't been 
 in church, I know it was about 15 years 
 for me, maybe 16, 17 years for Emily. 
 And the pastor there was speaking on 
 joy. And if anybody knows about joy in 
 the Bible, he's talking about the joy 
 that Jesus Christ brings to our life. 
 And instead of worrying about happiness, 
 he was speaking on joy. And that touched 
 Emily and I really, really hard. We felt 
 like he was talking directly to us in 
 that moment. And on our knees in that 
 church on in Bryson City, we both 
 accepted Jesus into our hearts that day 
 and started our seeking together for the 
 Lord. Now, about a year later, I 
 proposed to Emily. And amazingly enough, 
 she actually 
 accepted and I got here to move to 
 Arizona. 
 And during that time, we had a we were 
 seeking for a new church. We were trying 
 to find a place to call home. We went to 
 a lot of different places. And we found 
 Cross Church Elm Mirage. And since we've 
 been here, we got married on this stage 
 by Pastor Tyler. on that very morning, 
 we were baptized by Pastor Tyler that 
 morning on our wedding day. 
 And 
 exactly one year from today that Pastor 
 Tyler actually just spoke to me about, 
 which is an amazing thing, is he was 
 speaking on leadership 
 and accepting what God's calling is for 
 you that day. 
 And that same day that he was preaching 
 on that, I messaged him. I directly 
 messaged him. I wish I had it to put up 
 on the on the screen back here, but I 
 said, "I think God is calling me to to 
 be on stage. I think God is calling me 
 to to preach the word." 
 And that was exactly one year ago and he 
 was speaking on leadership and I will be 
 speaking on leadership today. So Jesus 
 doesn't let anything go pretty much. 
 He's always there and he never lets us 
 down. It's just going to be in his time. 
 So, 
 we're going to be in a a series. We've 
 been in a series for the last five weeks 
 called Rooted and Ready. We're going to 
 speak on being ready for leadership. And 
 I want you to go and pull out your 
 Bibles because we're going to be in 
 them. So, flip there, click there, just 
 get them out 
 so we can get this thing started. We're 
 going to be in Romans 10 verses 14- 15. 
 And listen, don't be jealous of my cool 
 glasses, 
 but I need them. 
 All right, guys. So, verse 14. How then 
 can they call on him they have not 
 believed in? And how can they believe 
 without hearing about him? And how can 
 they hear without a preacher? And how 
 can they preach unless they are sent? As 
 it is written, how beautiful are the 
 feet of those who bring the good news. 
 Let's pray as we dive into this 
 scripture today. Dear heavenly father, I 
 second, if we're going to bring value to 
 people, we need to become more valuable 
 ourselves. We just got to simply get 
 better. We can't be stagnant. Pastor 
 spoke, Pastor Tyler spoke on learning 
 last week in disciplehip. 
 Everybody in here should focus on 
 learning to get better if you're going 
 to want to be a good leader. 
 Three, we want to relate to people. We 
 want to get to their level. We want to 
 make sure that we're seeing where 
 somebody's coming from. We need to 
 relate to them. And finally, we need to 
 be more like Jesus. 
 Jesus was the best leader of all time. 
 And the number one thing that he did as 
 a leader is he served others first. 
 Even as the son of man, the God in the 
 flesh, he did not come to rule, but he 
 came to serve. 
 So we'll get into our key thought today 
 and that's going to be how can we be 
 leaders 
 that bring the good news. 
 So a little background of this uh 
 scripture of Romans 10:14-15 is is 
 Paul's actually writing to the church of 
 Rome from Corenth and he has never been 
 there. He's never been to Rome. So he's 
 starting a doctrine to the church of 
 Rome that's full of different believers 
 and non-believers that have different 
 viewpoints and he's explaining the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ and all that 
 we're responsible for as Christians. 
 It pretty much boils down to this 
 scripture 
 Romans 10 verse 8-10. 
 But what does it say? The word is near 
 you in your mouth and in your heart. 
 That is the word of faith that we 
 proclaim. 
 Because if you confess with your mouth 
 that Jesus is Lord and believe in your 
 heart 
 that God has raised him from the dead, 
 you will be saved. For with your heart 
 one believes and is justified, and with 
 your mouth one confesses and is saved. 
 Paul is establishing the bedrock of the 
 Christian faith here. And as a leader in 
 our community almost 2,000 years later 
 since this was written, it's just as 
 important it is now as it was then. 
 So let's dive right into the three ways 
 that we can grow as leaders in our 
 community. The first one is to be 
 intentional in our spiritual 
 development. 
 Be intentional in our spiritual 
 development. So what does that mean? 
 Well, we can develop as 
 Christians by reading the Bible. We can 
 get in the word by reading it. But how 
 are we intentional about doing those 
 things? Well, we have about a million 
 things distracting us out there in 2026. 
 The evil one wants us to get on TikTok 
 and scroll all day. He wants us he wants 
 to look at things that have nothing to 
 do with Christianity so that he can 
 distract us from what our main goal is, 
 and that's spreading the word. 
 So, one thing that I like to talk about 
 as a let's just call it as somebody that 
 is in fitness and uh coaches people for 
 a living is I've had the benefit and I 
 don't know, I guess you'd call it the 
 hard times of watching people work out 
 if they don't know what they're doing. 
 And a lot of times I'll see them like, 
 you know, they're doing like a curl or 
 something like that, you know, and I 
 just want to grab them and shake them 
 and be like, "Listen, 
 I know you're trying hard, but you got 
 to be intentional about these things, 
 right? You got to pull your shoulders 
 back. We got to squeeze the muscle and 
 we got to work in an intentional way, 
 just like when we read the Bible or we 
 study scripture." 
 Bryce Crawford is a young man of God. 
 He's an evangelist. He's a street 
 preacher. 
 And he spoke about this not that many 
 weeks ago and I just remembered it hit 
 me really hard and I've actually been 
 doing it ever since. He says reading the 
 Bible without calling on the Holy Spirit 
 for guidance is like going to war 
 without with the best gun you could get 
 without any bullets in it. We don't have 
 the ability to deep down absorb 
 scripture as well without the power of 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 So, one of the things that I actually do 
 is I like to be by myself in my car my 
 it's most my my most peaceful time I 
 guess and I listen to the Bible and I 
 absorb scripture that way and I go over 
 what we're going over and I do it again 
 and I do it again. My goal is to absorb 
 scripture the best I possibly can. 
 And with all the distractions out there 
 in the world, we as leaders in our 
 community, we want to use those things 
 in our households. So, one of the big 
 things that we did over the course of 
 this summer is we joined a Bible group 
 here at Cross Church. And it was a 
 marriage Bible group. And that was 
 really good for our spiritual 
 development because we were able to get 
 in a in a room with 10 to 12 people that 
 are all going through the same things we 
 are. And we're trying to learn scripture 
 in order to help our marriage, in order 
 to help guide us in the word of the Lord 
 in our everyday life. But that gave us a 
 lot of things to look at. It gave us to 
 look at different ideas on how to manage 
 our day. It gave us the aspect of 
 looking at prayer for your spouse on a 
 daily basis. I mean, it I'd like you to 
 try and be involved in this, but show 
 your hands if you pray with your spouse 
 every day. 
 Yeah. Not that many. So, when it comes 
 to prayer with your spouse, it can be 
 very intimidating. 
 It you don't want to say the wrong 
 thing, right? You don't want to sound 
 stupid like your spouse is the person 
 that's around you all the time and you 
 know that they're going to look for the 
 best for you but they're also going to 
 look they feel like you're going to look 
 at you like what are you even doing? 
 You're not even put you're not saying 
 the right things. Thing is that the Lord 
 doesn't care if we say the right things. 
 But it does bring us closer together as 
 spouses. And it also gives us confidence 
 to do that for our family. To pray at 
 the dinner table, to pray for a friend 
 that might need it in that moment. You 
 are part of this leadership, Christian 
 leadership group. You're going to want 
 to use those small things that can 
 become big things. Second is walk in the 
 word. We want to walk in the word of the 
 Lord. 
 So tell me this. If you've heard this, 
 if you've heard this saying before, go 
 ahead and finish it for me. If you're 
 going to talk the talk, 
 >> the walk the walk. Let's go. Come on. 
 Let's get it right. We got to wake up. 
 You guys had plenty of time to sleep 
 this morning. It's the 10:30 service. 
 So listen, we got to walk the walk in 
 our lives. We got to walk the walk for 
 the Lord. We got to walk the walk for 
 our family. 
 And the ways that we can walk the walk 
 is we can be the ones that lead from the 
 front. Lead by example. 
 We as Christians are called to be like 
 we're called to be slow to anger. We're 
 called to be quick to forgive. We're 
 called to deny our flesh from things 
 like gossiping. 
 I work in fitness around a lot of women. 
 Gossiping is a really common thing over 
 there. It's pretty consistent. I'm not 
 saying men don't gossip, but women 
 gossip more. And so, as as Christians, 
 we are here to try and be the light. 
 We're trying to be the ones that don't 
 fall guilty of those things. And 
 sometimes it can be difficult. I know. 
 I did have an uh an opportunity with my 
 daughter driving home from school and 
 we're talking about leading from the 
 front. 
 there was an opportunity where giving to 
 a homeless lady was something that came 
 about. We were driving from uh her 
 school. A lady was coming up that was 
 clearly having a hard time and we didn't 
 have time to stop and help her figure 
 out her life. Um so we were able to give 
 her $5. I gave Eva $5. I said hand this 
 to her. Eva probably doesn't even 
 remember this, but I hope she does. And 
 when she gave her $5, the lady just was 
 like, 
 "Right, no thank you, no appreciation of 
 any kind." And guess what? Three and a 
 half years ago before I was saved, 
 that would have made me mad. I would 
 have been upset that I gave somebody 
 money and they didn't appreciate it. But 
 I felt only joy. And the fact that I was 
 able to do that, I was able to give for 
 the Lord and feel joy. I was able to do 
 that in front of my daughter so she 
 could see that we don't as Christians 
 need to give and expect something back 
 immediately, expect some kind of 
 reimbursement. 
 Yeah. And then so in that same vein, I 
 did get to see a sermon by a pastor 
 that's evangelized and planted churches 
 all over in London, New York City, 
 Washington DC, Sacramento, San 
 Francisco, and planting churches out in 
 San Francisco, I'm guessing, is pretty 
 tough. But this guy spoke about some 
 amazing things. And one of the things he 
 spoke about was some of the as a 
 collective as Christians that we make 
 mistakes doing and we kind of fall into 
 two groups. One is isolators 
 and you probably know who you are if 
 you're an isolator. We're going to talk 
 about it. Isolators, 
 they don't like being around people, but 
 not just people. They don't like being 
 around people that don't have their 
 beliefs, that don't believe the same 
 things they do. They don't fall in the 
 groups that they fall into there. They 
 might have differences in political, 
 social, economical, or even spiritual. 
 But if you look at the world right now, 
 there couldn't be any more divide. 
 Spoke about social media. If you're on 
 that, you're seeing the most divided 
 groups of people you've ever seen in in 
 the world. And it's not on it's it's not 
 on accident that that's happening. 
 And the fact of the matter is is we're 
 not called to isolate. Now, I get the 
 idea of wanting to be on your own. My my 
 uh wife is probably guilty of this a 
 little bit. Uh she's the one that wants 
 to be on a farm, right? She wants to be 
 on a plot of land on her own with her 
 own farm animals, right? Maybe making 
 her own jam, 
 >> getting her own community, 
 right? And guess what? If you're those 
 kind of people, I'll be over to grab 
 some chicken eggs. 
 But the Lord did call us not to isolate. 
 Instead, we're actually called 
 to to love our enemies, to pray for our 
 enemies. And not only that, we're called 
 to be amongst them, all different people 
 in all walks of life. And we're called 
 to lead them to Christ. 
 Now the second mistake that we make as 
 Christians is we could be assimilators. 
 Assimilators are unlike isolators. 
 Assimilators are okay with being in the 
 world, associating with people of 
 different [clears throat] backgrounds 
 and different beliefs. 
 They might even have many friends that 
 are secular or don't believe in God at 
 all or maybe have a real harsh view of 
 Christianity in general. I fall I have 
 fallen into this before 
 and the problem with this 
 is instead of speaking the truth around 
 these people for the 
 the the [snorts] sake that they might 
 get judged or they might ruffle feathers 
 or they might even lose a friend they 
 just don't say anything. 
 So simulators, 
 well the the sad part about it is the 
 most unloving thing we can do is not 
 tell the truth repeatedly over and over, 
 especially to our closest ones, even 
 though we know it. 
 So assimilation to the world is losing 
 our influence on the world. 
 And as leaders and Christians, we don't 
 ever assimilate. Instead, we are called 
 to be the light among darkness. 
 Now, walking in the world isn't always 
 about what we do. Sometimes it's about 
 what we don't do. 
 Romans 14:20 speaks about this 
 perfectly. Do not for the sake of food 
 destroy the work of God. Everything is 
 indeed clean, but it's wrong for every 
 anyone to make another stumble by what 
 he eats. 
 That might be slightly confusing, but 
 it's not when I tell you that Paul is 
 writing to the church of Rome again, and 
 he's speaking to Jews and Gentile 
 believers. 
 And back then, they would slaughter an 
 animal animal or sacrifice an animal, 
 and the pagans would eat that animal. 
 And that was against Christianity at the 
 time. 
 But after Jesus was crucified and rose 
 in three days from the dead and saved us 
 from our sin, he changed all of that and 
 everything that we eat has become clean. 
 But what he's describing there is if you 
 are going to make another stumble by 
 eating the food, don't do it. 
 Don't waver somebody from their walk in 
 the Lord just because you know it's okay 
 and they don't 
 or they might fall out of grace with the 
 Lord. So a real world example of 
 something like this is you might know 
 someone that has an addiction of some 
 sort. You might know somebody that 
 has trouble with alcohol. 
 You wouldn't want to invite them to a 
 bar, right? You wouldn't want to invite 
 them over and see you having drinks or h 
 everyone partying, drinking 
 because that might get them to change 
 their path and stumble. And that's 
 important because as leaders, we try and 
 sacrifice for the greater good for our 
 brothers and sisters. 
 This also just comes to relating to 
 others, seeing where they're coming 
 from, seeing what their struggles are, 
 seeing where they've been. 
 So there's a lot of reasons why someone 
 might stumble, but there's also a lot of 
 reasons why someone might have become 
 separated from God. 
 A lot of people have their own reasons 
 for this. Sometimes it's church hurt. 
 I'm sure you've heard that they've had a 
 bad experience in church with somebody 
 at the church or Pastor Tyler spoke 
 about this a couple weeks ago, which was 
 Christian hypocrisy, right? Or 
 hypocrisy. So they saw some Christian 
 say one thing and do another. 
 Guess what? We're all hypocrites. We're 
 all fallen. We all need a savior. 
 Don't paint a brush over everybody. But 
 seeing that that might be their issue is 
 what our calling is. We're want We're 
 called to relate to where they are and 
 help them go to where they need to be. 
 And Paul did this in an amazing ways in 
 Athens. He spoke on the Aropagus. And 
 the Aropagus in that day was where all 
 the smartest people got on top of this 
 mountain and they basically debated and 
 they spoke about truth. 
 And when he preached on the Aropagus, he 
 was preaching to some of the most 
 knowledgeable, some of the most educated 
 philosophers of all time, especially in 
 that day. 
 But he had to start at the beginning. 
 He couldn't start where Jesus had just 
 been crucified and resurrected. They 
 have no idea what that is. He had to 
 start from the beginning of time, the 
 beginning of our faith. And he was able 
 to build this bridge 
 to introduce the God of the Bible to 
 these philosophers of all time. 
 And because of that, we are called to do 
 the exact same thing. We are called to 
 see our friends, our family members, 
 somebody at the grocery store, whoever 
 it might be to see where they are 
 and go to there with our proclaiming of 
 the gospel. 
 And finally, our third point, your 
 testimony is transformational. 
 Your testimony is transformational. 
 Everybody in this room that is saved has 
 a story, 
 has something that got them to seek the 
 Lord and change and transform their life 
 and pull the Holy Spirit into their 
 heart and be guided by it. You heard 
 Emily and I's story earlier. 
 We are away from God for 15 to 20 years. 
 And 
 even though we found the Lord on the top 
 of this mountain 
 kind of out of nowhere, 
 it's an imag. It's a It's a 
 transformational, it's a wonderful 
 story. We've told it to a lot of people. 
 She's told her friends and family 
 members. I've told mine. 
 And some have changed. Some have 
 accepted Jesus. Some are seeking the 
 Lord. Some have been baptized. And 
 that's an amazing thing. That's what 
 we're called to do. But not everybody 
 will accept Jesus in that moment. We're 
 called to do it anyway. 
 And some of my own personal experience 
 with this type of situation is I do have 
 a daughter. She's 15. I have a son. He's 
 10. And my son's been through it. He's 
 been through it. He's had a rough time, 
 rough go at it. Ever since he was first 
 born. He had surgery on his brain when 
 he's only a month old. He got a shunt 
 put in for hydrophilis 
 and ever since that time he's had 
 multiple bouts in the hospital. He's 
 been on life support three different 
 times. 
 He has been brought back to life 
 multiple times. Matter of fact, one time 
 he was only two years old and they 
 pulled out the the tube that was giving 
 him breathing to make sure he was able 
 to breathe on his own and his lungs 
 collapsed and he could no he could no 
 longer breathe. And you had nurse after 
 nurse compressing his heart to pump 
 blood through his body while other 
 nurses gave him epinephrine shots, which 
 is adrenaline. Seven of them to be 
 exact, to try and keep his heart going. 
 My daughter has seen most of this. 
 Matter of fact, my daughter could 
 probably be a nurse right now at 15 
 years old for all the things that she's 
 helped with with my son. He has 
 seizures. consistently and we have to 
 bag him. At least we did. God willing, 
 we don't have to do that anymore, but we 
 had to bag him 
 to just keep his oxygen up. We had to 
 give him rescue meds to get him to stop 
 seizing so he would start breathing 
 again. And my [clears throat] daughter's 
 been part part of all of this. She's 
 been able to help out and see this. But 
 the crazy thing about that is my son, 
 she's seen this nice line of life and 
 death. 
 and she's been able to see that it's a 
 really fine line at a really young age. 
 And the thing is is she hasn't accepted 
 Jesus Christ into her life just yet. 
 And I know 
 I know that she's going to end up having 
 a testimony that's fantastic and people 
 will want to hear her testimony when she 
 accepts Jesus. And bunches I was going 
 to say millions. That'd be amazing. But 
 so many people's lives could be changed 
 by her testimony. And I'm guessing some 
 people in here have had the same story. 
 They know a loved one. They have a 
 friend that hasn't accept Jesus in their 
 life yet. And they just want them to 
 hear it. The Holy Spirit will get to 
 them. You just got to not give up. 
 So that brings us to our key question of 
 the day. As a leader, how can you make 
 Jesus known? Crossurch is all about 
 making Jesus known. If you've been here 
 for longer than a couple weeks, we talk 
 about it all the time. We need to make 
 Jesus known. The first way we can do 
 that is use our gifts. 
 God has given us all specific gifts. 
 Whether it's in your job or in your 
 hobbies, we want to use our gifts. Peter 
 talks about this in chapter uh Peter 4 
 10- 11. As each has received a gift, use 
 it to serve one another as good stewards 
 of God's varied grace. 
 We are called to use our gifts. Whether 
 it's making clothing for somebody, being 
 a good giver, being a good steward of of 
 the word, joining a group and speaking 
 to people and being the leader or coming 
 up on stage and doing it. We are called 
 to use our gifts. Second, share your 
 story. 
 Your story is truth 
 and with truth comes trust. 
 If you have a strong story, you want to 
 share it, especially to the people 
 closer to you. They're going to believe 
 it. They're going to accept it more 
 likely than just some random thing that 
 you pull out of the Bible. 
 Don't just yell scripture at people. 
 Tell them the truth. 
 Third, surrender to the spirit. 
 The Holy Spirit, it gives you joy. 
 The Holy Spirit, it builds you from the 
 inside. that it brings love and peace 
 into your heart, but the Holy Spirit 
 speaks through you. The Holy Spirit will 
 give you guidance. And I hope that you 
 are able to hear it when it matters the 
 most. When you're at the barber shop and 
 the Holy Spirit tugs on your heart and 
 says, "Pray for this shop." When the 
 Holy Spirit tugs on you and says, "Pay 
 for this person's meal." Or, "Ask this 
 person if they know Jesus." The Holy 
 Spirit will speak through you. Surrender 
 to him. 
 Number four, leverage the power of 
 prayer. Prayer is the best chance we got 
 to improve our relationship with Jesus. 
 It's like a direct aiming right into the 
 heavens, speaking directly to our Lord 
 will help build your leverage and the 
 power of prayer around the people you 
 know. So that when you're doing this 
 consistently and your confidence builds 
 and you're praying at the table and 
 you're praying with your spouse and 
 you're praying with your friends, 
 they can feel that from you. They can 
 feel the Holy Spirit speaking through 
 you. So leverage the power of prayer. 
 And finally, number five, lead like 
 Jesus. 
 Jesus valued all. 
 He valued every one of his sons and 
 daughters. And he walked around with 
 sinners and the broken. He didn't find 
 the best in the world. He found the 
 broken and the sinners. 
 And he even spoke at their language. He 
 used a standard language, the low-level 
 language of the time, so that he could 
 speak to so many people and they could 
 all hear it and accept the word. Jesus 
 never ran away from people. He never 
 assimilated and he always challenge the 
 status quo to proclaim the gospel. And 
 we're called to do the same. 
 So just to encompass this entire sermon, 
 I'm going to close with Matthew 5 verse 
 13- 16. 
 So this scripture on salt and light 
 basically encompasses the entire sermon. 
 And verse 13, you are the salt of the 
 earth. But if salt has lost its taste, 
 how shall its saltiness be restored? 
 It is no longer good for anything except 
 to be thrown out and trampled under 
 people's feet. 
 Verse 14, how are the how are the light 
 of the world or you are the light of the 
 world? A city set on a hill cannot be 
 hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and 
 put under put it under a basket but on a 
 stand and it gives light to all in the 
 house. In the same way, let your light 
 shine before others so that they may see 
 your good works and give glory to your 
 father in heaven. See, we are called to 
 preserve goodness. 
 We're called to add value and influence 
 society positively. 
 So just like salt that preserves decay 
 or and preserves flavor, we can never 
 allow ourselves to become stagnant in 
 our journey with Jesus Christ. 
 We are called to openly live out our 
 truth, live out the truth of the gospel 
 and never hide away from it. We're 
 always striving to glorify God. And as 
 Pastor Joby Martin once said, "Those 
 with little faith usually need more 
 clarity of outcome 
 than those that are fully trusted in 
 God's word." 
 So if someone says, "We're going in this 
 direction," and someone questions, 
 "Well, what if it goes bad?" I say, 
 "What if it goes good?" 
 Because in what you do is you pray, you 
 guess, and then you just go. And it's on 
 the go that God will direct your steps. 
 And I challenge everybody in here to 
 lead from the front, 
 to take it upon yourself to proclaim the 
 gospel to anyone that you can because if 
 we don't do it, who will? 
 Let's pray. 
 Dear heavenly father, I'm just so 
 grateful to be on stage. 
 They able to preach your word. I just 
 pray that for all of us, we're able to 
 step forward in the word of the Lord. 
 And we're leading. We're able to lead 
 from the front. We're able to lead in 
 your word, the gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 lead in our families, lead around our 
 friends. we're able to proclaim your 
 name and the truth to everyone that we 
 can. I pray this in Jesus's mighty name. 
 Amen. 
 If everyone could stand to continue and 
 work