I was at a Banner of Truth conference and one of my former professors John R. W. DeWitt was going to be speaking, actually it was when Ian Murray's second volume came out of his biography of Martin Lloyd Jones, that long ago. It was when the Banner of Truth Conference was in Memphis, it tells you how long ago it was. But Dr. DeWitt was scheduled to speak about that biography, and just before he gets up, he's looking around, he looks at his briefcase, and he turns, he says, dear me, He was pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis at that time. He said, I left my notes in the church office. And he said, well, God's sovereign. We'll go ahead. And he says, does anybody have a copy of the book? And he looked up a couple of references in the book, and then did a brilliant job without his notes. He had left his notes. Well, I might not be able to see my notes today, but we'll see how it goes. But I'm not concerned about it. The Lord's sovereign over these things as well. I want to give just a brief introduction before I want to point out some things from the first portion of what Jeremy's handing out to you, something I put together a number of years ago, but have updated it. 1994 was a significant year in what would eventually be the Presbyterian of the Southeast life. A really, I think, remarkable godly man came into the Orthodox Christian Church. Of course, I came into the Orthodox Christian Church in 1994, but I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about Dr. George Knight, and Dan and Jeremy and others that knew Dr. Knight, he's with the Lord now, will realize what a godly man he was, what a man of great stature in the church, a man of wisdom. And we came in, we were supposed to come in at the same presbytery meeting. He was coming back into the OPC from the PCA. He had actually been a moderator of the General Assembly in the early days of the OPC, and then was in the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod when he was at Covenant Seminary, and then in the PCA when RPCES went into the PCA, But when he came back to the East Coast and came back to Greenville Seminary, he was eager to come back into the OPC. And I heard about that, and I thought, I know what I'm going to do in my exam, because I'm coming out of the PCUSA. They're going to look at me kind of like this as I come in. And I knew I was going to get a grilling. And so I had it down. I figured, well, they would bring Dr. Knight in first. I would just get up and say, ditto everything he said. And then I could just sit down in terms of my exam. But he was delayed and actually came in at the next presbytery meeting, if I remember correctly. But I got to know Dr. Knight. Dr. Knight was one who liked to lead by whispering. There were certain ears that he would whisper in things about the church and the direction it needed to go and things that needed to happen. And we became close because we came in, he came back in, I came to the OPC about the same time. And my ear was one of the ones he would whisper into at that time. And he began to plant the seed for the planting of a new presbytery, the Presbytery of the Southeast. And I think he had a number of motivations for that, just for the sake of the gospel, you know, a concentrated effort in between the Mid-Atlantic Presbytery, its southern churches, and the Presbytery of the South, its northern churches coming together that would be more effective in evangelism and outreach, which was a big burden for Dr. Knight. I think he also recognized that the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic, and Dan was ordained by the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic, was a broader presbytery theologically. It was a very mature presbytery and a very peaceful presbytery. I really enjoyed the years that I was in that presbytery. But Dr. Knight, I think, realized that in the Presbytery of the South, there would be even more of a homogeneous, in terms of theology, in terms of practice, in terms of the application of the regulative principle. And so he was working behind the scenes by whispering in different people's ears and then suddenly you have a committee that's formed and then the committee is doing its work to put it all together. And I remember one thing about Dr. Knight. He wanted us to put the foot to the pedal. in church planning. He did not want us to slack off at all even though we're going to be a very small and weak and struggling Presbytery. And so when we were putting together standing rules, I can recall he was adamant that we have more men on the omissions committee than either of the two Presbyteries that we came from. He wanted a six-man committee. And he wanted that, and he whispered it in my ear and some others. And so, of course, it appeared in the standing rules when we approved them at a meeting that took place at Matthews OPC. That's what they called it back then, in Matthews, North Carolina. I think it was in November of 1999. I remember I moderated that meeting. And we adopted standing rules. We elected all the committees. The committees met in order to elect their chairman and all that kind of thing so that we could hit the ground running in January. And then we ratified all those things that we did. I think Dan was elected to the Home Missions Committee at that time, if I recall, up front. And Jeremy, shortly after, within three or four years, I think, was elected to the Home Missions Committee. And I was elected the chairman of the committee. And I'm going to come back to that in just a moment, because I was fully prepared to be the chairman of the committee. And I'll tell you why in a moment. But just to get some sense of just how weak we were when the Presbytery came into existence. If you look at the handout, you'll see the congregations that existed, organized congregations in the year 2000, and there were eight of them. And if you look at these, Christ's Etowah doesn't exist anymore. It's gone first, Taylor's doesn't, but that was an interesting thing. We closed the church at a Presbytery meeting, and we established a mission work in the same place at the same presbytery meeting. So the ministry continued, but all the elders resigned, and there was not any animosity or anything, but resigned and went to other churches in order for the mission work to get off to a good start. The church in Lenore, North Carolina, which had been newly organized at that time, yeah, at that time, no longer exist. These were small churches, some of them new churches at the time. There was one church, if you look at that list, that you could say was a historic flagship church when the Presbyterian Church came into existence in 2000, and that was Redeemer in Atlanta, where Tom Champness was pastor. Now, the Matthews Church was rapidly growing under their young minister Nathan Trice and his ministry, and rapidly took its place as a foundational church for the Presbytery, also one that supplied many resources, financial resources, in the early days. But it still was kind of a motley crew when you consider the 11 congregations that existed at that time, and we inherited seven mission works. So we had 11 congregations, most of them small, some of them new, some of them struggling, And then we had seven mission works. How in the world can 11 congregations care for seven mission works that we inherited the first day? And of course, one of those mission works was covenant here in New Bern at that time. It would organize two years later. But I was confident of being chairman. of the committee. I'm gonna take these down and hope the lens doesn't fall out. I was confident of being the chair of the committee because I had an ace in the hole. His name was Jim Heemstra. I think Jim did some work here in the very early stages in New Bern. And Jim was the Dutch uncle to everybody. Jim's with the Lord too now. And Jim was my Dutch uncle. He was the regional home missionary in the Presbytery of the South. He was a ruling elder, and as a Dutch uncle, he sometimes got in trouble because he didn't know when to keep his mouth shut on occasions. I love Jim. And the plan from the beginning and the formation of the Presbytery of the Southeast was that Jim would serve both the Presbytery of the South and the Presbytery of the Southeast. So I had it all figured out. I'll chair the committee, Jim can do all the work, and I'll take all the glory. You know, it just made sense to me. Well, two weeks, I'm being a bit facetious there, just a little bit though, about the glory part. I don't really mean the glory part, but you understand what I'm talking about. Two weeks before we were gonna have our actual first meeting in January, I get a phone call, and it's Jim Heemstra. And I had something I wanted to talk to him about anyway, so I was glad he called. And first thing he said after greeting me, he says, Lacey, I don't want the job. I said, Jim, what are you talking about? He said, it's just too big. He said, I don't want the job. I said, well, they can't be our regional missionary. We need a regional missionary. He said, I know you do. He said, I know you do. But he said, no, I'm going to stay in the Presbytery of South. And I could not dissuade him. Now, there's no way we could have paid him extra salary at that time. But I was grasping for straws, quite frankly. And so as the conversation went forward, I said, Jim, we're going to need a regional missionary. He said, I know you are. And he said, let me give you some advice, which he always gave advice. And it was usually good. But he said, when you get ready to call a regional missionary, don't call a young man. He said, I don't care how gifted he is. It has to be somebody that's been around the block, somebody that's seen a lot, someone that's gained wisdom through experience in the church. And he said, second, When you call a regional missionary, call someone from within the Presbytery. Call someone that the men in the Presbytery know and trust and the congregations know and trust. I'm still in shock because I'm going to be the chairman of the Home Missions Committee with seven mission works and not going to have a regional missionary. And so I hung up the phone and I began to mentally go through the list of the ministers that were going to be in the Presbyterian of the Southeast. Okay, who are the old guys? Well, he's retired. That's not going to work. This one just went to this work. He's brand new there. That's not going to work. Too young, too young, too young, too young. Come to Dan Fincham's name. Too young, you know, as I'm going down the list. When I got to the bottom of the list, there was only one name on the list, and it was mine. And I told my wife what Jim said. I said, but we don't have to be concerned about this. I was the pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church that's now in Chilhowee, Virginia at the time. We were in a rented facility in Meadowview. I said, we've got to help the congregation get out of this rented facility and get into a permanent church building. And we were looking in those directions. before I can leave this work." And I said, that's going to take at least five years. Surely we'll have a regional missionary before then. And so it dropped. And sorry about being autobiographical here, but the pressure of the Southeast is somewhat tied up with this history. as well. So Presbytery of Southeast came into existence. I had a very forgiving session in congregation that gave me a lot of time away from the pulpit, because these works needed to be visited. And I was visiting them in that first year, and the session would let me go and visit these works. The other man, Dan, and others were tied up. It was harder for them to get away to do it. I had the ability and the liberty to do it. And so, in a sense, I was wearing two hats, sort of functioning as an RHM, and at the same time, pastoring the church. And after that first year, I realized something's got to give. This is not fair to the congregation. And what came to mind was that conversation I had with Jim and the list of people, the old guys that, you know, within the Presbyterian, my name was on the list. And the Lord did some remarkable things in the interim. For one thing, he provided for us to be able to get in a church building way quicker than I thought that we would. And that's an interesting story too. I had a friend of mine, because this makes a difference in terms of PSE as well, that I had been his pastor years before. He lived about an hour away from me. He was a ruling elder in the church. We were very close when I was there and stayed in touch from time to time. And he called me up and he said he wanted to have lunch with me sometime. I said, sure. So we met for lunch and he told me, you may be getting a telephone call from an attorney. He said, you were in a meeting when I was selling my shares in the company that he was CEO of. a president of that company, and there's some legal things that have come up, and they may be contacting you." And I had to scratch my head, do I even remember being at the meeting? And I had vague recollection of just being there as moral support for the member of my church, but remembered nothing of the details. And he said, and by the way, remember that Dell computer? that you got, and I didn't buy a Dell computer. My first computer was given to me by Bill Hobbs. Some of you know Bill Hobbs, who was pastor at OPC Church in Tallahassee, Florida for about 30 years and now is in Jacksonville. And Bill called me one day and he said, if somebody gave you a computer, I didn't own a computer. I had a word processor, a little word processor thing I used. This is in the olden days, kids. There were days when there weren't such things as personal computers, okay? And certainly not smartphones or any of that kind of thing. you And he said, if somebody gave you a computer, would you take it? I said, well, I suppose I would. He said, well, I'm gonna buy you a computer. He said, what do you want? I said, I don't know anything about computers. He said, I've been looking at this little company that's just starting up in Dallas, Texas, no, in Austin, Texas, called Dell Computers. I like what I'm reading there. I'm gonna have them send you a computer and I'm gonna get one. I'm gonna send one to another seminary classmate, former classmate if he is. And so I get this computer in the mail. I don't even know how to plug the thing in. Well, this elder who does comes over and he helps me. And he's intrigued by this little company called Dell Computer. And he took the fairly sizable sum that he got when he sold out of that his shares in this particular company that he and his brother had established. And he decided, and this would be the late 1980s, to buy $100,000 worth of shares in Dell Computer. So we're sitting there and he said, it's divided seven times. It's worth $8 million now. And he said, I made a mistake. I sold half of it six months in. But I left $50,000 worth in it. It's worth $8 million now. I want to help your church. He said, I'm going to not write a check, but I want to transfer stocks from telecomputer to your church. He said, I'm thinking maybe $50,000. Now, this doesn't make sense, what I'm about to tell you, OK? Mathematically, it does not make sense. But I'm convinced it makes sense spiritually. I didn't think $50,000 would be helpful to our church in terms of the stewardship of our members at that time. We had a small debt of about $11,000 on property that we had bought, that we were paying off. But it paralyzed the session and the deacons, only $11,000, it still paralyzed them from moving forward with a new building project. They wanted to get it paid off before they did anything. And that was going to take at least months, maybe a couple of years. I said, C.R., if you were to make a contribution to retire that debt, I think it will stimulate the stewardship of the congregation. So I turned down $50,000 and took $11,000. I know that doesn't make sense, but it did make sense because that's exactly what happened. It multiplied his $11,000 over more and more as the congregation. It satisfied that debt, but they could step up in their own stewardship in terms of moving forward with the building project. And then a building comes available in Chilhahar, Virginia at a great price, we buy the building. And then suddenly, you know, my five years until we get there to my wife, we're in that building. I mean, almost immediately, just months after this was taking place. And at the same time, I'm feeling this pull of how do we help support these mission works? How do I pastor the church? And I had this wild hair idea, well, maybe I need to become regional missionary. I don't know. Maybe I do. I don't know. Something's got to give. I've either got to resign from the committee or from the chair of the committee and give it to Dan, let him do this stuff, you know, or something's got to give. And so the first person I talked to after my wife about it was Nathan Trice, who was on the committee. I think he was vice chair. And Nathan said, I could get excited about that idea. Those were his words. He says, let me take it and run with it. The next person I talked to was Jim Hamstra. Jim was driving through, he called me up and said, I'm going to be driving through your area, you know, maybe we can meet for lunch, anything you want to talk about. I said, there is something I want to talk about. And so we had lunch, we sat in the car for several hours afterwards, and I told Jim what I was thinking. I said, I don't know. I've got one member of the committee I've talked to about it. He seems excited about it. Don't know how the president is going to pay for it. We don't know any of this kind of thing. And so he said, I understand. And he spent about three hours telling me every horror story that's ever occurred in the Presbytery of the South that a regional home missionary has gotten involved with. And when he got done, I said, are you trying to talk me out of this? He said, I figured if I could, the Lord wasn't calling you to do it. I said, am I crazy? He said, no, you're the guy. That's what he said. And Nathan took it and ran with it. But still, how are we going to pay for it? You see how meager we were, how small we were. We did have about $20,000 in the bank we got from the Presidio of Mid-Atlantic when the Presidio of Southeast came into existence. And so I thought about my friend, C.R., the one who had made the contribution to our church that helped us get in the building. And so I put together a plan, I talked to Nathan about it, I put together a plan and I went to see R and I sat down with him and I said, this is the opportunity and I think it's a way where the Lord can multiply your gift again. Would you pray about it? And I asked him to fund the first year's budget. And then on a descending scale over the next two years, I said, would you be willing to think and pray about this? He said, I would. And almost immediately, the next day or two, he called me, he said, I'm willing to do it. Out of the blue now, well, it's not completely out of the blue, I wasn't asking about it, but we had funding without taxing these small churches and even the General Assembly to support an RHM ministry. Okay, we get everything in place. Call everything. Everything's ready to go. And I get a call from CR. No, I think I called him and said, CR, we're about to do this. Are you ready to make your contribution? And he said, well, guess what happened? The dot com bubble burst. Remember when that happened? and it had grown to 16 million, was now back down to 8 million by the time he got out, and he thought, I'm losing everything. He said, I'm not sure I can do it. I said, C.R., you said you would, and we've made all these plans around this. He says, is there anybody I can talk to at the denominational level. I said there is I gave him Ross Graham's phone number. And Ross told me this and CR told me this both. He called Ross, and he told Ross about what had happened, you know, the stock market and his ability to give and he said, What are you going to do if I have to pull out? And Ross says we're going to do it anyway. If you knew Ross Graham, you understand. He said, the Lord will provide. This would be wonderful if you can help us, but the Lord will find a way. We believe that this is what God's doing. And he said, I'll fund the first year. And so he funded it. The budget was $60,000. It's over twice that now. But this was in the year 2002. He funded it. And just to take that story a little further, His wife died just a few years later, two or three years, not that long later. And I was contacted to see if I could do her funeral. And I couldn't. It was over the weekend. I was going to be out of town, but the graveside would be on Monday. I said, I can be there for the graveside. And so I went over and I did the graveside service and his dementia was beginning to show. And after the graveside service, a church hosted us for a meal, the family for a meal. I was sitting with C.R. and we were, he could remember some things from the distance past and we were reminiscing things. It was a wonderful time. And I said, C.R., I want to thank you for how you supported the church and how you supported the Presbytery, you know, when I became breach on missionary. And he looked at me, he says, I don't remember any of that. He could not remember any of it, but Jesus remembers. The Lord remembers what that godly man did. And that's how I became the regional missionary of the Presbytery of the Southeast in 2002. And the Lord has made provision in remarkable ways ever since. He funded the first year, which gave the Presbytery an opportunity through its askings to begin to build the teal, to build the nest egg for the year to come. General Assembly came in the second year with their full support at that time. And the Lord blessed and prospered our presbytery. Our churches began to grow. Churches were planted. Those mission works became congregations. Some of them became our biggest giving congregations within the presbytery. And the Lord has made provision ever since for the last for the last 22 years. And the Lord's grown our presbytery so much using multiple people and individuals. I often say, no, no, no, it's not me. My gift is I say, hey, look at this and look at this. If we bring these two things together, then something wonderful might happen. I'm the guy that kind of stands in the gaps sometimes in those ways. But so much so that your session did something that I'm a little ticked about, but I'm also happy about it. About three years ago, they said, we need to think about dividing the Presbyterian, we need to do it right. Because people were talking about it, because the churches were having trouble hosting Presbytery. And they were saying, tell men not to bring their families, because you can't feed everybody. And your session had the foresight to realize if this is not done well, it could be done poorly. and came with a recommendation that the Home Missions Committee begin to study the issue. That was precisely what needed to be done. And we anticipate within the next two or three years, the one presbytery will be two presbyteries. But we're sad about it because the fellowship is so sweet. And it's hard for me to imagine not being in the same regional church with some of the men that would be in the Southern, what we typically call the Southern. It could also be called the Western in some sense of the division. But the Lord's blessed us. And just to demonstrate that, if you look down the page, you see where we are today. Today in, that says 2021, it should say 2024, updated everything but the date. There are 24 organized congregations. Remember there were 11 in the 12, no 11 in the beginning. There are 24 organized congregations now. Now some of these came in from other churches. Covenant Buford is one that came from another denomination into the OPC, and I think it's our biggest giving church in the Presbytery right now. And some of these that were small churches are really vibrant congregations now and have grown significantly and have taken their place in supporting the full program of the church. Our budget for the Home Missions and the Presbyteries is close to $250,000. And we're asking the General Assembly for just under a half a million dollars this year to help support our work. And they help support me significantly as RHM. But then also there are 11 mission works currently within our press. The most that we've ever had at any one time is 11. A couple of these are poised to organize pretty quickly, which is a good thing. And I'm gonna give a fuller report in Sunday school about the individual mission works and what's going on in them now. Plus we have the Clarkston Refugee Evangelistic Ministry where we, up until the end of this year, Malakou Tamaret, who is a minister that came to us from the Presbyterian Church in Ethiopia, has been serving as evangelist. That will end at the end of this year, and he's going to be working primarily in translating works into the Amharic language and working with the Ethiopian church through the OPC. or we would have been supporting that work at $25,000 in 2025 as well. The work is going to continue under the session of Redeemer Church. But there's also sad news in the history of the PSE. When you look at this, we have had eight churches that have been dissolved since the PSE came into existence. Trinity Bristol, particularly sad about that one since it was the daughter church of the church that I was pastor of when we were in Mediview and in early stages in Chilhowee. Christ London was a mission work that we inherited when the Presbytery came into existence that organized, Patrick Ramsey was the pastor there, really good man, he called me Dan and Jeremy a couple weeks ago with a pastoral question. I hadn't heard from Patrick in a long time. But that work, it got on solid footing financially because of a couple of families that were doctors that lived about an hour away that were vital in the church and both moved away. And then they just ultimately couldn't pay the bills. And we tried to hold on, but it didn't make it. Providence Lenore didn't make it. Providence Aiken, South Carolina, both of those became organized congregations before they closed. Providence Greensboro, that's the saddest one for me. That breaks my heart. My brother, our brother Ari Van Eyck that we deeply love and thanks be to God, he has a call and he's serving our work in our church in Cumming, Georgia now, but that was a tragic closure that just happened of a church that was very vibrant at one point. Cornerstone Arden was small when it came to us as an independent church. An interesting story that it had three ruling elders when they petitioned. By the time we took them in, two of the ruling elders had left the church. So it was weakened when it came, and ultimately it didn't make it. Christ Attaway was a church that had a bivocational minister for years and years, and it was small. When he passed away, the church was closed. And then, like I said, First Church Taylors, South Carolina, was struggling. Sid Dyer was pastor there at one point, I think their first pastor, and then they brought in another gentleman out of the Bible Christian Church, remember, that served for a year still had trouble getting traction. And the elder said, somebody else needs to try this. And Tony Curto said, there's going to be an OPC church in Greenville, South Carolina. He wouldn't take no for an answer. And we knew just to shut him up, we had to do what he wanted to do. And so at the very same Presbyterian meeting where we closed First Church Taylors, We planted a mission work in the same building at the very same Presbytery meeting. And the first pastor that came was George Scipione, you'll remember. And George was a great guy. He's with the Lord now too. And he was Tony's best friend, but I don't think Tony was pleased with George. I shouldn't say that. Anyway, that didn't last too long. And then they got this young guy named Peter Vandudeward. I'd love for Peter to be my pastor. This guy wears all the hats, and probably the most respected, or one of the most respected men in our presbytery, and the church is exceedingly vibrant there. Covenant Community Church is. We've also had one church that you know quite well because it came in as a mission work of this church, that was Trinity in Wilmington, that sadly, through some conflict that arose, ended up leaving the OPC, and I think most of you probably know that, and then dissolved as a congregation entirely. Of course, we have a thriving congregation in Wilmington now. There's also been mission work efforts. Now, what time am I supposed to end? I don't pay attention to the clock, but that one stares right at me. It's so big. At 10 o'clock, okay, we're doing pretty good here. Mission work efforts, these were ones that didn't become organized, or even in most cases, full mission works, but efforts at evangelism and church planting that didn't make it. Carrollton, Georgia, that one was very sad to me because it did, It came to the point of the calling of an organizing pastor. We were very excited about it. I worked significantly in that work in the early stages of it. But then this often happens, division happens within the church. And it was division that we couldn't resolve. And it ended up splitting the work. And then I mentioned Bill Dennison and his work with Machen's Letters. Bill went down there as an interim for a season, and it revived a bit, and we thought it might take off. We even thought about calling Bill as a pastor. I don't know whether Jeremy and Dan remember that, and Bill was interested. But the congregation says, we don't think that it's going to work. And then the work closed. And it's always very, very sad when works close like that. We had preaching points in Dayton, Tennessee, Clarksville, Tennessee. There was a uniqueness there with the man that we were calling to be church planter that backed out at the last minute. Smyrna, Tennessee. I did an exploratory Bible study there in the Nashville area years ago. that didn't get off the ground. Lexington, North Carolina, the Mount Airy Church tried an exploratory Bible study there for a season. Dunlap, Tennessee, we had a preaching point there with a retired minister, really wonderful man who's with the Lord now, and did an exploratory Bible study in Griffin, Georgia. And there have been others that have been shorter-lived attempts to see if the Lord would gather a group that could move towards mission status, and I didn't include all of those. There are also those that are in discussion even now of possible places. There's been experimentation even in a couple of places, but haven't quite pulled the trigger to the point of being an exploratory Bible study or a preaching point or certainly a mission work. But when you take all of this into account, and let me say this, I do not believe that any of these are failed works. There's much gospel fruit that's taken place in these. Whether they were meeting for a Bible study for two years, or a preaching point for three years, or a mission work for five years. And in the congregations, too. For many years, the gospel was preached. People were shepherded. Seeds were planted, it's just in God's purposes he did not see fit to continue that particular congregation. His church will never fail, here on the earth, in terms of the church universal. But oftentimes churches rise up and fall. Some, we know, become synagogues of Satan. Whereas before, there was great gospel witness in those very same pulpits. And then false gospels were preached. We saw some of that that happened when we were talking last night about the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and what happened in the Christian Church of the United States of America prior to the start of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And it's a wonderful thing to see what the Lord has done And I'll say this, the last four or five years, maybe even longer, our Presbyterians received the most mission dollars from the General Assembly. I kind of like that. I'll just tell you, I just kind of like it. And it was so funny, about three or four years ago, two of our regional missionaries who are now retired, Dave Crum from Southern California, and then Jim Bosgraf from the Midwest. Great guys. Dan's been to the Rechecks Conference. He knows how it's done. Takes place in November, early November of every year. And there's a time when we divide up the denominational pie of monies to the new works for the next year. At least what we're gonna recommend to the General Assembly Committee. And that conference has all the regional missionaries and the chairman of the Home Missions Committees of our presbyteries. So Dan was our chairman for a number of years. He attended a number of the rechecks conference. So we were kind of a one-two punch for the Presidio of the Southeast in terms of the dividing up of the money. And they come in and they have a figure in mind that they're given by the treasurer. This is how much money is going to be available for new works in the next year. There's a target dollar amount. And then they go around the room, presbytery by presbytery, and the presbytery says, well, you know, we need to start this work here. We're going to start this work here. When are you going to start that work? Well, we want the money to start in January. You know, well, for this one, we'll start the money coming in April. And they start tabulating this. I mean, it's real scientific, the way it's all done and everything. They start tabulating it, and it got somebody on a computer there that's keeping account of it as it goes. They go around the presbyteries until every presbytery has made their report, and then they hit the thumb button, and then they see how much more we need than we have that's available, typically. And sometimes, when things are a bit tight, Somebody said, well, you know, we probably won't have a man in January. Why don't we start in July instead? And there's some of this back and forth. And then there's banter back and forth. And particularly between Dave Crum and Jim Bosgraf. You guys don't need that money. We need that money. And they would just go back and forth and back and forth. Every year it was a spectacle to watch those two guys. And everybody laughed at it. And John Shaw one time came up to them and they were just during a break and they were just bickering back and forth. While you guys are bickering about this, Lacey's taking all the money. And then when we looked at the sheet, our presbytery was getting the most dollars. This past year, Ohio really thought, we're going to beat them this time. They were excited because they had a lot of new works that were coming, but they didn't. The Lord's blessed our presbytery in really in remarkable, remarkable ways. And let me say something else here as we close. And I think that our conception of the regional church in the OPC, which is unique to the OPC, is a tremendous blessing to our church. When I went to seminary and took politics, I took it under a man by the name of Al Freund. Dr. Al Freund, he was the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Central Mississippi and the PCOS, the Southern Church, and of the Synod. My first theology professor was Dr. Morton Smith, who was the study clerk of the PCA. So you can imagine the battles that were kind of going on behind the scenes at Reformed Theological Seminary in the late 1970s. But I remember Dr. Freund being adamant in saying, the presbytery only exists when it's in session. It can only do business when it's in session. When it's convened, it exists. When it adjourns, it ceases to exist. That's not the way the OPC sees it. Now granted, the court can only act when it's in session as its governing body. But we have explicitly stated in our book of church order, and other denominations don't, I just went back and checked the PCAs again this past week to make sure I wasn't lying about the PCA. This is nowhere to be found in the PCA's book of church order. And I told you last night, we're more like them than we're different than them. But ours is very, very clear. The regional church is made up of all of the ministers, elders, and members of the congregations within a particular region or a particular district. The governing body of the regional church is the presbytery. We recognize there is a vital existence, not only of congregations between session meetings, but of regional churches between presbytery meetings. And that understanding binds our hearts together. In my experience, and I haven't seen everything, and so this is not scientific, But in my experience, there is a greater fellowship and connection within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church than what I have observed in other Presbyterian denominations. Now, there may be some other ones that share it that I just don't know about their experience. But there's a greater fellowship, mutual accountability, knowledge of, prayer for, support for each other, and maybe partly because we're smaller, that may contribute to it. But I think the idea of the regional church and of the whole church, its governing body is the General Assembly, I think that's part of it. And I think it's genius. And I would that our brothers and sisters who don't have this understanding would catch it and would incorporate it. And our churches are spread out because we don't have near as many of them as some other denominations do. And yet there is a fellowship that we enjoy greatly, especially within the regional church, but even beyond the regional church, between congregations that are on borders. I have labored in the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic. I've labored in the Presbytery of the South on border plants, those kinds of things. Boy, we have stolen from the regional missionaries in the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic to labor on our side of the border up in the Virginia area. And sometimes they think, well, maybe we shouldn't have the lines drawn where they are, because Steve Doe helped us in Virginia Beach. Charles Biggs is helping us in Short Pump, Virginia, right now, across our line. Boy, I wish we could get one right across their line that I could help them to sort of repay a little of that. We had some of our men help with Eastern Shore, a work that hasn't worked out. But there is a fellowship. and the regional church. And I think it's partly due to precisely this understanding. We're a regional church. We're not just a court that meets a couple of times a year. But we're a regional church, and we're bound to one another. And I love that. It was foreign to me when I learned about it coming into the Orthodox Christian Church. OK, we have time for Q&A later. It's not now, so I'm going to close in prayer and then turn it back over to Dan. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for what you have done. in our regional church for the multiplication of churches. Father, we thank you for that witness in those places that don't exist anymore as a witness of the OPC, but for ministry performed and for seeds planted even in those places. Father, we thank you for how you have blessed many of our churches in extraordinary measures and extraordinary ways. Lord, we know from your word that it's Christ Jesus who builds this church. The gates of hell will not prevail against his work. Lord, we pray that you would continue to bless our regional church. And if indeed we become two regional churches, that blessing would continue in the two. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Lacey. Let's stand as we sing 353 in the Trinity Hymnal.