And so I want to begin reading where Jesus says in verse 18. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority and heaven on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. Behold, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. That's the ESV. Could be translated actually better than that in a couple of points. you know, for one, go therefore and make disciples. The actual imperative in the text is make disciples. So the sense is, as you are going and in terms of where you are in life, the imperative is to make disciples. Then you have this, you know, this some participles that follow, baptizing them, actually better translated, into the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, behold I'm with you always to the end of the age. So church planting, like foreign missions, is in a zeal to be faithful to the great commission that God has given to His church. And so what I put together here are some prayer notes so that you can take these home in family worship or in your private devotions. You can pray for what's going on in home missions in our Presbytery. And a couple of things I'd like to say here. One is, I said this at Presbytery, we are seeing unprecedented blessing. in church planting in our presbytery. And we've never had 11 mission works at one time in the 24 years the presbytery's existed. We've had seven, eight, nine mission works, sometimes four, five, or six because the plan is when you plan a church is that the Lord would bring it to maturity and it would be organized and not be a mission work anymore. It would be a congregation, an organized congregation. But currently we have 11 mission works as of our last presbytery meeting and the potential is great. In fact, I expected it will be the case, but it's in the Lord's hands. There's been delays in the calling of organizing pastors in two of our works that we were actually hopeful were going to transpire at our October meeting that have been postponed until the April meeting. I have great hopes that those men will be called in April. If that is the case, apart from one of our organizing pastors taking another call, going somewhere else or something happening that we wouldn't expect at all, we would have for the first time in my memory, had church planners in every single one of our mission works. And I'm excited about that because when we have several mission works that don't have pastors yet or evangelists organizing pastors in those works, I'm tied up in those works. I'm tied up preaching in those works and giving leadership to those works. When we get organizing pastors, that liberates my schedule. But typically, as soon as we get an organizing pastor, we have another mission work. And so I go from one, you know, this is my Sunday to be in this. Okay, now it's my Sunday to be in this from there. But I am hopeful. It's not that I don't want more mission works. Don't get me wrong. But I would enjoy at least a season where my schedule wasn't so tied and I could do things like this conference or do things like visit our organized congregations to give them firsthand accounts of what's going on in Church Planting and our Presbytery and in particular to visit more often during the course of public worship, our mission works with our organizing pastors there. To sit under their preaching, because sometimes I might need to whisper in their ear a little bit here or there. But also, maybe to give them a break and preach one of the services, if we have two services. And I just haven't been able to do that because the Lord's been blessing us with the number of mission works that we have. But unprecedented blessing, and I'll just say this, unprecedented satanic attack against the work in ways more overt than I've ever seen. I'm not going to go into any details because there's even some privacy issues in some of the details that are there, but Satan is not happy. And I'm glad he's not happy. He's already lost, but it's exceedingly painful for brothers and sisters to go through some of the things that they're having to go through as Satan is trying to disrupt the growth of the church. This is also true in some of our organized churches, but in particular in some of our mission works. One of the things I've seen through the years over and over again is that We can have a period of real peace and all of our mission works and then here's problems over here, we'll look out, the phone's about to ring because it's something very similar is going to be happening in another one. And usually it happens in threes. If it happens in two, then there are going to be issues in a third. And so some of my labors are trying to be of aid and counsel in the midst of these kinds of things, these disruptions that sometimes take place. But please be in prayer, because I think we are wrestling with principalities and powers, not in a charismatic sense, but wrestling with principalities and powers. It's in the arena of prayer, laying hold of God, in the battle against the enemy, and our works really need this. However, in every case, we're seeing perseverance, we're seeing the Lord continuing to bless, but it can be very, very difficult for organizing pastors for provisional sessions or commissions of works. I'll talk a little bit about the works particular, but one of the things that God has done that has multiplied church planting is a shift from how we used to do church planting to how it's happening now. And I think that at the General Assembly level, our general secretaries have typically been wise to see what's happening in the church and to help facilitate what's happening with direction and the way we move forward. When I came into the OPC in 1994, Ross Graham was the general secretary of Home Missions. And what I loved about Ross is he was always looking 10 years down the road. What's the landscape going to be 10 years down the road? How do we need to be preparing for that? And Ross recognized that there was within the OPC a real zeal growing to be aggressive in church planting. And the RHM program, we had like one or two men that were doing it at that time. But a zeal to have somebody that was there to answer the phone when there was an inquiry and to get involved with it, that began to grow into different presbyteries. And the General Assembly to support it. But the zeal was to have our foot on the pedal, I mean, and pressing it down in church planting. Our book of church order, if you read its assumptions about church planting, the assumptions of the book of church order is that predominantly you'd have a mother church that would oversee a daughter church plant. Ross realized that the OPC was so small and so scattered that there were practical reasons why that could be prohibitive of having a mother church close enough that could really give the oversight that's needed. Now our book provided for an exception. If you don't have a mother-daughter situation, then the presbytery can take oversight over mission works directly. And so under Ross's leadership, what was the exception became the norm. That's why we did it. A group would approach us and say we're interested in planning a church. The Presbytery would get involved through their Home Missions Committee or if they had an RHM to assess the work, to begin to develop the work. When it got ready to petition to be a mission work, it would petition to be a mission work. The Presbytery would then appoint a provisional session to oversee the work. And provisional sessions aren't even in our Book of Church Order. It's not even there. We do it in a corollary fashion, the way congregations function. Because Ross was determined we're gonna be Presbyterian from day one. When we have a mission work, we're gonna be Presbyterian. They're gonna have elders. If we have to appoint them elders from the Presbytery. And so that's the way we did it. Probably 15, 20 years. If you read the manual for planting Orthodox Presbyterian churches, that's the assumption. that this is how it's going to be done. But as Ross and Dick were ending, Dick Gerber were ending their time as General Secretaries and John Shaw became the General Secretary and then a little bit after that, Altra Carrico came on as the Associate General Secretary. But even before then, there were conversations going on between Ross and Dick and John as he came on as well. We had planted churches that were thriving and able to now plant daughter churches. This is exactly what we saw happen in the Precious Southeast at our presbytery. And so we began to see it. It almost occurred organically of mother-daughter plants. Now, on a couple of occasions, they weren't mother-daughter. They could have been, but there were problems, serious problems in the church. But rather than just losing a lot of people, they came to the president and said, would you plant a daughter church? That happened on two occasions. That's not the way you want to do it. And yet, in one of those occasions, you've got two thriving churches that occurred. Two of the occasions you have that. In fact, it's one of them. Now you've got three thriving churches that have taken place. And in the other one, you have a third new church plant that's taking place. And then working on reconciliation and the issues that kind of were causing division within the church. And so we sort of stumbled into this, of people from the congregation going to plant others. And I talked about Virginia Beach, and I'm not gonna go into detail, but just remind you of what we talked about yesterday morning about Virginia Beach. We went into Virginia Beach with the thought, let's be forward thinking about planting a church that plants churches. I'm gonna quote Jim Hamster again. When the church that I was pastoring came into the OPC in 1994, I thought Jim had lost his mind, literally. Because when we organized, we organized less than a year after we started as a mission work in what's now Chilhowee. And Jim wanted to speak. Of course, Jim always wants to speak, right? Because he was part of that history. And he got up, and I'll never forget what he said. He said, I was always told soul winning Christians win soul winning Christians. He said, you need to be a church planting church. And we were a baby. It was the day we were organized, OK? And he was saying, you need to plant other churches. And I thought he had lost his mind. I said, why are you saying that, Jim? In less than a year, we had a daughter church in God's providence. We went into Virginia Beach with this mindset. There's one and a half million people in the Tidewater region. There's no OPC witness except for we start with this Bible study. As it began to develop and then we brought in Lowell who just has an evangelistic zeal. It's in his pores. It's just in his being. I think partly because he was converted in solitary confinement and couldn't talk to a single soul. And so he's been wanting to tell people about the gospel ever since he had an opportunity to be able to speak to people. And he bought it. And so he was forward-looking and he wasn't threatened, you know, with, well, here's a group we could better serve by planting a church. And getting churches to think that way is difficult. And that's why I've used Virginia Beach to provoke to jealousy some of our larger churches. I'll tell them that. on the floor of Presbytery. I'm going to tell you this to provoke you to jealousy because you have people that are driving long distances to come to your church that would better be served and their communities if we planted where they were and had the wherewithal to do it. And I know one of our larger churches at one time the pastor is very eager about planting again. very eager, and Dan and Jeremy would remember this, but the session put the halts on it because they had some things they needed to address. And then the session says, we just like being together. And I'm having trouble to get them to think through in terms of, it's time for you to plan again. you can plan again i'd love this church is great church uh... but we can get comfortable what we were born when i think in in that way but virginia beach really became sort of the uh... paradigm program in uh... and that's a threat where do you know i'm talking about it because they were zealous about it they planted in yorktown they planted in in in at all saints and there have been it's been painful When all of your families that have children go to the daughter church, which is what happened in the Sulfic situation. It can be painful for the Mother Church. And they were having other struggles, internal struggles in the session. They're having all kinds of, Satan was coming after what was going on. And the Lord's sovereign over it all and things are going well. But we've seen the multiplication of this with Mechanicsville and Short Pump, Virginia. And so I'll get into that one that's on your list here. Mechanicsville, Knox PCA was very small when it called Jeff Downs to be their pastor. And Jeff was a PCA minister who desperately wanted to be in the OPC. He just loved the OPC. He had come under care of our presbytery when he was in seminary, but he did an internship, he was licensed in a different presbytery. There aren't many calls sometimes, and men sometimes can't find calls within the OPC, and he found a call in the PCA. And so he took this call in Mechanicsville, which is in the Richmond area, sort of just north of Richmond, and there. And it was a small, struggling church. But at the very same time there were people, mostly members of All Saints, very sound, solid PCA church in Richmond. We call it kind of the OPC church in Richmond in some ways. Great relationship with that church. There were members that lived on the West End, one elder in particular that was burdened to see a church on the West End. And we were having meetings with him because he was thinking about the OPC And his session knew about all of this. I mean, and we're approving of it. COVID hit, which kind of slowed us a bit. So those families decided, let's go over to Mechanicsville, 45 minute drive for them. Let's go over there and strengthen their hands. So that's what they did. They went over there and the elder became an elder. there and it just brought life to the church and viability to the church even though the plan was eventually to plant in West Richmond. And what happened, and here's where you really see faith, and I credit Jeff Downs because he liked it. You've got to understand this. He's going to get a paycheck somewhat. I mean, their stewardship was strengthened in the life of the church. Their singing ability, which is unbelievable, strengthened the vibrancy of the worship in the church. Their leadership. These were people that were on fire that suddenly show up and jump into the church with both feet. And yet he knows they need a church where they live. And he knows that's what their eventual heart's desire is. And we had a meeting. I kind of told, I think I told somebody, in one of these things, Q&A or something, I can't remember now, about when Charles Biggs came with me. And we had an initial meeting at that time, and from it, the decision was made, let's move forward with the Bible study on the western end of Richmond. And Jeff was not at that meeting. And Jeff was, yeah. This is tough. When you see vibrancy in your church, and you're a small church, but he loved the kingdom more and trusted God. And then the Lord began to bless the church. People are coming into, Knox Church is growing. It's a growing congregation and yielding these up. And the Lord does that over and over and over again. And I try to tell churches, you can trust that the Lord is going to do that if opportunity exists to plant, even at sacrifice. Now, you have to be careful. And one time, because Matthew's planted, well, Redeemer came out of Matthew's, and they planted the Greensboro Church as well. And at one point, Nathan said, we need to be a little bigger before we plant another one. Because when Redeemer came into existence and suddenly you have 50 to 60 people that were there every Sunday morning and Sunday evening that aren't there anymore immediately. The mother church feels it. The 50 or 60 don't. They're excited. We're doing something new. But they felt it at Redeemer. Now the Lord grew them so fast that those 50 or 60 were replaced in like three months time. but they weren't the seasoned people that came in that had gone to plant Redeemer Church. But having that mindset that the Lord blesses. I think I've talked about Zion and Sandy Springs, the same thing. Maybe that was in an individual conversation. Because the ruling elder in Maryville, Tennessee, when I was snooping around about maybe trying to get something started in Knoxville, he said to his pastor, you tell Lacey Andrews to stay out of my backyard. That he was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, he and I are close, I love the man, he loves me, but he was also somewhat serious. Because he realized that if we plant in Knoxville, this stream of people coming to the Maryville Church, it's not that great a distance, could be cut off. And then what about the church in the smaller community? Can it thrive? So he's hesitant. So when A.J. Millsaps came to do an internship, he was okay with us looking as far south as Athens. He still had the heebie-jeebies about us looking in Knoxville. But he said, let's do it. And there was a Bible study in Knoxville. Zion, Athens, the Bible study took off, became a mission work. We called A.J. as the pastor there. They continued to try in Knoxville. But then I go and visit Maryville, and I call my wife, I said, I haven't, I've never seen, it's been years before a split, years before that I saw this church this full. The Lord blessed the mother church. And so we're seeing this happen. Now, we're having to learn from mistakes about the dynamics of how to give oversight. And the way we typically do it in the mother daughters, in order for the session of the mother church, which is oftentimes not quite big enough to take on a daughter church, and to give oversight to both, it's just too much. And so what we have done is we've established commissions. If you don't understand committees and commissions, I don't want to go into a big polity thing, but a commission, a committee does something and reports to the session. And the session says yay or nay. A commission acts in the power of the body that appoints it. So when a commission acts, it is the session. And so we establish commissions so that all the elders aren't giving direct oversight to the mission work, so that some can give full oversight of the mother congregation. And then we augment the commission with people that have experience in church planting. That's why I'm on 10 sessions and commissions right now. We augment those, and sometimes not just with me, we augment with other ruling elders and other ministers to give the kind of direct oversight that the mission work needs. That works great when everything's working great. If something, and it doesn't have to be something big, goes awry, we're learning up there's problems in terms of communication that's going on. And left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. And we're trying to catch up in one of those situations right now in the situation that we're facing. And people are getting frustrated on both sides. I had a phone call with one of the elders on the way here on Friday. And he was saying, I don't know what he's thinking. I said, I agree with him. He said, wait a minute. Well, I don't think I, I said, no, listen to me. You need this voice. Here's the problem. When they act as a session, those of us that are augmenting this commission don't know what they did and they're not communicating. And sometimes we operate as a commission. We're not clear at communicating with the others and there's catching up that has to be done. That slows down process. And because we're in a critical situation. This is the kind of guy, he's fantastic. I'd put him on every session as long as you had other elders that had other gifts to bring. You want to get something done. And I'm not talking about Mike Cloy. I'm talking about his clone. I'm talking about Dan. They see a problem, we're going to solve it. And Cloy will do it with full artillery. Right Carolyn, you know my Chloe. And they can get more done than any 20 people other that I know. These two men are remarkable, gifts to the church. But sometimes I got to grab them by the ear and they'll tell you that, you can ask them. But we have to learn to be able to communicate better. And while it's true, and we keep our own minutes in the commission, it wouldn't be a bad thing to still make sure that the whole of the session gets the minutes of what happened so they can stay abreast. and have reports that are more than just a five minute report so that they can stay abreast. We've got to learn some of these things. So we're still learning. But if things are going great, The commission thing works fantastic. If things go awry, it can spin out of control pretty quickly. So we're having to learn some things about that. But what that did was it multiplied our church planting exponentially, as you have churches that are planting daughter churches. And in two cases, they were not large churches. In Mechanicsville's case, it was what you would call a small church that planted a daughter church. And I'll just tell you this, and if they see it, I don't care. I got a little bit frustrated with our General Assembly Committee. We have a wonderful program called Seed and Sower for mother-daughter churches where they provide a matching grant of up to $54,000 one-time payment to help a mission church get off the ground and a mother-daughter They have objective criteria. I don't have any problem with objective criteria. They can be helpful. But in the case of Mechanicsville and Short Pump, our application for the seed and soil grant was denied by the committee because you have to have eight families. We had five families. I had to sit down with our general secretaries and said, you are discouraging small churches from planting daughter churches. It takes more faith for Knox Session to step out and plant a daughter church than it does for Shiloh to send 20 families to plant Zion, which just perfectly meets the way they were. And I understand if they make an exception for us, they'll have to make an exception. I understand all those things. And I had my say. And they had their say, and we hugged each other's neck through Zoom. I mean, and move on. I'm very appreciative of the labors. But I do want to say this. If circumstance, if the Lord in his providence makes the provision, smaller churches can do it. I've seen it happen, and I've seen in every case the Lord bless the smaller church when it's done it, or the larger church. when they've done it. I'm not telling you a lot about the mission works in doing that. So I wanna talk some about these mission works. But that's how things have changed in the last 10 years in terms of approach that has exponentially multiplied our church planting opportunities. Everybody always wants to know about neon. Everybody loves neon, and rightfully so. And I love them more than you guys do. uh... i was the pastor of the mother church we started the work in neon when Seth Long and his family and Doug Brink and his family they were in the work at that time when they drove up to our church after talking Jim Hamstra again uh... Jim sent them to the London church to visit to our church in Bristol then to our church we were the only organized church at the time and when they drove up I fell in love with these families and their zeal to see a faithful church planted. They joined our church and they drove an hour and a half one way every Sunday for months. I'll never forget it. One Sunday I got up and it was snowing and I called up I think Seth on the phone I said it's snowing here I said, we're going to have church, because I can get there. I don't know how many go there. We'll see you at church. Of course, he was from Pennsylvania, and Doug was from Michigan. They know what snow is. People in the South don't know what snow is. So I always got to the church building early. First ones to drive up, they'd driven an hour and a half down, hour and 45 minutes down from Neon to Meadowview to church. Next Sunday, got up, it's 30 degrees and raining. Freezing rain. I called and said, guys, it's 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, it's what it is up here, too. I said, it's too dangerous out there. You guys need to stay home. And they said, oh, we'll see you at church. I said, I might be the only one there. If you guys come, it might just be us. But we're going to have it because I can get there. I got a truck. And I get there. Sure enough, first ones that come driving in, I'm talking, it's ice. These guys driving there in 45 minutes probably had to spend more time because of the climate conditions to drive there. When they get out, they're laughing. I said, what are you laughing about? And they said, we didn't have any trouble till we got to Abingdon, Virginia. And we were coming right down the main street there. And we did a 360 right in the middle of the road. But we rided, you know, and we came on. And I love this church, and I love the young people that have been converted and discipled, and they're in that church now. When our ministers go down there, because they're without a pastor, because Jay forsook us, and he should, it was time, he needed to go to Lynchburg. But it was difficult for them. They loved Jay. And so I'm going up once a month to preach and then on 5th Sundays I go that Sunday too. But we've got an eager, eager group of people. It's small. You remember it got flooded out. The OPC, they had to tell people to stop sending money. $300,000 to completely refurbish the building there. And it's beautiful. It's extraordinary what has been done. And Jim Flanagan was one of the ones that was down there helping us learn how to clean this thing up, you see, and the mold and all that kind of stuff and that kind of thing. Just I just love it. I've had to fight for it sometimes because people think we're putting a lot of money in and is it ever going to really fully grow. You just got to experience it to see. And I'm going to fight for them until the Lord takes me home. Harvest Winston-Salem is a daughter church of the Mount Airy congregation. What they desperately need is at least one more elder. Every other way they're ready to organize. They have an elder, good man, I actually did the charge to him when he was ordained as an elder several months back. They're up over a hundred in worship some Sundays and right at that most Sundays. Calvin Keller is the organizing pastor there and Calvin's energetic. He's not quite as old as me, but he's getting on that side, but he's got more energy than some of our younger guys do. But we pray in particular for the Lord to raise up other officers. That's been the struggle. It's finding a lot of men, but men that are really prepared and ready to serve as officers. and the church. Peninsula Reformed in Yorktown, Matt Walker. I've been in session meetings, Lowell Ivey and I have been in session meetings, or commission meetings of that work, and just watching Matt's leadership, I'll send him a text, I'm so thankful God sent us Matt Walker. This man knows how to lead people to where they need to be without them realizing they're being guided to where they need to be. He's patient, but firm. He's got the administrative abilities to do it, but also the pastoral skills. The church is growing now. We desperately need a building. We meet in a dance studio, and it's about full. It served us pretty well, but pray the Lord would provide a meeting place for us there. We were deeply saddened recently when a family left us for the Roman Catholic Church. It was heart-wrenching. There was no indication. The man just said, told Matt, I need to meet with you, and we've decided we're going to go to the Roman Catholic Church. and did everything we could to dissuade. But the Lord is blessing the work. We have several members that have come in lately from a liberal Methodist church, because a man whose Bible believer was teaching a Sunday school class there, he couldn't go to the worship service in good conscience, so he started coming to ours. And now he's joined and a couple of families from his Sunday school class have come and joined the work in Yorktown. One blessing that we have there is a retired minister named Pete Hurst. Any of y'all know Pete very well? I love Pete. He can be blunt, but he's a churchman. And he was really the mover and shaker when he retired from over 30 years as pastoring a really solid PCA church in the Hampton area. It has kind of moved in some different directions, but he has tremendous support for Matt. Sometimes a retired minister in a place, they struggle to do that with a young guy on his first call. It's the opposite there. He has Matt's back big time. And I love Pete and Brenda. Pete, I think they're 76, 78, going on 50. So I told you something about Landis and Marion. I'm not going to get started on that. Just a couple of things there without going into a lot of details. This was a little PCA church. that sometimes it would be more robust in its history. They had one minister probably 15 or more years ago there out of Greenville Seminary that was just a perfect match. He's with the Lord now. You guys could probably tell me. Philip Seeley. Y'all know Philip. And he took another call and then the church had its ups and downs. When they approached us, they had four members. and their church building. And then they had a couple that was relocating from Fredericksburg, Virginia that were in the OPC church there to Marion that told them they were worshiping with them when they were in Marion. They said, if you go into the OPC, we'll join the church. And so I went down and met with six people including the two that weren't members and then A single man in his 50s, a woman in her 60s whose husband's an unbeliever, and then a couple that were in their 80s. That was the group. And they were adamant God's not finished with our church. It was pretty stirring. I mean, they were adamant. And our Home Missions Committee wasn't too keen on it. And, um, but John Malden won't say no, can't say no, especially to anything in North Carolina and Western North Carolina in particular. We need churches in Western North Carolina. John's at resurrection in Matthews and he's on the committee and John's pushing 80 now, I think going on 50. Um, but, um, just their commitment and their zeal and they weren't getting any help from their presbytery. I'm not faulting the presbytery. It's a dying church. You have to recognize that. But it took some time. One thing that really helped was Mike Cloy called me up and said, what's this I hear about down in Landis? Because he and Debbie were thinking about relocating to Morgantown, which is 30 minutes away. I said, well, something might be brewing. It didn't hurt to have Mike and Debbie Cloy. become part of the church when it was tiny. And we had a family that came back that had left the church under difficult circumstances before when they got down to four. And then we called a pastor that's got 11 kids and that kind of helps the attendance. 11 kids that can lift the roof off of this place singing too. Incredible family. And people are showing up and we, they don't even know why or they have to find out where. Almost every Sunday. And this is a small place. And Carolyn was there when we had six or seven there on Sunday mornings. And we hated to give her back to you guys. You got to realize that. We were not happy. You guys were, but we weren't happy. But you know what the Lord did? When Carolyn moved back here the next Sunday, an OPC lady, single lady, who's a nurse, moved to the area and showed up at church the next Sunday and said, I'm going to join this church. So, the next Sunday. And it's just unbelievable what the Lord's doing there. There are some struggles. We have one pastoral issue that's deeply heart-wrenching for us that we're going through right now with a young couple that we love dearly. I'm not going to say who, but be in prayer for them. We have another young man and his family, and he's very serious about gospel ministry. I think he may end up becoming a minister. And it's just, we had to enlarge the parking lot. I had one presbyter after the April meeting of presbytery and I did a report and I'll tell you guys later who it is. He wrote me and he said, I need to ask your forgiveness. I need to repent. because when you brought up this about Landis, I thought, well, there Lacey is again, and his eternal optimism, and this is gonna be money going down, you know, going down the hole. He said, I stand rebuked, is what he said, because, and I had no, in my wildest dreams, I wouldn't have imagined the kind of blessing that we're seeing now there. What time are we supposed to end? In two minutes? 1230, is that right? Okay, I'll go very quickly here. Just Bluffton, South Carolina, Andy Juan is our organizing pastor there. We believe we've turned a corner there. This is where you learn from your mistakes. We probably should have never started the work to begin with under the circumstances we were in. But the Lord kept sending people even though there was a lot of dysfunction. uh... and we thought they were unifying around bringing Andy in and it didn't take six months before some that were disgruntled about everything you know some people are like that they're not like this church there's some people that are just like that they're disgruntled about everything uh... and uh... that left and it broke our hearts we love these people but it's probably for the good of the church But some of those gave and our financial situation got really tight because we were spending close to over $40,000 a year just on a rental facility. It was a good facility. But Andy has, he caught a second wind. it's become very active in and outreach in meeting people the church is beginning to grow again and both pressuring general assembly are backing up and we're coming we're strengthening our resources to help them and we just made a decision last week uh... the landowner are her three-year lease scott to be up in february where we were uh... has has agreed to a one-year uh... lease so that we can look for something else. Everything is expensive there. And the Lord's made provision, resources for us to do that. And so Andy Juan is the pastor there. I told you about short pump. All Saints, I told you I think in Q&A or in something, No, it was when I was talking about Reformation. I can't remember when I said what. Please be in prayer about the immigration situation with John Nyman in particular. He's a very godly man, a gifted minister, does a lot of outreach and evangelism routinely, at least once a month, sometimes twice a month, congregation would go downtown Sulphur. He does street preaching. They hand out literature and engage people. He's really gifted at street preaching. John is. Preaches on the street. Does some in Virginia Beach too, but mostly in the Sulphur area. We did just lose a family that had 13 kids. It was very, very sad. In the end, I think, God has His purposes in things that happen. I mentioned about Zion. in Athens. One thing is pray for, because AJ still lives closer to the Maryville area, and he's looking for housing. And I think getting him to where he can actually move into the community itself is going to help. The good thing about AJ is AJ knows how to speak East Tennessee. If you meet AJ, He wears an orange t-shirt with Tennessee across the front of it. But he can talk about your hardest boss in East Tennessee. And it's needed. and the people he's seeking to reach, to be able to understand the culture where he grew up, the kinds of churches that he was in, what God has brought him, how the Lord has brought him to a more substantive understanding of the scriptures. He's a very gifted preacher. The people love A.J. there. Pray for more growth and eventually the Lord to raise up elders there. And then two others and then I'm going to quit. I'll try to be quick here Jeremy. Kannapolis. Don't even say anything about Zion. They don't count. You know they got 70-80 people every Sunday. and they've got two ruling elders and a minister. From the beginning, from the first Sunday, we should take Matt Ezell out and vlog him every now and then, because it's just not fair. It's not fair. I love Matthew. He's an outstanding preacher. He's doing a good job there. But Kannapolis, this was a unique situation. David Vogel, Graduated from Greenville. Candidated in some of our churches. Was highly considered. He's a bright young man. He's a gifted preacher. But he had a burden to plant. To move somewhere and just start gathering. And he had a job where he could do it. And he talked to me about it. And finally, he was just determined. I said, go to your session. Cliff Blair is his father-in-law and the pastor of the church. He's a member of Redeemer. I said, go to resurrection session in Matthews. Go to reformation session in Gastonia and tell them your vision and see if they will come around you and offer you some support. He could live, he could work 15, 20 hours a week, put food on the table. And that's what he did. And those churches said, we will help you with additional expenses. So he went there, just he and his family. And now we have a congregation, we have a mission work there. And what we just did at our Presbyterian meeting is we decided we're going to start paying him. He was doing it without any remuneration at all. He was putting food on the table through his tent-making labors. I have been incredibly impressed with David, his pastoral sensitivity, his wisdom. And Dan and Jeremy will tell you, you've seen him on the floor of Presbytery too. And he doesn't speak a lot, but when he does, it's careful, it's clear. And of course, Cliff Blair's his father-in-law. That doesn't hurt about things like that. But we're excited about what's going on in Kanapis. It's still small. They have between 15 and 20 people there on Sunday morning and a little bit less on Sunday evenings. And some interesting folks that the Lord's drawing in, some that have some pastoral issues that are with them. This was his burden. He just moved, bought a home, moved, and just started meeting people. And a church is being planted. And then, very quickly, Johnson City, Tennessee, where Jason Roddy has been stated to apply for nine years in a PCA church, got to the place where they were ready to think about organization, have a ruling elder, and realized that, well, if we organize, then Jason will have to come into the PCA. And though Jason could do that in good conscience, his strong preference was to stay in the OPC, spend the OPC for the nine years he spent there as regular supply. I said, go to the overseeing session, go to the mother church, you know, get their blessing. I said, I can't even really give you counsel until you do that. That's my counsel. And the session at Westminster and Kingsport was encouraging. Yes, we see this. You'll be a good match there. This is what you need to do. Unanimously, we'll call the congregational meeting for you to vote to leave the PCA and to petition the OPC. no animosity towards Westminster Presbytery or the PCA in general at all, just a better fit in the OPC. And I think being in the OPC is going to help them grow. I've seen that happen. When there's a sea of PCA churches around, some of them good churches, being in the OPC distinguishes you. And there are people that seek that out in helping to grow a church. Probably half the members now are OPC. Let Seth Long, our elder in Neon, his daughter, son-in-law, and kids are members of that church. Matt Figueroa's mom and dad are members of that church. And son and daughter-in-law are members of that church. And there are others that have had OPC backgrounds that are members of the church. It just made sense, too, when your pastor is, and half your congregation are OPC. And we were delighted, by the way, Westminster Presbytery and Westminster Presbyterian Church you know, saw this as in no way systematic, this is for the kingdom's sake and this is better. So they're excited and raring to go. And I expect they will probably be organizing early in the next year. So, that's a... The Clarkston work, briefly, I think I said this already, Malacca is not continuing with the church planning effort Clarkston is too transient with the refugees. The refugees come there. They need help. We help them. They get upwardly mobile. They move other places where there's more opportunities for them. Many of them are Muslims, other religions that we're trying to reach as well. Some are Christians. There's over a hundred ethnic groups within a one square mile piece of territory in Clarkston. That's why we're there. But the church at Redeemer that has an Eritrean as their pastor. is going to continue the mercy ministry down there through the members of the congregation. And Malacu is turning his attention to how to strengthen the Presbyterian Church in Ethiopia and in Eritrea. Special focus on Ethiopia. He's Ethiopian. in translating uh... works into the amheric language for missions committee the journal assembly and and also the presbytery or for working together to assist uh... assist in that but the mercy ministry is continuing it's just it's not going to have the church planting focus it did in the beginning It's daunting. It's difficult to do. So people that they've reached have joined Redeemer. There are a number of refugee families that are members of Redeemer in Atlanta now. Okay, I'm done. I went too long. My stomach's starting to growl. You going to close in prayer? I'll close in prayer and pray for the meal as well. We're generally around this time about ready to go, so let's close our time in prayer. Lord our God, we give thanks for the work of the gospel that you are doing in our presbytery. we give thanks for the men that are raising as church planters, and for those that you have gathered in each place to build your church, and we do pray that you will continue to build it and increase it, and that we would see additional churches planted, and that the lost would be gathered into yourself. We thank you for the work that you are doing here, throughout this Presbyterian. We thank you for Lacy's ministry to us this weekend. We thank you for his labors even today in preaching the gospel of Christ. And we pray that as we fellowship together, you will continue to build us up. And we ask that our conversation would be edifying to one another and glorifying to you We give thanks for the hands that have prepared the food. We thank you for your provision for us in it. We pray, Father, that you would strengthen us for your service. Even today, we ask in Christ's name, amen. Amen.