All right, so membership class, it used to be, I think before I got here, that they would have several different membership classes where they'd have an hour here and an hour there. And then I decided, well, let's just put it all together and drink from the fire hose. So supposed to have four hours of instruction. I think we might have changed it in the bylaws to three hours cuz I usually try to get it in between 9 and 12. Or if we do it on a Sunday afternoon for three hours there. And I've got a whole pew full of handouts here that I'm gonna start and work our way down. And we will be taking breaks as the morning goes along, so you won't be sitting here listening for the whole time. So let's go ahead and jump in then with one of, let me tell you what we're gonna do, okay? So first of all, we've got a couple of handouts on the history of the church and basically the DNA, what this church really is all about. And then we've got the bylaws. And the bylaws is the biggest handout that I'm going to give to you. It's the most detailed. And we'll spend quite a bit of time going through that. But we won't cover everything in the bylaws today because we don't have time for that. And the assignment will be that you'll take the bylaws home and read them. And then when you're done with this class, you'll have an interview with the elders to apply for membership. And at the elders interview, if you have any questions or concerns about anything in the bylaws, you can bring that up at that time. In your interview with the elders, you also want to share your personal testimony, because we want a regenerate membership. We want our members to be born again. And so you don't just join the church because your family joins the church, or you've got tradition or roots, but you join the church because you're a believer in Jesus Christ, and you have personal faith, and you have the Holy Spirit, and you can really be a member in that sense. And that's the most important membership, is the spiritual, organic membership that you already have. and really we're just going through the official process of what is supposed to be genuine and real in the heart as Christ makes us members of his body. So then after the bylaws, we'll talk about the doctrinal statement, and we like to keep our doctrinal statement short and sweet. We don't go into long detail, but we try to put things in there that will let people know what our church stands for, and somewhat in contradistinction to other churches around so that you can know, well, what makes this church different than this church? What's important to us doctrinally? And then there'll be some policies that go along with the doctrinal statement. The policies are not as important as the doctrinal statement, but just things that we've come up with practically how we operate. So those things can change over time, but it's good to let people know our child protection policy and also a few other policies. And then at the end, we'll just go over some of the ministries of the church and how you can get involved, and we'll be talking about that. So that's the plan for the morning. And as I said, we'll take some breaks here. Our first break will be after we discuss the bylaws. But the first thing I wanna talk about is the history of the church. And I love the history of this church and I'm so thankful for the history of this church. So let me hand out for you a brief summary of how the church began and what changes it's gone through over the years. Would you like one or two copies as a couple? Okay. Can we take two? Yes, you certainly can. All right, so you see here that the church was originally a part of the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA, and that actually goes back to... 1881, if I'm remembering correctly. Yep. So I've also got with me here an article from The Voice newspaper. It's the local newspaper here in the area from 1979 with an article about the history of Firth. And so in there, it gives a few details that aren't here. So 1881 was when it started as a church. And it didn't start here at this location. It was across the park. And Caddy Corner, basically on the corner, the northeast corner of the park, there's a brick house there now on the corner, but that used to be the church grounds. And then we were a part of that for 61 years. You can do the math from 1881 for 61 years. But then in the 1920s, which is not 60 years, this is when it started to go a different direction, the pastor that was here, and somebody told me what they thought his name was, but I didn't write it down, he began to let the congregation know that the denomination was losing its doctrinal bearings. And this usually happens in denominations at the seminary level. Seminaries tend to go liberal, if you wanna use that word, Theological liberalism is not the same thing as political liberalism, although they do have some association and overlap, but theological liberalism was basically a departure from the faith that began in Germany and some of the schools in Europe, and it denied certain basic truths of the scriptures having to do with the miracles that are in the Bible, that philosophical naturalism really took over the thinking of Western civilization at the academic level, and that is the belief that there really is nothing beyond the physical world. And so therefore, the Christians, they had to kind of try to find a way to make themselves seem intelligent and relevant to a culture that no longer believed in the supernatural. And so they started taking a lot of those things out of their preaching and stopped believing in them. That was known as theological liberalism. Things like the virgin birth of Christ, things like the you know, parting of the Red Sea and those miracles that are in the Bible. They're like, well, those things may not have actually happened and that's not important. What's important is, you know, the moral spiritual truth that God loves you and things like that. So that was theological liberalism and that started taking over the PCUSA in the 1920s and before that, but it was kind of coming to a head in the 1920s. And this became known in America as the divide between the the theological liberals and the conservatives, and the liberals, they were called liberals, and the conservatives were called fundamentalists. And now we hear the word fundamentalist and we associate it with legalism and narrow-mindedness and bad things. But when it first was starting to get used, it didn't have those associations. It just meant that they believed in the fundamental truths of the Bible that the liberals were denying and no longer believing. And so the pastor here, as is often the case in Midwest areas, was much more theologically conservative than the population centers on the East Coast or the West Coast. And so he was sticking with the Bible as the denomination was going off to the left. And so he was deposed from his pastorate because the PCUSA had control over the pastors. They could give you a pastor and take a pastor away. And so they didn't like this guy that was here and they said, you're out. But the congregation stood strong doctrinally. And they didn't use the Sunday school literature that was put out by the Board of Education for the PCUSA. They also didn't support the Board of Foreign Missions, and those were two areas that the liberals had really taken over in the denomination. And so because of that, they Presbytery, the group of church leaders in the area here, wouldn't give them another pastor. So they were kind of left to flounder for a number of years. They were just told, as it says there, that no pastors are available, sorry. And so they began to pray about the situation, and God answered their prayers in an unexpected way, that on December 29th, 1946, a fire broke out in the old church building and burned it to the ground. and they thought maybe it was a faulty furnace. So the congregation at that time says, well, we don't have a building, we don't have a pastor, we've been going a different direction from the denomination, I guess it's time to cut ties and start over. So that's what they did. The denomination took the insurance money, they took the lot, and the church started over with nothing but the membership, which is the important thing. The building, the lot, all of that is very replaceable. But you guys, you are what's important. And so the congregation had that, and that's all they needed. So that's when they then bought this property, and together with help from the community and volunteer work, they were able to build this half that we're in now of the building, and they completed that As it says there, oh, I don't think it says there. Oh yeah, June 13th, 1948, they had the first services in the new building. And they started with 72 when they left the denomination, but by the time the building was completed, they had 170 members. So it was neat to see how God blessed their faithfulness. They went through difficult years, hard times. and were tested, but then through that testing, they had a new building and more than double the size of their congregation, and they were debt free. So pretty awesome testimony of God's faithfulness. That's why I love the history of the church here. And we want to continue that history of faithfulness because history repeats. And basically now in the 21st century, we're at the same point in the church culture that they were at in the 1920s, here we are in the 2020s, and instead of fighting the modernists in the church, who were the theological liberals of the last century, now most of evangelicalism has largely been influenced and taken over by postmodernist thinking. that just relativizes truth and says, well, you know, we can just kind of drift with the culture on cultural issues and we don't have to take a stand on certain things about gender roles or we don't have to talk about homosexuality the way that they used to and things like that. So a lot of the seminaries have also drifted in our time. You see a further divide happening. The Reformed church here in town is talking and thinking about their future. Are they going to stay with their denomination? Because now they're experiencing the same thing. Their denomination was good in the 20th century, but now the East Coast and the West Coast are gone kind of crazy, as they often do. And so they're like, well, you know, what's our future? So we'll see what happens there. So then the church affiliated with the Bible Presbyterian denomination there in the late 40s until the 1960s, but they ended up leaving the Bible Presbyterian denomination because it ended up developing some of those negative tendencies of fundamentalism that we associate with fundamentalists, the legalism, narrow-mindedness, and divisiveness, and that kind of thing. And so they're like, well, I guess we'll leave that. And they were an independent congregation then known as Firth Community Church during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And then at the latter part of the 90s, the church became a part of the Evangelical Free denomination. You see that there in the last paragraph. And it says that we felt the need to join with the EFCA, that's the Evangelical Free Church of America, so the church could call on outside help in dealing with issues affecting the church, also to help with supplying a pastor. So they'd had a difficulty with their pastor, and they kind of felt like they didn't know how to handle it because they were an independent local church that didn't have those connections. And so they thought, well, we need somebody that can step in and help us when the elders and the pastors and the congregation have a disagreement. So that was one of their motivations for joining the EFCA, and also to look for a pastor. Now, I am not a part of the EFCA historically. I didn't grow up in the EFCA. And so when I came as pastor in 2008, this church had been with the EFCA for a good 10 years. And as the EFCA had tried to supply them with a pastor, they couldn't find one in the EFCA that was really where they were at and what they were looking for. And so they ended up finding a guy from the Master's Seminary, where I went to seminary. We seemed to really link up well and sync up well. And I was excited about being a part of an EFCA church. But that excitement dimmed over time as I found out that the EFCA was not as doctrinally strong. now as they had been in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. If I'd been an EFCA pastor in the 60s and 70s, I would have fit in really well. Sadly, I don't fit in as well in the 2010s and 2020s. And that's not because I've changed, but because the EFCA has changed. And that's another story. Maybe we'll talk about that at another time. But I do want to give you guys more of the recent history, probably as we go forward a little bit more. But this is a good handout for the history of the church from its beginning in 1881 up until about the time that I was called as the pastor. And I've been here since 2008. Any questions about the church history? It's not. We left the EFCA in 2020, I think. Maybe 2019. I have a bad memory for dates. Yeah. Well, while we're on the subject, let me go ahead and tell a little bit about that story. So I came in 2008. I don't think we left until 2020 or 2019. At the beginning, I was very excited about being a part of the EFCA because I really want our church to not be isolated. I want there to be conversation. I want there to be fellowship. I want there to be cooperation among believing churches, even if we're not fully in agreement on all doctrinal matters. And we'll get to that when we talk about our statement on cooperation and separation. However, my experience in the EFCA was that they were not very open to dialogue and discussion. They basically just wanted me to follow what the national leadership decided. And they weren't platforming anybody that held my views on things, but they were only platforming people that had their views on things and were developing kind of an echo chamber that was moving the denomination, again, more in the leftward direction away from what I would think would be biblical fidelity. And so this arose in a number of issues. And some of the ways that it revealed itself was, I went to a spiritual warfare seminar that they had for pastors and elders in the area, and it was a pretty strong departure away from the Reformation principle of Scripture alone as our authority. In fact, the people who were presenting there explicitly said that their teaching doesn't come from scripture but it comes from their own practical experiences. So when I challenged the casting out of demons out of believers, that believers can't be demon-possessed and you don't have to cast demons out of believers, I didn't find them ready to discuss and dialogue that on a biblical basis and we didn't get anywhere. So I was like, well, what am I doing here if I can't have a good influence on the movement? Another area where I saw problems in the EFCA was a general lack of discernment, and in particular showed itself in a book that was very popular when I came here as pastor about 15 years ago known as The Shack. Shack was turned into a movie. It was a best-selling Christian book. But I use the word Christian rather loosely because the guy who wrote that book, he doesn't believe in substitutionary atonement. In fact, he attacks the substitutionary atonement of Christ in the book. It was also problematic for other reasons. The book was, a lot of people focused on the fact that his portrayal of God the Father was as a black woman. And that is a problem, but to me it's more of a symptom of the real problem was that he didn't believe scripture and he had really a problem with the holiness of God, the wrath of God, and therefore his view of the atonement was all messed up. And so when I tried to dialogue with the EFC on that, they were just like, well, you know, it's a book that we might not agree with everything, but it's helped a lot of people and that kind of thing. And so I just didn't sense a real desire to stand on truth and fight for the truth in areas that I think are foundational and important, the nature of God and the nature of the atonement. Also, I saw a lot of pragmatism in their church growth methodology and in their missiology. It was more just focused on success in numbers and not so much in what does the Scripture actually tell us to do in these areas, church growth and missions. I saw integration of secular thinking into the counseling methodologies. They were promoting Catholic mysticism through the spiritual formation movement. They were not consistent in their interpretation of the Bible when it comes to the sufficiency of Scripture. They said they believed in inerrancy and sufficiency, but in practice, it didn't really work that way. They were more pragmatic. The watchword of the ESCA, traditionally, was where stands it written? And I was like, all right, let's do that. Let's do where stands it written. Let's talk about that. And they no longer were interested in that, at least from my experience. And so those things together with them walking away from premillennialism and removing that from their doctrinal statement just showed that there wasn't that much I could do in the movement and we weren't getting that much out of it. And so for the health of the church, I thought it would be better to separate amicably to wish the EFCA well, but at the same time to focus our efforts in other fellowship. And we'll get to that. What churches do we have fellowship and how do we keep from being isolated and alone as an independent local church? That's an important issue we'll talk about. So good, good question. I'm glad we talked about that. Any questions on the recent history of the church then? So the process was smooth. We formed a committee on independence, independence committee. We presented it to the congregation. We had a unanimous vote on that issue of leaving the EFCA, which was so encouraging. Then when we did leave the EFCA, I tried to do it the right way. I wrote him a letter laying out all of my reasons. in a respectful manner, and didn't hear back on any of that. So, yeah, it was a good experience for the church, and no hard feelings. All right, well, with the history of the church in mind, then let's go ahead and talk about some of the DNA of the church. And here, we've got the three E's of ministry that I wanna put up in front of you. So yeah, Firth Bible Church. We changed our name to Firth Bible Church then in 2021, and we left the EFCA in 2020, and then it took us a little while to come up with what our name was going to be. And so when it comes to the DNA of the church, you can really simplify what we're all about in the three E's of ministry. That is that we're here to exalt God, We're here to edify one another, and we're here to evangelize the lost. And here the exaltation is there with the Hebrew praise as a symbol from the Psalms. And then we've got the edification from God's Word, the teaching of God's Word. Then the evangelism with the fishing out there as God sends us out to be fishers of men. And so really these three E's summarize our ministry to God, we're here to exalt God, our ministry to one another, we're here to build up each other in our faith, and our ministry to the world, that we're here to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and make disciples, baptism, and such. So as long as we're focused on a proper biblical ministry towards God, one another, and the world, then we're well-balanced, we're not leaving anything out, we're accomplishing what the New Testament has given us to do in the Great Commission. God is seeking out worshipers, but worshipers have to be holy and loving as edification focuses on those dual aspects of loving one another and being holy in our lives and then that ministry to the world. There's many ways to minister to the world, but the greatest and the best is to share with them the message of eternal life and bring them into a reconciled relationship with God. So those are the three E's. And as you think about the three E's, I've also got a little handout here that we put together when I first came as a church. So these are just a few bullet points that can kind of give you an idea of what it is that we try to be as a church. And when I say truly evangelical, what I mean is that the evangelical movement has kind of lost its way in some respects, not just the EFCA, but all of what would be considered evangelical Christianity. And if you're looking at church history and you want to know what is evangelical Christianity, well it really comes out of the Reformation. Evangelical is another word for reformed Christianity that focuses on sola scriptura, that is the principle that the Bible is our authority, focuses on the idea that we're here to bring glory to God, that Christ alone is the one who saves us, not the sacraments of the church. Those basic Reformation principles that are illustrated in the five solas, that's an evangelical church in its historic definition. And then as the Protestant church lost its way and the liberals destroyed most of the major denominations, then evangelicals were those Protestants who stayed faithful to those Reformation principles and faithful to the teachings of Scripture. And then since that time in the hundred years, since the evangelicals came out from the mainline denominations, well, you've seen the evangelicals also weaken in their faith and compromise. And so my goal for our church and our church's goal that I found when I came here was that we want to remain truly evangelical. And that is that the gospel is our chief passion, our true delight. The growth of the gospel is how we evaluate everything we do. Then secondly, you see that we're not trying to be a nice church. And what I mean by that is that we're not just trying to please people and make people comfortable, but that our goal is to love people by speaking the truth. And so the gospel's always under attack, like the author of The Shack attacks the gospel. And we are called to defend it from those attacks, from those who are within the church professing to be Christians, and the attacks from the secular culture without. So you've got to have that militant mindset as a Christian. There's a spiritual battle going on and you can't always be nice when you're in a spiritual battle. You can always be loving, but nice is not a fruit of the Spirit. Love is a fruit of the Spirit. It's important to differentiate between those two. Then thirdly, you see, we want more than lip service to the Bible. We don't just want to say that the Bible is our authority. We want to actually practice that and all that we say and do. We teach the Bible and only the Bible. We don't pick up the latest movement within evangelicalism, but we just go back to what does scripture say, where stands it written. And then fourth bullet point there is we're looking for discipleship, that true disciples are ready to die for their Lord. And so that means that we want a church full of people who are actually living that way. We don't just want pew sitters. We don't just want nominal Christians. We want a church full of people who are called and who are encouraging one another, who are challenging one another, who are setting the example for one another, on that discipleship that is willing to lay down your life for the Lord Jesus and to follow Him wherever He goes. That's what we're looking for. And then family, a focus on family. We believe that men are responsible for their families. Every dad is called to be a youth pastor to his own children and to the extent that's possible to other children in the church. So we want dads involved with Awana. And we want dads involved with Sunday school. And we want dads to be doing personal devotions at home with their wives and with their children, and to be discipling their families so that you don't just think, well, you know, we hire the youth pastor to do that. Well, you know, no youth pastor here. That's one blessing about not having a youth pastor is it makes it harder for people to shuffle off the responsibility to the youth pastor. I was a youth pastor for one year in Wyoming after I graduated from seminary. And my experience, again, it's just my experience, but it might be telling. that when I was hired as the youth pastor, the first problem I encountered was that all the dads who had been serving in the youth ministry when they didn't have a youth pastor were like, phew, good, now he can do it and I'm out of here. And I was like, no, no, no, don't go, we need you. And I couldn't get the dads involved. They were just like, oh, nope, that's your job, Timothy, that's why we hired you. And so I think there's no youth pastor mentioned in the Bible. You can read through the whole scripture and it never talks about a youth pastor. That's not saying it's wrong. We can do things that aren't in the Bible, but we have to do the things that are written in the Bible. And we can't replace what's written in the Bible with something that's not in the Bible. And the Bible says, fathers, bring up your children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. And so that's very important, that family discipleship, all right? The organic church. We recognize we're just a small part of what God is doing in our area and we believe that we must cooperate with other believing congregations while separating from apostate churches in order to progress the gospel. So we have to recognize the true unity of the church but we have to recognize true divisions as well. And so if a church is apostate, and we'll talk about what that means for a church to be apostate when we get to our statement on separation, but we must cooperate with non-apostate churches, and we must separate from apostate churches, and that's how we move forward for the gospel and do our part. We're not trying to grow this organization, we're trying to grow the organism of the whole body of Christ. So if we had to shut down this church and dissolve the bank account and we all went and joined other churches and that was better for the progress of the gospel and the growth of believers, then we should do that. Because it's not about this church and this organization, it's about the glory of God in Christ in the lives of people. So we must always keep that straight. And then we also want to be a church full of ministers. That's why I don't really like being called a minister, because it tends to give the idea that I'm a minister and you're not. And that's not biblical. And the biblical teaching is that everyone is called to ministry. and that pastor-teachers are just one kind of ministry that enables the rest of you to fulfill the ministry that God has given to you. And that my ministry is not more important than your ministry, but my ministry is essential for you to be able to do your ministry. So I do my part, you do your part, and we'll take a look at that in scriptures here in just a moment. And then let's just look at the last couple here. We want to keep it simple. We don't want to multiply programs. We want people to be free to serve God wherever He calls them, even programs in other churches. So if you've got a home Bible study that you've been a part of before you joined this church, well, keep doing that. If you've got a ministry that you are doing that's not associated with this church, great. We're not here to build this church. We're not jealous for your time. We want you to be free to serve the Lord in whatever way He's called you and in whatever way is fruitful. So we're not trying to do the latest things, and we're not trying to look like we're presenting some kind of image. We're just trying to keep it real. And then finally, we want a pilgrim church. And that is, we want to resist living for the here and now. We want to be rich in good works, laying up our treasures in heaven, and longing for Jesus' return. So if we have this, I think we'll be doing well. Now I may have left a thing or two out when I put this together, but these are mostly my thoughts, and they seem to gel with the congregation here. When I came in 2008, We've had 15 years now of like-minded, wonderful ministry. Every decision that the Board of Elders has made in the last 15 years has been unanimous. And that is just such a wonderful blessing. And that doesn't mean there hasn't been problems. But overall, we've had wonderful unity. And the vision that God put on my heart for the church was also the vision that God put on this church's heart. And I'm so glad he brought us together, because not every pastor gets that. And it can be quite a rough road when your vision is different from the vision of the church you're called to pastor. All right. Well, that's great. So any questions about the DNA of Firth Bible Church and what it is that we're trying to accomplish? Always great to start with the big picture. So then let's get into some of the practical details. There you go. The bylaws of the church here. As I said, we're not going to go through everything that's in the bylaws, but we're gonna focus on the opening sections on membership, because this is a membership class, and so it's good to talk a little bit about membership. Oh, but I did promise that we were gonna look in Scripture first about the calling of the church, everyone to be a minister, everyone to be involved. And for that, my key text is Ephesians chapter four. One of the first passages I preached when I came here was Ephesians chapter 4. For my first five years in ministry, I preached it once a year. And it is the foundational text for my understanding, what I think is a biblical understanding, of what a church is and how a church is supposed to operate. At the same time, when I preached Ephesians 4, then we went to Revelation and we looked into chapters 2 and 3 in my first year here of ministry to look at the seven churches and see how Christ evaluates a church so that we would all be on the same page there. So I'm glad we're doing that again now, 15 years later, and that you're joining the church when we're taking a look at that so you really get a good sense of what the Bible teaches on what a healthy church looks like and what things we have to look out for as a church that are dangerous. So in Ephesians chapter 4, it starts in verse 11. And, of course it doesn't start there, but that's where I'm starting. And we'll just pick it up where it says, Notice shepherds and teachers is together grammatically. and I think that's the right way to translate it, to equip the saints. So the apostles and prophets have already been stated in the book to be the foundation of the church. How many times do you lay a foundation? Once, and you build the whole church on top of that. So God started the church with the apostles and prophets, they wrote the New Testament, and that's the foundation. Now the pastors and teachers and the evangelists, they come along afterwards. The evangelists proclaim the same gospel that the apostles proclaimed, The pastors and teachers teach the same doctrine that the apostles proclaimed, and so we have an apostolic foundation for our church in the New Testament writings. That's the only reliable source of apostolic teaching. That's what the church is built upon, and that's how pastors shepherd, and that's how they teach. And from that apostolic foundation of doctrine and truth in the gospel, then the people, as you see in verse 12, are equipped, and you're called saints, to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So God has made you a saint. You're a holy one. He set you apart from sin. He set you apart from the world and the culture, and he's made you a part of a Christian counterculture that shares in God's own holy character. and has God's love. And so God is equipping you for the ministry that he's given you to do through the ministry of the apostles and prophets who are still with us in their writings, the evangelists who share the gospel with you, and the pastors and teachers who shepherd and teach you. so that you can do the work of ministry. And what is that? Well, look at what it says. For building up the body of Christ, so you're here to build up the body of Christ. You can evaluate yourself as a saint. How am I doing at building up the body of Christ? Am I tearing it down by being divisive, by being selfish? Am I staining it with my sin when I come to church and we're supposed to be holy in our worship of God? How am I doing at building up the body of Christ? And we do this work for how long? So there's our goal. Our goal is that the whole church would be completely mature in Christ. That's a difficult goal, and we've been working on that ever since the apostles and prophets went to be with the Lord. And we have setbacks, and we have advances, and our goal is to do our part. And the local church is our part, not just the church that meets here on Sunday morning, but the church that meets over at the Living Life Church and churches that are around us in the area. Whatever connections we have, whatever fellowship we have, your family members who live in other states, you're building up the body of Christ when you encourage them, and then they are able to be a better part of their church and their congregation. So keep that local picture, but then also recognize the connections that go far beyond the local church. And our goal is that we all attain to the unity of the faith. And so we've got to be evaluating ourselves. Well, what are we doing as a congregation to bring not only our local congregation, but the whole church to maturity? And sharing the gospel, making disciples, and bringing those disciples to full maturity and full unity. So, truth unites. Falsehood divides. And pointing out falsehood is not divisive. It's the people who teach falsehood are the ones who are dividing. You can pretend to be united by just overlooking the differences that people have in their beliefs, but that's not true unity. True unity is when we all believe the truth. And so we've got to be able to confront falsehood in order to bring people back to the truth. Otherwise, we'll never reach that unity of the faith that is our goal, is our mission, and our purpose. So we're looking for that true unity, which is the knowledge of the Son of God. And that's going to bring us to the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ. And that's a powerful and beautiful statement of the church's glory, which is really Christ's glory dwelling in us. And then verse 14, So we gotta watch out for that false doctrine, not be carried about by it. It comes by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. rather speaking the truth in love we are to grow up here's the purpose restated once again we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into christ from whom the whole body being joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped and that's us and we're all individual joints here connecting one another in the body of Christ. When each part is working properly, it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Do you see how essential your ministry is? that you have to be functioning the way that God has designed you to function. He's put you in the body for a purpose. He's given you abilities. He's given you responsibilities with those abilities. And if you do your part, then if everyone does that, then we can reach our goal. But if parts are not functioning well, then other parts of the body are affected by that, and they can't function as well, and you just see problems. And that's where the church has its problems, is that we're not individually doing our part, and therefore, as a whole, we're falling apart, so to speak. So, I love this passage. You've got to always go back to it and remind yourselves, what are we doing? What are we called to? What is God's purpose? What is our vision? And we don't get our vision from some human pastor. We get our vision from the apostles and prophets of the Lord Jesus, who gave it to us from Jesus Christ himself. That's the vision right there, beautifully and powerfully stated. So I've preached several messages on Ephesians 4. Sometimes I assign listening to one of those messages as part of the membership class, but I think we hit it pretty well just there. If you wanna go online and look at one of those sermons on Ephesians 4, you're welcome to do so, but I'm not gonna require it. All right, so bylaws. We're doing great. We've been going for about 40 minutes, and we've covered a lot, and now let's see how far we can get into the bylaws before we take a break here. These bylaws are heavily adapted from the EFCA bylaws. When we joined the EFCA, we used the bylaws that they kind of hand out to churches as a guide and a model, adapted it at that time, and it's been further adapted and modeled over the years. You see, our last update was January 2019. Can't remember exactly what all changed in January of 2019. I could find those records if you were interested. But it's one of those things, as you see, it's kind of like the constitution of the church. You have to file with the state as a non-profit, and that's your articles of incorporation, but those aren't very important for the daily life of the church. The bylaws are basically what is important for how the church is governed, how we function practically. And our goal is that our bylaws are as biblical as possible while at the same time being suited to the time and the place that we find ourselves in. The New Testament was written by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is very wise. He knew that the church was going to exist across many centuries and across many different cultures. And so he didn't tell us exactly what to do in every situation because there's going to be a lot of different situations and that would be too long of a book. And so what he did was he laid out principles by which we can draw from and then apply those biblical principles to our time and place on how we're supposed to carry out those things as 21st century Americans. So that's our goal, is that our bylaws are according to the principles of the New Testament and that they're the most effective way of implementing those principles in the time and place in which we live. And it's open to revision. One of the things we'll see as we go through the bylaws is that they can be updated by a vote of the congregation. So let's read the first paragraph there on membership, section 100.1. Membership in this church is the acceptance of responsibility. It is the membership that gives assent and encouragement to the disciple-making ministry of the congregation. That's a kind of ponderous way of putting it. You could just simplify it by saying it's the membership that does the disciple-making ministry of the congregation. And maybe there's good reasons for the way it's stated. I might have spoken out of turn there. Therefore, attendance at business meetings and faithful service to the Lord are expected. So some of the responsibilities. Number one, the annual business meeting. That's the main one. There's also other business meetings that can be held, and we'll talk about those. But the main one is the annual meeting that takes place in February. and your membership will be the first order of business at the annual meeting. And then once the congregation approves your membership, then you can join in the annual meeting for the rest of the meeting coming up in February. And then secondly, faithful service to the Lord. And the bylaws will give some definition of what faithful service to the Lord looks like and what our business meetings are all about. Now, you see section 101 then is about three different classifications for members of the church. An active voting member, that's what most members are. You can be an active non-voting member. We have a few people in the congregation who don't really believe in congregational voting, and they want to be a part of the church, but they don't want to vote. for multiple reasons or whatever reasons. And so you can be an active member who is non-voting, if that's what you want. And then thirdly, there's the inactive member. So that's someone who's not able to be here regularly, but they still want to maintain their membership in the congregation. Maybe they can't be here because of health reasons, maybe they're elderly, and yet this is still their home church. And so that's the inactive membership. You can read the rest of that paragraph when you read through it. So let me go ahead and ask, is everyone here wanting to apply as an active voting member or would anyone like to apply as an active non-voting member? You're all active right now, so I assume that that's what you're applying for. Anyone that does not want to be an active voting member? Well, if you think about that and you decide otherwise, let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to assume that you're applying as voting members, all right? Now, active voting members in section 101.2 are those who participate in the ministry of the church. They are committed to attending the congregational meetings for the purpose of praying for and determining the direction for the ministry in consultation with the elected leadership. So this is an important section. We'll just kind of take it point by point. Talks about non-voting members there in 101.3 and the inactive members in 101.4. So then some of the details about active voting members. If you miss two congregational business meetings consecutively, then it's our job as elders. We have currently four elders in the church, including myself. Jerry McNeese, Jerry Schmidt, and David Meraz are the active elders, including me. So that's four. So it's our job then to discuss your status. If you miss two business meetings in a row, saying, well, do you still want to be an active voting member, or do you want to move to the active non-voting membership, or are you to be moved to the inactive role? If you miss the congregational meetings without a good cause and you're just blowing them off, then you're gonna be placed on the active non-voting role and we won't be counting towards the quorum when we're trying to establish that we have enough voting members in order to conduct business. That's just kind of a practical thing. We're not trying to take any personal shots at anybody. We have to have a quorum according to the rules. And then 1016, if you're an active non-voting member, you can be returned to voting status after an interview where you express your commitment to participate in the future congregational meetings. So section 102 is an important section on qualifications for membership. So here you are. Are you qualified for membership? We already talked about number one, a confession of faith. We want a regenerate membership. Any person who confesses faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, having been born again, who has the assurance of salvation, and whose character, conduct, and reputation are in accordance with his confession and the word of God may apply for membership. So that last part there about your character, conduct, and reputation means that you can't just profess to be a Christian and then live in a completely non-Christian manner. but that you have to have a life that is in keeping with your profession of faith, and that is that you're trying to obey the commandments. Now, none of us do it perfectly, but there needs to be that reputation that you are a practicing Christian and not just a professing Christian. Then secondly, the cooperation. This has to do with cooperation within the church. We'll talk about cooperation with other churches, but an applicant, a member, has to be willing to submit to the statement of faith, we will go over the doctrinal statement, that's the statement of faith, and the bylaws of the organization. So you can't be a member and say, well, I don't agree with the doctrinal statement, and I don't agree with the bylaws, and I'm here to change everything. It's like, well, maybe you just need to find a different church, because we don't want that trouble. Now, if things need to be changed, you can do it according to the bylaws. If the statement of faith needs to be changed, you do it according to the bylaws. But you have to agree to submit to the statement of faith and the bylaws until they're changed. And you have to have a willingness to support the church through your attendance, prayers, and service. That if you're just looking to have your name on a roll and say you're a member, then you might want to find a different church. We're not interested in that here. We want people who are actually attending and praying and serving. All right. So then section 102.3 is a statement on sex, race, and ethnicity, that we don't exclude people for being a woman or for being a man or for being African-American or having a European background, that, of course, we are not judging people based upon those rather unimportant things, but the spiritual heart is what's important. The faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that caused us to be born again and unites us as one body with people from all different cultures. One of my favorite things about traveling is to meet Christians in other countries and other cultures and to speak even different languages and to find out that despite all of our differences and clothing, and food, and habits, that we have the same heart for the Lord Jesus Christ, the same hope of His coming, the same love for God, and the same faith in God's words. That's pretty awesome. So, the board examines applicants to determine if they are members of the body of Christ, to determine if they support the purpose of this local church, as stated in a class like this, And if the elder board determines that the moral and spiritual character does not give evidence, then we will not recommend them and that their membership will be rejected. So the elders recommend the members to the congregation and then the congregation votes. And I can't think of a time where the elders recommended someone that the congregation didn't approve of. And I also can't think of a time that someone applied for membership and the elder said, Nope, you're not qualified for membership. Our church is pretty clear in how we present ourselves, so most of the people who come forward for membership, they've already kind of got an idea of what they're getting themselves into. All right, and you have to be 18 years old to be a member, so 18 months doesn't count, 18 years. And then the procedure we've talked about, you got the membership class, you read the bylaws as it says there, and then you attend three hours of classes, which we're all doing all this morning. You have the interview with the Elders Board, they recommend you, and then we'll have a couple of weeks before the business meeting where anyone in the congregation can give input and feedback and say, well, actually I know this person and he cheats everybody in his business and that's something we should probably talk about with him. Or something along those lines. And so we give time for the congregation to give their input before the vote comes up. If there's a valid objection, then that needs to be put in writing, and we need to have, as it says there, the person appear before the elder board and give the scriptural reasons why someone should not be granted membership, and then the elder board considers that before the business meeting. The recommendation and vote, there has to be a three-fourths vote in the affirmative for the congregation, and I think all the votes have pretty much been unanimous on that. Voting privileges are granted to the new member after they've been approved. As I told you, you'll be able to participate in February after we vote you in. Each member has one vote on each issue presented for vote. I don't get two, I only get one. But your wife gets one. And so new members received into fellowship on a Sunday service. They're encouraged to share their personal testimony, but you don't have to. The elder board will notify your most recent church that you've become an active member here at this church. And if you need to transfer a membership from your previous church, that's what section 105 is about, transferring membership. So that's the important part there on membership process. So let's go to section 107 and look at the conduct and the duty of the members. Toward the church, section 107.1. So we want you to attend regularly at the services, and we want you to be doing daily private and family scripture reading and prayer. We want personal and public testimony, and that means that you're willing to share your faith with others. And it's your sacred duty as parents to provide Christian instruction for your children, like I talked about earlier. Each member shall consider it their responsibility and privilege to make full use of their talents for the Lord's service in the church and to other churches and ministries as well. You're encouraged to remember each other in prayer, aid each other in sickness, to be courteous in speech and slow to anger. Slow to anger, that's a good one. We wanna keep that in mind. That's how a family's gotta operate. And then the purity. So the first one is kind of focused on the service and the unity, but then the purity is also essential. As you go through all the commands in the New Testament, you can basically categorize them under one of two things. It's either talking about loving one another in unity, or it's talking about being separated from sin in holiness, purity. So unity and purity are really the two major things that make a healthy congregation and a healthy Christian. So each member is called upon to heed the admonition to not love the world nor the things of the world. This is worldliness as the Protestant church has talked about it in that biblical terminology. So don't be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I'm glad that when they were putting together the doctrinal statement they chose Romans 12 too. I think that's a key place to start there on that idea of being separated from the world in that holiness. So examples in speech, defiling speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity, in marriage, purity in the marriage relationship. A member is expected to abstain from any practice which may be harmful in its influence or a stumbling block to the weaker brother or sister." And that stumbling block to the weaker brother or sister, that's one that needs more clarification, needs more teaching, and it's something that we could talk about in more detail at another time, but I can't go fully into that right now. But you might want to mark that as something to look into and discuss because there is some difference of opinion among Christians as to how to apply that and what exactly it means to be a stumbling block to a weaker brother or sister. All right, but moving on, the attendance at the Congregational Business Meetings, again, highlights and focuses that responsibility. And then I want to focus here before our break on section 108, and that is the restoration and or discipline of sinning members. And you see this is a long section starting there in 108.1. And basically this is our best attempt at applying Matthew chapter 18 to how we're supposed to carry out discipline of members who are sinning in the church. So the church is called to purity, the church is called to unity. Well, what if someone is walking out of step with the holiness that we're called to? And what if someone is creating disunity in the church? Well, what do we do? Well, there has to be discipline. If there's not discipline, then you lose the order. And if you lose the order, then you lose your identity. One thing I like to compare it to is, say you had a chess club at school. And somebody shows up and says, hey, I'm here, and I want to play checkers. And he's like, well, that's great. You can go start a checkers club. But here, this is a chess club. We're going to play chess. He goes, no, I want to join the club, and I want to play checkers. You have to say, I'm sorry, but we have rules, and we're in charge, and we're kicking you out, because this is a chess club. We're not here to play checkers. And that's kind of what it is, where someone comes into the church and says, hey, I want to be a Christian. I want to follow Christ, but I want to do it a different way. Well, no, we're going to follow Christ according to the Bible, and that's our plan. If you don't want to do that, then you have to go elsewhere, because that's what this is. And if you allow people to come in and do it differently, then you lose your identity. You're no longer a chess club, now you're a chess and checkers club, and that might not sound like a bad thing when you have an amoral subject like chess and checkers, but when it comes to loving God and serving God and the morality of living life, that is a big deal, and we have to keep our identity. Christ gives us the instructions in Matthew 18 on how to do that. So if you want to turn to Matthew 18, I think that would be a good idea to have that as a reference point. Christ being all-knowing, he anticipated the formation of the church and he gives us instructions on what to do if your brother sins against you, as he says there in Matthew chapter 18 verse 15. And notice that this instruction is not given just to elders or pastors, but this instruction is given to Christians in general. If your brother or sister sins against you, what are you supposed to do about it? So that's why our statement on the discipline of members says, it is the responsibility of the church membership and regular attendees. So even if you're not officially a member, but you're coming here regularly on Sunday morning, The scripture addresses you. If you're a professing Christian, then you need to carry out the instructions that God gives us here in Matthew 18 and 15 in helping professing Christians to turn away from a lifestyle which is not in accord with Christ's teaching. So we all got to be looking out for one another in love. We're not looking out to put people down or to be an authority that sometimes people enjoy being, but we're here to help one another. And so we do that by, as Christ says, going to the person, you and him alone, and tell him his fault. If you see someone sinning, you don't say, well, I'm gonna go tell the pastor, I'm gonna go tell the elders. I don't need to know about it. If you see someone sinning, you need to go to that person and talk about them, talk about it with them. That's the right thing to do. That's the respectful thing to do. That's what we want people to do for us. The golden rule goes a long way. If you see me sinning, I don't want you to go tell the elders that I'm sinning. I want you to come talk to me. Because you might have misunderstood what you saw. And that's kind of important that we clarify that before you go start telling other people what I did. If I want to be treated that way, then I should treat you that way. So man up, even you ladies, be courage and bold and go and do the conversations that you don't want to do, that are hard, that are difficult, but that's what it means to be a mature Christian. Be responsible. So you go to them and you discuss it with them alone as Christ says. If he listens to you, Matthew 18, 15, great, you've gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. Happily, sometimes you go and discuss sin with someone, and they're like, yeah, you're right, that's sin, I want your help in confessing it and forsaking it and turning away, and boom, you can do some discipleship right there. Other times, the person's gonna be like, I don't think that's sin, or I don't think that's any of your business, and don't talk with me about that. Well then, what do you do? When Christ says, then you take one or two others along with you. That's up to your discretion. Whether you think one is right or two is right, you get one or two other Christians. Now, if you want one of them to be an elder or a pastor, fine, but it doesn't have to be. It could just be one or two other people in the church or even just another Christian or a family member that you'd go and talk with this person. You have some discretion there on how you want to carry out this command of bringing one or two others with you. And you do that so that it's not just, well, that's just like your opinion, man. But instead, now you've got, no, this is the opinion of the church, and us three, or us two, are representing the congregation, and we're not telling everybody, but we're telling you this is what the Bible says, and this is what we believe, and you're not allowed to have your own personal opinion on this. So that's why you take one or two others so that, as Christ says, every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. So now if he blows you off, then you've got two or three witnesses that can go to the church and say, well, we tried to help this person, we tried to show them that their decisions here were destructive, and they refused to listen. So you're witnessing about that. The second person doesn't have to be a witness of the sin that's being confronted. He has to be a witness that we talk to the person and the person is not willing to listen. So if he refuses to listen to the two or three, then you tell it to the church. And the way you tell it to the church would be you approach the elders and you let them know about what's going on and how you did step one, you did step two, and now you're on step three. And so then the elders then will bring the next step together with the congregation that the elders lead and the congregation is involved, okay? So you tell it to the church. And if you refuse to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. And this is first century Jewish terminology for somebody that is excluded. Somebody that doesn't get to be a part of what you're doing. And of course Gentiles now are included. We're all Gentiles and tax collectors can be saved and that was a big part of Jesus' ministry. But this is just terminology to describe someone that would be excluded. So that's the final sad step of church discipline. When a person is unwilling to repent, unwilling to listen, then they can't be a part of the church membership anymore. They can't even attend on Sunday morning. And I have to say, you're not welcome here until you repent. Now, that seems hard, and that seems cruel, and it seems countercultural, but it's actually loving. The loving thing to do in order to love the congregation and to maintain the identity of the congregation is to exclude those who are working against what Christ is trying to accomplish. Because if you tolerate sin, it spreads. And a church that ceases to discipline will soon cease to be a church. You can see that in church history over and over again. As soon as a church is like, well, you know, let's just be loving, let's just accept, let's just welcome this person even though he's not willing to repent, it's not long before sin just fills the church and it's no longer even a church, the lampstand is removed. It's a false church. So for the love of the church, we have to do it, but also for the love of the individual. We're not a civil authority. We don't have the power of the sword. And so if someone's sinning, we're not going to be visiting upon them the penalties of the Old Testament law. We're not stoning anybody to death. But what do we have power to do? We have power over who is a part of our meetings. This is our meeting, our building. We have the power to decide who gets to be here and who doesn't get to be here. So it's not a public meeting in that sense. It's public in the sense that anybody can come, we want everybody to come, if they're coming in order to find out what we're about and they want to be supportive of what we're about. If they're coming just to see, that's great, we want people to come and see. But if they're coming to try to undermine what we're doing, well then no, you can't come, you have to go. And that's our right. And it's the right thing to do not only for the congregation but also for the person. It's not loving to let a person continue in sin and to fool themselves and think that they're all right with God and the church accepts me so God must accept me and I don't have to repent. That's not good for that person. Spiritually, it's not good for that person in a lot of ways. So, this is to be done for the love of God, the love of the church, and the love of the person who is sinning. So that's why we wrote the way that we did in section 108. First, by individual reproof, anyone who claims to be a Christian and is regularly attending is to be confronted. Now, if somebody doesn't claim to be a Christian, but they're coming for a few months, and they're interested, we're not gonna say, well, you can't come because you're living with your girlfriend. But once that person is like, yeah, I wanna be baptized, and I wanna join the church, and I believe, and I wanna be a member, but I wanna keep on living in sin, sorry, you can't do that. You need to make a choice. You've been here long enough, you know what the message is. Do you wanna follow Christ, or do you not wanna follow Christ? That's the decision in front of you. And then second, as it says, by two or three church members, and then third, by the entire church mediated by the elder board and the pastor. If none of this leads to repentance, the regular attender or the church member must be asked to cease from his attendance and participation until willing to turn from the sinful behavior. Also, other like-minded churches may be contacted regarding the situation so that the sinner doesn't just go to the church down the street and try to hide and fit in. Because that happens a lot. That's what makes church discipline difficult, is that we have lots of different churches around, and if one church finds out about your sin, it's like, oh, I'll just go over here and blend in, and nobody will know. And that happens. And so we want to do what we can. We're not malicious. We're not like following this person trying to ruin their life. We're trying to protect the church, and we're trying to help the person recognize that you can't just hide your sin. You got to deal with it. So the second to the last paragraph gives some examples of what types of sins need to be confronted, and really any sin needs to be confronted. And that includes sex outside of marriage, pornography, homosexuality, lying, causing disputes, unwillingness to work and support one's family, teaching that goes against the statement of faith, immoral or crude or abusive speech, stealing, tax evasion, drunkenness, drug abuse, anything else the New Testament speaks against as sin. There are gray areas, so to speak, where people will differ on, you know, is this okay or is that not okay? Like, is it okay to have a Christmas tree or is that pagan? We're not gonna discipline somebody for having a Christmas tree, as you see, but if the New Testament specifically speaks against something as sin, then that needs to be addressed. The other areas, we wanna, you know, challenge one another. If you wanna challenge me on Christmas trees, great, you know, we should talk about it. That's part of being a family, living together, lovingly discussing things that we disagree on, and coming to the Bible to make our decisions. So don't be afraid of talking about those gray areas with me or with anyone else in the church. Just always do it from a Christ-like, humble, and loving manner. All right, so given that these responsibilities are applicable to all believers, this church will reserve the right to exercise biblical discipline of regular attendees who profess faith in Christ, even if they are not a part of the official membership. So you don't have to be an official member for us to come and say, you're sinning, you claim to be a Christian, you need to stop that. Okay, so that's a difficult issue. It's unpleasant. There have been times as a church where we've had to go through this process. Since we make this known that we do this, very often the person removes himself from involvement in church because he knows that that's gonna happen and he wants to avoid the confrontation. And so in those cases, the process hasn't been allowed to go through all the steps, because the person has seen the writing on the wall and has run, so to speak. And so in those situations, we can't exercise church discipline, but the person has kind of disciplined themselves. And we kind of have to wait until they find repentance and pray that if there's anything we can do, we should still talk with them and still go and say, hey, how come you're not coming to church? And what's going on in your life? So you don't have to remove somebody who's removed themselves, but we still have a spiritual responsibility to love and speak to them. All right. Well, inactive membership is in 109, and withdrawal of membership is in 110, loss of rights of membership. Just things that are just practical that you have to do in order to keep an active membership role. But we're gonna go ahead and let you read that on your own, those sections, and we'll take a break here, and then we'll come back in about five or 10 minutes to talk about the meetings of the church and the government, and we'll probably wrap up our study of the bylaws here in about another 20 minutes of discussion. So we're continuing on with the bylaws in our membership class we've covered the first section the 100s on membership So let's take a look at section 200 on the meetings gonna just take a brief look here at the annual meeting and special meetings So the annual meeting will be during the month of February. All of the officers are elected at annual meetings. They serve multiple year terms, so we try to stagger those so we have different deacons and elders being appointed yearly. And other business is taking place. One of the main things there at the annual meeting is the budget for the upcoming year. The elders will propose the budget, and then there'll be time for discussion on all of the budget. And then there can be amendments and changes that the congregation votes on as the elders have proposed it. And then the whole congregation will approve the budget at the annual meeting. And there's other items that come up from time to time. One of the things that was early on in the ministry here was changing from our old hymnals to the hymnals that we have now. And the first time we brought that to the congregation, there was some hesitation about changing the hymnals, and so we didn't vote to change the hymnals. And then a year later, after we'd talked about it more and had a chance to talk with those who would be most affected, like the pianists, then we were able to go ahead and move forward with that. So one of the great things about the annual meeting is it makes sure that the elders are communicating well with those in the congregation who are going to be affected by their decisions, so that when we don't do that, we find out at the annual meeting, well, did you think about this? Or did you think about that? So I really like the way that the church is set up at the annual meeting. We'll talk about that a little bit more here in a minute. But then section 201 is about special meetings. And so you see in section 201.1 that special meetings can be called to deal with one or two items that need to be addressed that can't wait until the annual meeting. And so those are announced with at least one week of notice ahead of time. Usually we have special meetings after church on Sundays. And of course you have to have the quorum and The quorum is 50% of the active membership being present for a business meeting. So that's why we have to have inactive members and also remove members so that we're able to actually conduct business with a quorum. If we have a long list of members who don't come to the meetings, then we'll never be able to have a meeting. And the purpose of a quorum, of course, is to make sure that you don't, you know, handpick a time and place where you can just select a few members to come and get business done in some kind of underhanded manner. We don't want to conduct ourselves like that. That's why the meetings must be published ahead of time in the bulletin. That's where you get all of your information on what's coming up for the church. Not just the announcements on Sunday morning, but the weekly bulletin that is put out should have those publications. And then when it comes to voting requirements, you see there in section 204, you have to have three-fourths of the active voting members present in order to call a pastor, buy, sell, or encumber real estate, or to make amendments to the bylaws. So most things are just a majority vote, but these few things are three-quarters vote in order to call a pastor, to do stuff with real estate, or to amend the bylaws. And then we're gonna follow parliamentary procedure when necessary. We're not sticklers for that. If we have a contentious issue and it gets riotous and people are talking over one another, then we'll bring in the parliamentary procedures, but usually we're able to conduct ourselves without that level of formality. All right, you can read the rest there on the meetings and then the government of the church in section 300. I wanna read section 301 points one and two here. But let's start with section 300.1. This church may affiliate with such general church organization or denomination as it shall hereafter determine, respecting, however, that in no instance shall the right of property interest pass to the denomination, nor shall we become subject to any other person or entity or to be encumbered thereby, and that the government teaching and practice of such denomination must embrace the doctrinal statement of the congregation. So we have to be in doctrinal agreement with any denomination we join, and the denomination cannot take control of our property. That was a problem with the PCUSA. They had control of the property, and they also were in charge of calling pastors and getting rid of pastors, and that was not good for the local church, so we're not going to make that mistake again. And then the church is currently unaffiliated and we seek to work with other faithful congregations in accordance with our statement on cooperation and separation. So let's do that. Let's do the statement on cooperation and separation. Thanks, David. So this is front and back. One side you've got cooperation, the other side you've got separation. There's not really a page one or page two. They're both equally important. And we'll go ahead and start with cooperation. And there, Luke 9, 49 and 50 states that he who is not against us is for us. And we have to remember that. Sometimes Christians remember the opposite statement, that he who is not with us is against us. But Jesus also said, he who is not against us is for us. And we must act according to that. Oh, I see I've got the old name there of the church, the Evangelical Free Church. I corrected it in the title, but then I have to correct it there in the first paragraph. So, Firth Bible Church, it should say, will pursue biblical unity with all Christian churches which are not apostate. And apostasy is defined on the opposite side. Biblical unity amidst separate organizations, congregations within the body of Christ is exemplified in the following ways. Number one, working together in missionary enterprise in both giving and participation. We had the privilege of doing that this week. We had our event at the high school, the Todd Becker Foundation came and shared the gospel with all the teenagers. We had over 100 teenagers there. I didn't count how many, but it was great. and had over 60 come forward and respond to the message. And so that was so exciting. And we had members from the Living Life Reformed Church. We had members from Redemption Hill in Hickman. We had the pastor and his wife from another church plant, I forget the name, Anchor Bible Church that's just getting started south of Lincoln. And we contacted the Reformed churches, and we had Chet there, the youth pastor from one of the Reformed churches, I think, in Holland. I always get those two mixed up. But it was great to see the churches come together to work together on that missionary enterprise of reaching people with the gospel. And so that's one way that we show that unity. Number two, working together to meet the physical needs of saints who are suffering. And we've got scripture examples of all of these, of congregations in separate places working together for these purposes. Showing hospitality to those who are traveling through our area in Christian ministry, 3 John 5 through 8, and pursuing doctrinal clarity in the unity of the faith, as they did in Acts chapter 15. The churches came together to discuss a doctrinal issue and to pursue a unified knowledge. And then number five, exercising loving church discipline, as we just talked about in our previous session, for the health of the individual and the body of Christ, according to Matthew 18. So biblical unity involves a repudiation of factionalism that centers around personalities. Church is not about me trying to build a following. Or organizations, it's not about our organization. Or around doctrinal issues that the scripture does not focus on. What does Scripture focus on and what does Scripture not focus on? I think the point here is that you never use doctrine to promote yourself. And we pursue doctrine, but not for self-promotion, but for the good of the church, for the building up of the church. So if I start to preach every week on a doctrine because I end up saying, well, this is the most important doctrine, and I'm the only one who's teaching this, well, then you get that idea that I'm trying to build a faction around myself on this doctrine. We don't want to do that. In obedience to Christ's command to love the brethren, one of our goals in ministry will be to promote greater doctrinal and organizational unity between our congregation and other believing congregations in our area in order to enjoy the benefit of mutual edification and to communicate the unity of Christ's body to the world. So it's important that we communicate to the world our unity so that they don't see us as just another group trying to build up their organization. So then you flip it over, and you get the flip side. We must pursue biblical unity, but we must also preserve biblical separation. Some churches are really good on the separation and bad on the unity. Some churches are really good on the unity and bad on the separation. And Christ wants us to be good at both. You can be good at both, and that's what we are called to. So though the body of Christ is one, and there is to be no division in the body, it is necessary for a church to recognize proper divisions, those between Christ and the world, and between Christ and apostate Christianity. So Christ has separated us from the world, and we are to separate ourselves from apostate Christianity. 1 Corinthians 11, 18, and 19 makes that very clear. Therefore, Firth Bible Church, it should read, will not engage in any kind of cooperation in spiritual undertakings together with any religious or spiritual organization which is apostate or non-Christian. Some more scriptural examples from Corinthians. Some examples of activities that would be included in this category of spiritual undertaking are prayer meetings, evangelistic outreaches, worship services, personal growth or self-help seminars and conferences, fundraising, missions, and Christian camps. So if an organization is apostate, we're not going to do a prayer meeting with them. We're not going to participate in an evangelistic outreach together. There are certain churches around here I did not call and invite to help with the outreach we were having at Norris this week. And we're not going to go to their Christian camps. So, an apostate Christian organization is one in which any of the following statements are true. It doesn't have to be all of them. Just one of these things makes you an apostate Christian organization or church. Number one, they deny the person or work of Christ in their official written or spoken teachings. To deny the personal work of Christ is to have a different gospel and that is the mark of an apostate. You have this all throughout church history. Started in the very beginning with the Gnostics who taught that Christ was an emanation and that God the Father was different from the Old Testament God and just had all these wrong views of God and what Christ accomplished in his work on the cross. Muslims have a different Christ. They have a different understanding about what happened at the end of Christ's life. They don't think he died on the cross for our sins. And so while they believe in God and they're religious, they're not Christian, as has always been recognized. And other groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, they have a different view of Christ. The Mormons have a different view of Christ. Very nice people. They do wonderful music. But they're not Christians. They're apostates. So we have to make those proper distinctions between what is the true church and what is apostate Christianity. Number two, they preach a different method of receiving the gospel of Christ other than by faith alone. So the Catholic Church is accurate on its Trinitarian views. It understands the doctrine of Christ. and understands that he died on the cross for our sins, and understands his resurrection, but they preach a different method of receiving God's grace, rather than by faith alone, and that's what the Reformation was all about. That's why the Protestant church ended up having to separate from the Catholic church, was over this issue, and Galatians 1, 8 and 9 makes it that clear, that the book of Galatians was really the book for the Reformation, and showed why it was necessary to separate from the Catholic church. And then number three, they affirm or promote an ungodly lifestyle as acceptable for followers of Christ. And you see a lot of examples of that in the New Testament. Very often we just focus on the doctrine and gospel stuff. But the Bible says if they're teaching an ungodly lifestyle as acceptable, that's the mark of an apostate. And that's where a lot of the churches now are dividing, as churches are ordaining homosexuals and they're marrying homosexuals, in clear contrast to New Testament ethical teaching. And so even churches that are kind of liberal in the 20th century, and they weren't standing strong on some of those issues, now they're saying, well, we can't go along with this immorality. And there's a number of churches in our area that are separating from their denominations because of this affirmation of an ungodly lifestyle. So I'm glad that they still have that discernment in a lot of these churches. And while their doctrine could probably use some shoring up and they need to start preaching the Bible again, at least there's enough knowledge of the Bible there and I want to encourage them to keep on going with that and to keep on reforming. So then right after number three, I want to clarify what we mean by separation. We do not believe that the Bible teaches second-degree separation. So second-degree separation means that you have to separate from those who don't separate. Not everybody practices biblical separation, and so do we have to separate from churches and organizations who don't separate? That's second-degree separation. For example, if the Living Life Reformed Church is not separating from Mormons, but they're inviting them to come and do concerts at their church, do we have to separate from them? We do not teach that we have to separate. I'm not saying we don't have to separate, or we can't separate, or we can't talk about it with them, but we are only going to separate from those who are, in fact, separate from Christ. So Christians can fail to separate, but we still want to have fellowship with those Christians and encourage them to become more biblical in this practice. Weddings and funerals are spiritual undertakings, but they are exempt from this statement on separation because it's understood by everyone who attends that you don't have to be in agreement with the church that is hosting the funeral or the wedding, but that you're there supporting the family. So you can go to a Catholic Church funeral, you can go to a Catholic Church wedding, and that's not confusing to people. They don't think that by doing that you're supporting the teaching of the Catholic Church. I think that's pretty clear in most people's minds. But you might have to clarify that. You might have to say, well, I'm coming, but I don't agree with what the Catholic Church teaches. Because there's a lot of ecumenism in the Church. This exception can also be applied to certain examples of guest speaking or going to another organization in order to boldly share the gospel. So if I'm going to a Mormon school in order to say, well, here's what we teach that's different from what you teach, and they've asked me to do that, then I can do that because I'm showing the differences and I'm not creating a false sense of unity. So First Bible Church, it says there in the last paragraph, we'll be careful to do nothing that promotes an apostate church or a non-Christian religion or to confuse our gospel with theirs in the eyes of our community. In fact, we will seek to take actions and positions which actively make a distinction between God's work in Christ and the spiritual deceits of the enemy. So you see that throughout the New Testament, and that's what we wanna do. We wanna practice apostolic Christianity. So that's why in the statement on affiliation it says, we seek to work with other congregations in accordance with our statement on cooperation and separation. Any questions about that? That was one of the first things I worked on when I came here as pastor was defining our cooperation and separation statement with the elders and getting it voted on by the congregation. So it's served us well over the years and there might be room for improvement. All right, so then let's continue on in the bylaws and look at the section on the authority of government. What's the ultimate authority in this congregation? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ, but he administers that authority through the members of the congregation. Notice what it says there in 3011. Ultimate authority in the church will reside in the members of the congregation in the sense that they elect the elder board. If the church is having a problem and there's a division, well, ultimately the congregation is the one who's going to decide which direction the church goes because they're the ones who appoint the elders. And if you don't like the direction the elders are going, well, you vote them out and you vote in new elders and the congregation has that authority. So we are an elder-led but congregationally ruled church. Some people don't like that. They think, well, you should be elder-ruled and not congregationally ruled. I've seen that, and I can understand that doctrinally. And when I study the New Testament, I tend to lean towards elder rule. In practice, I really like doing what I accuse others of doing, being pragmatic. In practice, I really like the congregational rule because it prevents the elders from becoming autocrats. And when you have elders appointing elders, you can end up with an echo chamber, and that can be very dangerous and can cause a lot of division between the elders and the congregation. And so I appreciate the elders being appointed by the congregation and that keeps that accountability there that seems to be very helpful in this world that is still filled with imperfect people. So the congregation delegates to the elders authority for day-to-day oversight of the church, except for the following. So what can the elders not do? Well, they can't change the Articles of Incorporation or the bylaws. They can't approve the annual budget. They can't take people out or put people into membership on their own. They can't do the final step of church discipline. They can't call a senior pastor, and they can't add to the facility. But everything else they can do. Elder board meetings are open to members of the congregation and any voting member may request to speak to or bring a matter before the elder board at any regularly scheduled meeting. We meet every month, usually the second Sunday of the month after church. We have a lunch and then we have our meeting. And so if you'd like to bring anything to the elders, just let us know ahead of time. We'll put it on the docket and we'll get to you towards the beginning of that meeting so that you don't have to stay for the whole meeting if you don't want to. but you're welcome to, and you're always welcome to sit in on the meetings. If any confidential matters come up that need to be discussed, we'll just ask you to leave until we've been able to discuss that, and then you can come back in. That doesn't happen very often. So that's why it says the elder board may choose to close the meeting to visitors when discussing matters needing confidentiality. So authority for the day-to-day ministry of the church is in the elders, and if the elders say, you know, on a Sunday morning, We're going to change up the order of service and we're going to do the singing after the service instead of before the service so that elders have that right. And the congregation can't say, well, you can't do that. We've always had the singing before the sermon. Now, when you're appointing the elders, you're giving them the right over things like that to be able to make those day-to-day decisions. when COVID hit in 2020, and the elders had to decide. Do we meet inside? Do we meet outside? What are we going to do here? We still don't know much about what's going on. Do we close down completely? And we made those decisions. That congregation followed those decisions, and it worked out wonderfully, and I was really pleased with how everybody handled that. The elders working together well, the congregation following, and had great unity in a time where a lot of churches really struggled with that unity. And so I'm proud of how we've conducted ourselves. So yeah, the elder board also has the authority there in 3012 to change the annual budget, but we can't set the annual budget, but we can change it as needs arise, but by no more than 10%. So our annual budget's usually around 120,000, I think. So if we decide, you know, we need $8,000 for a new air conditioner, we can do that. If it ends up being more than 10%, you know, we need a new roof for 20,000 or whatever, then we have to go to the congregation, have a special meeting and have them vote on it. We can appoint committees and task forces. And the bylaws have a lot to say about committees and appointing committees, which I'll let you read. We don't do a whole lot of committees, but we have from time to time, like our independence committee. That was a good one. So then section 400, we'll just go over very briefly here on the officers of the church. There are three corporate officers. The Articles of Incorporation require corporate officers. In the state of Nebraska, in order to have a nonprofit, you've got to have a chairman, you've got to have a secretary, you've got to have a treasurer. So we have those. Those corporate officers are selected from the elders. So the church appoints the elders, and then the elders sit down at the first meeting after the annual meeting and say, all right, you're the chairman, you're the vice chairman, you're the secretary. And deacons can also serve as the secretary. Deacons can't be the chairman or the vice chairman, but they can serve as the secretary. Qualifications for the officers, well, you have to be a member of the church, and then you're elected at the annual meeting. You serve a three-year term. And then vacancies can be filled by the elder board. Somebody steps down and we need to appoint somebody, we can appoint someone until the next election. So if you had one year left, I suppose we'd appoint someone for a year and then have that filled by the congregation at the next election. So then you can read about the duties of the chairman, the secretary, the treasurer, and how all of that works out. And I wanna read section 401.1 about the office of elder. The elder board comprises the voting officers of the church for month-to-month business. Deacons don't vote, but they sit in, they give advice, they participate in the discussions, but the elders are the ones who vote. they provide the spiritual oversight for the congregation. So the Bible calls you as a Christian to submit yourself to the elders. That doesn't mean the elders get to run everything in your life. I'm not going to tell you what to wear and what job to take and all that type of thing. But it does mean that when it comes to the matters of the church, And elders say, hey, you can't be in this ministry anymore because I don't like the way you're doing it. Then you have to say, okay, I'll go do a different ministry. When it comes to the matters of the church, that's where the elders have the authority. And we expect you to follow God's instructions. And you should expect us to follow God's instructions and not use our authority for selfish reasons, but to use it in love. But you gotta have authority. You gotta have people who are in charge, who are making decisions. And then it's important that the people follow those decisions, just like a family. The elders are the ruling spiritual authority on matters of doctrine and practice and discipline. So you go to someone and you say, you know, I think you're sinning. And they say, I don't think I'm sinning. And then you bring two others and they say, we think you're sinning. And he says, well, I don't think I'm sinning. And you go to the elders and the elders say, we don't think he's sinning. then that's where it stops. You're not gonna have church discipline against someone who the elders don't think is sinning. So they are the spiritual authority on those matters of discipline as well as doctrine and practice. If I get up and preach something and the other elders come to me and say, we don't think that's biblical, Timothy, we don't want you preaching that. I'm like, okay, you're the elders, I'll submit, I won't preach on that. So I'm subject to the elders as well, just as the other elders are subject to the majority of the elders. And here's a good place to talk about the duties and responsibilities of elders and deacons. So if you're interested in being an elder or a deacon, men, then this would let you know what we expect, what are the responsibilities of elders and deacons. And it is a wonderful ministry, and I'm very thankful for everyone who has stepped up over the years to be an elder or a deacon. And the two offices are defined in scripture. The pastoral epistles of Timothy and Titus have a lot of instruction on elders and deacons, and we also see them functioning throughout the New Testament, especially the book of Acts, how they were appointed by the apostles. So, let's take a look at the elder responsibilities first. Elders and deacons are responsible to maintain the character qualifications for office found within 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. And we have a elder qualification form that we give to every prospective elder. The elder fills it out, his wife fills it out. or if not a wife, a family member, someone who knows that person for a long time and very well. And we go through each one of the character qualifications with that person and rate them on a scale of one to five. and make sure that those who are being appointed to the office are qualified. And when we're talking about qualifications, as it says, we're talking about character qualifications. We're not looking for who's the best speaker, or who's the best administrator, or who knows the most about business, or any of that. That's all good, but the only qualifications in scripture are character qualifications. And so, in order to be an elder, you gotta meet those qualifications, and then you've gotta do these six things. These are the basics that we think the New Testament teaches and exemplifies our elder responsibilities. Number one, oversee the teaching of God's word, including protecting the church from false teaching. That's primarily my job in the church as an elder, but not just my job. The other elders are involved with that as well, and we have a lot of discussions on those subjects. Number two, provide spiritual guidance for individual members of the church. By providing a godly example, being available for biblical marriage, family, and personal counseling, and administering the final step of church discipline, according to Matthew 18, to shepherd the church in the spirit of Christ and act as loving spiritual fathers to the members of the church. So, if you need help in your spiritual life, as a parent, as a husband, as a worker, as an individual, in your own private life, the elders are responsible to help you. And so you can talk to me, you can talk to one of the other elders, and don't feel like you always have to talk to me, because I'm gifted at some things, and just because I'm a good teacher doesn't mean I'm the best counselor in the church. And guys like Jerry Schmidt are really great at encouraging and have that personal ministry in a way that I could never be able to fulfill. So, you know, that's why we have a multiplicity of elders. Different elders can have different strengths and weaknesses and you can choose which elder you want to go to. I'm not discouraging you from coming to me. I love counseling and I love personal ministry, but I understand that other people can do things that I can't do. And then number three, You attend the leadership meetings, if you're an elder, to give direction to the ministries of the church. You gotta come to the monthly meeting. Exercise financial oversight, propose the annual budget, set the date and agenda for the annual meeting. Number four, you examine new candidates for the office of elder and deacon and propose them to the church after approval. Also, the elders will investigate any charges against another officer in the church. Number five, you administer the Lord's Supper and baptism. And number six, you lead in public prayer and devote significant time to private prayer for the congregation. Also, you visit the sick and pray for them in accordance with James chapter five. And you can look up James five about calling for the elders of the church and anointing with oil and we're all on board with that. So those are the elder responsibilities, and again, it may not be completely exhaustive, but that's most of what we do on a month-to-month and year-to-year basis. So then the deacons, you notice them in the bylaws after the section on elders in 401. Then you've got the qualifications and all of that. So then you've got the office of deacon in section 402, if you can find that. So deacons are also an office in the New Testament. And the way that they seem to function in the New Testament is that they are providing practical assistance to the church, taking responsibilities off of the shoulders of the elders so that the elders can fulfill their main responsibilities. And so that's why then on the deacon responsibilities, they have that more practical focus of overseeing the maintenance of the church building and the church grounds, assessing needs, financial needs in the congregation, distributing funds from the benevolence fund, attending the leadership meetings as non-voting members, in order to assist the elders in drafting an annual budget, apprising the elders of needs within the body, and on monthly business decisions. Deacons may assist in the administration of the Lord's Supper and baptism as needed, and they also organize church and community service projects. So that's how the two offices work in our church and the scriptural basis for them. And that is some of what is not specifically laid out in the bylaws, but is helpful just to give to prospective elders and to remind elders and deacons of as we go on in our work. So I'll let you read the rest of the thing there on the officers of the church. And I'm pretty much gonna skip over the elections and the staff. You're responsible to read those so that you're aware of what is in there. And if you have any questions about any of that, please bring that to the elder interview. But I want to jump all the way ahead to section 900 and look at the administrative and ministry policy as it's stated there. So this is kind of a summary here at the end. saying these policies are established with the full realization that some Christians and Christian churches may have different views. So you don't have to think that everything in the bylaws is perfect in order to join our church. You just have to agree to go by the bylaws in how we interact with one another, and that's the way it's always gonna be. There's nothing perfect in this world, and if it has to be perfect, then you'll be alone. And sadly, that's what happens with some folks. So you're just agreeing that we're going to avoid unnecessary tensions, and you can have your own personal views that are different from what's stated in the policies, but you're going to voluntarily submit yourself to these policies for the sake of unity and direction of the ministry. Now, section 900.2 points out, if you find that you can't do that, if these policies cause you great distress and inhibit your ability to serve the Lord in this congregation, we would accept, in Christian love, your decision to find a fellowship that more closely shares your convictions. So, we understand that we're doing our best here, but you might see things differently. And so, if you can abide by these, great. If not, you probably have to find a different church. All right, so then the last thing is just on the amendments there on the back page. And of course, you can change the bylaws by a vote of three quarters vote at a business meeting. And we have done that from time to time. All right, great. We made it through the biggest part here with the bylaws. It's important that we recognize there are going to be times where we're tested. And it's easy to say, oh, yeah, well, abide by the bylaws when you're sitting here and no disagreements have come up. And you can't imagine that any disagreements would come up. But disagreements do come up. And that's when you're going to be tested to find out your character. Are you a person who keeps your word? Are you a person who does what you commit to? Or are you a person that just does what you feel like in the moment? And that's not a person of character. A person of character keeps his commitments, and those commitments are tested when you disagree with the leadership. And you will disagree with the leadership. I hope so. If you don't disagree with the leadership, then you probably don't have any opinions of your own. And I want you to have opinions. And I want you to keep your opinions and hold on to them. That's great. But I want you to submit to the elders as the congregation appoints them. I'm an elder, I don't get re-elected, I'm an elder until I'm removed, and you can read in the bylaws about how to remove me, and it can certainly be done. And if God does remove me, I'm okay with that, not that I want to leave, I like it here, but I wouldn't make a stink, and I wouldn't treat anybody badly on my way out, because you're Christ's people, and I always want to honor you. And God is leading. If he leads me elsewhere, I will follow. So follow the leaders when you disagree with them. That's the point here. That's when you're really tested. All right, so the next thing that's important for us to go through is the doctrinal statement. Now, while you're passing out the doctrinal statement here, I'll direct your attention to the teaching requirements in the bylaws. I saved this until now because it's most relevant now. But if you've still got your bylaws in front of you, If you look at section 112.1, back towards the membership section there. And 112.1, actually that should be 112.2 cuz I have two 112.1s. There's a typo that needs fixed. So you see 112.1 and then 112.1 the second on teaching requirements. And there it says, non-members may participate in any public teaching in the church and among its members. So in order to teach Sunday school or to teach a home Bible study, you don't have to be a member of the church. But it is necessary for all teachers, whether you're a member or not a member, to not teach contrary to the doctrinal statement. So if you're gonna teach, you can't teach against anything that's stated in the doctrinal statement without permission. Now if you've got a different view on something in the doctrinal statement, and you ask for permission to teach on it, and the elders say, okay, yeah, we'll let you present your view, then that's great. But you can't just go off and form your own group and start teaching your own doctrine that's against the doctrinal statement and cause that rift in the church. The right way to handle a different view on doctrine is to go to the elders and discuss it with them. That's what a man does. A man goes and discusses it with those who are in charge. A sleazy guy, he goes around and just talks with other people and tries to get a following until he's got enough people then that he has the courage to be able to stand up to the elders. That's cowardly. If you want to change something, do it the right way and be courageous. So to teach in the church, we ask that you teach according to the doctrinal statement. So let's go through the doctrinal statement together. Now, as you see in the footnote, this doctrinal statement is also indebted to the EFCA. This is an expansion and a revision of the doctrinal statement of the EFCA, and it says last revised January 4, 2018. I'm trying to remember, is that when the EFCA doctrinal statement was revised? That might be, or was that the last time we revised our doctrinal statement, which would not be true, and I'd need to update it, because we did revise it last year at our annual meeting. Yeah, right. So yeah, we do have our updated doctrinal statement here from last year, and I'll point out what's new and different. Alright, so when it comes to the section on God, the Holy Bible, the human condition, and Jesus Christ, these are all pretty traditional Protestant Reformed views and Trinitarian views that even the Catholic Church would agree on. So pretty standard stuff here in these opening statements. But I do want to point out some of what's said in paragraph 2 on the Holy Bible. We believe that God is speaking in the scriptures, both the Old and New Testament, notice the present tense there, through the words of human authors. As the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, is the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and is the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. The Bible contains all truth that is necessary for victory over sin and for fullness of life and godliness. Therefore, it is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises. So a great statement about the authority and the sufficiency of Scripture. It seems like most evangelicals will agree to the authority of scriptures, but in practice, it's hard to find a lot of people who believe in the sufficiency of scriptures. That it's really all you need. They might say it, but they don't act like it. And we want to act like the Bible has everything that we need for life and godliness. It doesn't tell you everything you need for car repair, but it tells you everything you need in order to be a godly person. Okay, so then the human condition, I just want to point out one or two things here. Of course, you've got the fall in Adam and Eve, that we were created with dignity in the image of God, and that we still have that image of God, even though we are marred by sin. And that in union with Adam, there's this original sin that has caused all of mankind to fall from the state of innocence so that we are sinners by nature and by choice, alienated from God and under his wrath. And notice the last part here. We believe that human beings are dead in sin, being incapable of coming to God in faith apart from God's effective call to salvation. So that is a rather Calvinistic statement about total depravity. elements of Calvinism is the T in tulip. Tulip is the five points. The T stands for total depravity. And total depravity has also been called total inability. So this is a statement of total inability to be saved apart from God's work and God's grace being effective. That effectual call is also part of a Calvinistic view of salvation. So the question came up at the recent Elder Sunday, you know, how Calvinistic is the church? Well, The doctrinal statement is pretty Calvinistic, and I'm pretty Calvinistic. The elders may not be quite as Calvinistic as I am, and I'm okay with that, because I feel like in this area there's a lot of confusion, a lot of misunderstanding. There's a lot of caricatures of what Calvinism is and what it believes, and so sometimes it's not even a very useful word because it just scares people. But hopefully, if you don't like Calvinism, you'll find that from my preaching, it's not my hobby horse, I don't spend all my time preaching Calvinism, but that when I do get to texts that address issues of total depravity or God's effectual call, that I'm handling those biblically and accurately, and that it's not teaching anything that is a boogeyman, but that we're just teaching what the scripture says and is actually helpful and good. And there are Calvinists out there who've made a lot of mistakes and a lot of bad applications and bad implications from some of these doctrines, but that's not the fault of any of these doctrines. It's their fault for misapplying them and misunderstanding them. So just a little bit about Calvinism there and how it sadly leads to division that I don't think needs to be there. And I've had great fellowship and partnership with non-Calvinistic ministers and gospel workers, and great discussions with them, and I think that's the way the church is supposed to function. All right, and then the statement on Jesus Christ is very orthodox, focusing on his atoning death and his resurrection being the only ground for salvation. So if you turn it over, you'll notice that the section on the Holy Spirit talks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It also talks about regeneration, that's the work of the Holy Spirit, and that in regeneration we are baptized, that is, united spiritually with Christ and adopted into his family. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs at salvation. And that's what makes us a part of the body of Christ. If you're a Christian, you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit indwells, illuminates, guides, equips, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service. So the filling of the Spirit is different from the baptism of the Spirit. And we're supposed to be filled with the Spirit, not through some one-time experience necessarily, although there can be powerful experiences of being filled with the Spirit, but in general it's more of an ongoing growth in the Holy Spirit of having Him become in control of all areas of our life as He is the Spirit of the Lord and we follow His Lordship. So the section on personal salvation focuses on the call to everyone in the world, the general call to salvation. And then the second paragraph focuses more on the effectual call. And it says, when we respond to the gospel call, God is at work in our hearts for his glory. Our choice to believe the gospel is not independent from God's grace. That is, saving faith doesn't come from an independent act of our fallen will, but both salvation and faith are a gift from God, as Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 teach us. So the good part of Calvinism, the biblical part of Calvinism, is just trying to give God the glory for saving sinners. And I think when you read through the New Testament and you see that God is active in the salvation of sinners and that he gets the credit, he gets the glory, that's basically what good Calvinists are trying to protect, is the glory of God and salvation. Arminians are trying to protect something else. It doesn't mean that they're against the glory of God and salvation, it just means that when they get into discussions on this, their concern lies on the freedom of the human will and that God is not just pulling strings and we're just puppets. And so they're trying to emphasize that. And so it depends on what you're trying to protect as to how you kind of come at this issue. And I want to value what they're trying to protect, and I want them to value what I'm trying to protect, and for us to be able to have unity and understand each other's perspective. But I did want a clear statement on some of these things in the doctrinal statement, and the congregation agreed. They voted on that. So our doctrinal statement reads pretty Calvinistically. I'll take the blame for that. I did it the right way, through the congregation. The church then, not too much out of the ordinary there, but you do come to the last paragraph and you see that the church is shepherded by biblically qualified males, and we had to put that language in there of male because there's so much gender confusion in our society. You couldn't even use the word man anymore, you've got to say male. And then also because there's so much egalitarianism among professing Christians that they think that this old idea that leadership has to be male is very antiquated and the Bible shouldn't be interpreted that way. But we think the Bible's pretty plain, and God spoke it the way he meant it, and that men are supposed to lead their families, men are supposed to lead God's family. It doesn't mean they're better, and I've got lots of sermons on that subject. If you're curious about men's roles and women's roles and why it's important, I'm happy to have those discussions. All right, and we already talked about elders' roles, and so you have a little bit of that there. So then when you come to the Christian living section, you see that point number eight is broken down into a number of sub points. So you've got eight A through G there, starting at the bottom of the page and then going to the top of the next page. And there's a couple of things here that would be somewhat distinctive of our congregation that was that it would define how we view this in contradistinction to other movements or other evangelical churches, like the section on spiritual gifts. We say that the office of apostle and prophet are no longer given, the gift of apostle and prophet is no longer present among Christians, nor speaking in tongues, nor healing or miracles. Now if you speak in tongues or you believe that that is a gift today, you're allowed to do that, you're allowed to have your opinion, you're allowed to speak in tongues. I might even allow you to speak in tongues in church if you asked nicely. And there was an interpreter. But we're going to try to do everything according to Scripture, and we're just letting you know what our position on these issues is. So to join the church, you don't have to be in 100% agreement. You just have to be willing to submit to, this is how the church is going to operate. This is how the church is going to function as a congregation. So we're not going to have a speaking in tongue service without interpretation, for sure. And we'd be hesitant even to have a speaking in tongues service with interpretation because we don't believe that what people do today is the same thing as the gift of tongues in the New Testament. Not trying to put anybody down or discard anybody's experiences, just a matter of interpretation. So God still heals and works miracles, but he's not distributed the gifts to members in the church today. So I don't have a gift of healing or a gift of working miracles, but that doesn't mean that we can't ask God to heal or to do miracles. So this is traditionally called a cessationist position. And the cessationist position also can be misunderstood and maligned. And so we don't want to do to others what we don't want done to us. So I have to be careful not to misunderstand or show the worst part of a different doctrinal position. And so I don't want people doing that to me and saying, well, you don't even believe that the Holy Spirit exists. I'm like, well, I believe the Holy Spirit exists. I believe the Holy Spirit is active. And so let's treat each other with respect and not misrepresent positions and just have those discussions. Always going back to God's word. So then on prayer and God's will has to do also with the healing. Prayer for healing is good. We should pray for healing, but we have to submit ourselves to God's will. We don't know whether or not he's doing things through our illness, and that's why our prayer isn't being answered. So this is kind of against the name it and claim it philosophy of church and the health and wealth movement. That's pretty much what that paragraph is about. Now we've got a paragraph on manhood and womanhood, and this is one area that we've had discussion on and are trying to make sure that it communicates well and is biblical. So let's just go ahead and read that. Very controversial in the church today. The church at large. Our church is not that controversial, but it still comes up. We believe that God has created us to be male or female, gender being determined biologically at birth, Male and female complement one another in their nature and character and in their roles in relation to both family and church. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman. God has designed and instructed men to take the leadership role in their household, being ultimately responsible before God for the decisions and directions of the family. This leadership is to be exercised in love, seeking God's highest glory and the highest good of everyone within the family. Women are instructed by God to submit to the leadership of their own husband in all things. In contrast to our society, we uphold the value of motherhood and raising children as a full-time calling. So we don't prohibit a woman from working a job outside of the home, but we do uphold the value of motherhood and raising children as a full-time calling. That's what we encourage women to pursue, both young women and married women. And of course, when your children are raised, then if you want to get a job in a daycare and be a blessing to other families that need your help, that's great. If you want to be a high-powered lawyer, you'd probably say, well, I don't know if that's really God's calling for your life. I think the domestic life is really a wonderful calling and one that is so much derided in our culture that we need to set an example in the opposite direction and show people that family is important and career is not to be an idol in our lives as men or women. So there's a lot of liberty there in how you carry out the calling that God has given to you, but we want to emphasize those biblical values of motherhood and child raising, even being a grandmother and serving mothers who are younger once your own children are raised as the scripture teaches. So then the section on submission to government. Again, doctrinal statements tend to reflect the difficulties of the time, and so some of this on manhood and womanhood and government are issues that are currently being worked out in the church and are under attack by the enemy, and so we want to make clear what we think the doctrinal position is according to Scripture. And so we, going through COVID, had a lot of discussions about what a submission to government looked like, and I've got a sermon series, a four-part series, on Romans 12 and all of its implications and how to apply it in the current time. You can find that online if you're interested, if you weren't here for it. It says, So when the scripture says submit, it doesn't say except for this and that. You always submit. And one form of submission is disobedience that accepts the penalty. That's a form of submission. We're not taking up arms, we're not resisting arrest, we're not shouting obscenities at the police officer. If I feel like it is my duty to God to disobey the governing authorities, then I accept whatever penalty the authority puts on me for disobedience. That's the right way to do it. In the military, if a man disagrees with his superior officer, If he has a moral obligation to disobey an order, he also has a moral obligation to submit to whatever penalty is imposed upon him for disobeying that order. And so that's the way a moral person disobeys while still submitting to the authority structure and not tearing down that authority structure which is placed for our good. You don't want a chaotic, anarchic society, and you don't want to do anything that's going to contribute to an anarchic society. But instead, we show the world the right way to honor God in civil disobedience. And we may have more opportunities for that in the future. And then the section on racism, sexism, and justice. Well, of course, this comes out of the social justice movement. We initially adopted the Dallas Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel as our guideline as this became such a hot-button issue in the last five years. six years, whatever it's been. And so if you'd like to read the Dallas Statement, I've got some copies of it up here. But since then, we've incorporated what we think are some of the essentials of what is a rather long document into a much shorter, briefer statement in our own doctrinal statement. So I tried to condense what was in the Dallas Statement into this statement that was approved by the church last year, or this year, earlier this year. We believe God's word defines justice and injustice. Racism is an example of the sin of partiality. That's how the Bible talks about racism is partiality. Christ commands his followers to show no partiality for or against any people group. But male leadership in the home and in the church is based upon God's creative design and is not an example of partiality or oppression. Furthermore, identifying sins such as fornication, abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism as morally wrong is not partiality, but must be done as an act of love, speaking the truth to those who are enslaved to evil passions. So that covers racial issues, patriarchy issues, if you want to use their terminology, and then sexual issues, all of that justice stuff that has come into our culture, that's our position stated as succinctly as we can. And then you come to the back and there's a statement on the intermediate state and God's plan for the future. We don't believe in soul sleep as it's taught by some Christian denominations. We believe that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord in conscious enjoyment of heaven. And then as far as God's plan for the future, we are a premillennial church. We believe in Christ's return before a literal thousand year kingdom and that's the way I'll most likely be preaching the book of Revelation unless I have some personal revelation that shows me otherwise. It says, So the premillennial part is kind of the distinctive part. All Christians believe in a personal bodily return of Christ, but we believe in a premillennial return. The coming of Christ at a time known only to God demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living. Following Christ's return, Jesus will rule on this present earth over all nations for a thousand years. We believe that Israel will always be the nation which God has chosen for himself. While Israel is currently under the judgment of God for her rejection of him, there will be a future national salvation for Israel. We do not believe that the church has permanently replaced Israel as the chosen people of God, the recipients of all the covenants of promise, but rather that the church shares in those promises through Christ. During the millennial reign of Christ, Israel will experience the fulfillment of all of the promises of the prophets as Jesus Christ rules as the son of David on the throne in Jerusalem. At the end of the millennium, Jesus will assign all believers to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment, and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heavens and the new earth, to the praise of his glorious grace. So that's our doctrinal statement. It has been much expanded and revised. The goal of the doctrinal statement is to communicate to you, the members of the church, what the teaching positions of the church are. And again, you don't have to be in 100% agreement, you just have to not actively undermine the doctrinal statement if you're gonna be a member. Any questions? It can be revised. Nothing is perfect. All right, so we covered the statement on biblical cooperation and separation. At that same time, I was gonna make a mention of other churches that are nearby that we cooperate with. And there's some new ones that have not yet made it onto this list that we can add. As I mentioned, there's a new church plant in Hickman, Nebraska called Redemption Hill. Redemption Hill Bible Church. I think that's the full name. Sam Lawson is the pastor there, and they just started in the last few months. And Hickman has needed a Bible teaching church for quite a while, so I'm very happy that some Christians have undertook that, and it seems to be going well. But other nearby churches, Mark Starr has left, you could cross out his name, and instead we have Nat. But the Living Life Reformed Church has a new pastor, and we're getting along very well, and I think it's gonna be a great partnership. Country Bible Church has Dean Delfos there as the pastor. Crossroads Bible Church in Manly, east of Lincoln. Gary Whistle, very faithful man. Dustin Rogers in Lincoln at Heritage Bible Church. And there's many churches in Lincoln, too many to list. But then down below I've got a group of pastors that meet with regularly and have done so ever since I've been here. And so for the last 15 years, Rod Gertzon, Dwight Oswald, Doug Witzke, Mike Wing, Brian Fulkin, some of these guys came a little bit later, like Peter Kuhn and Casey McNerney. But yeah, just a great group of pastors that are also premillennial, like I am, dispensational, and so that kind of unites us together. Some of them aren't Calvinist, so, you know, we have some doctrinal disagreements, but great fellowship. So yeah, that's some of the things that keep us in touch with those who are closest geographically and also closest geologically in our part of the world here. And then also recently, there's been a group of pastors that have been meeting called the Master's Fellowship, TMF. the Master's Fellowship is mostly graduates from the Master's Seminary. That's why it's called the Master's Fellowship, but you don't have to be a graduate from the Master's Seminary in order to participate. And we've been holding breakfasts twice a year and bringing in speakers and having fellowship. And so that's been encouraging as well to see the Master's Fellowship take off in not only in our area, but around the states and even around the world. So that's an encouraging development. Good things are happening. It's not all bad out there. Good to keep that in mind. So that's just to let you know that we're not Lone Rangers out here building our own little kingdom, that we're just a part of what is going on. All right, so we've got about a half an hour left. Let's see if I can get through the policies that we need to cover. We'll probably do this pretty quickly. Well, The child protection policy is what I'm referring to. And this is a longer document, one that is sadly important. You kind of wish you didn't need a child protection policy and that we still lived in a society where children were safe. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And so I will make some copies of the child protection policy and hand this out to you afterwards before you go. Or I can put it in your mailboxes if you have a mailbox in the other room if you do need to go. Basically, if I was gonna summarize the child protection policy is that when we have children's events at the church, we don't allow an adult volunteer to be alone with the child. That's just not a good idea. And so there's always going to be either multiple children or multiple adults, and we have windows on all of the rooms that we're allowed to meet with with children. You can't go into a closet with a child that doesn't have a window. You've gotta be where people can see what's going on. And we do allow for people who have a criminal background in this area to attend the church, but they have to be escorted by another member of the church at all times when they're in the church building when children are present. If you have a record in this area, you're not allowed to be in the building when children are around without an escort from the church. And the identity of the offender will be made known to the congregation. He can only be here at approved times by the elders. A sex offender can't just come whenever he wants. He's got to have approval to be for any event that he attends. And then there's also the response to claims of sexual abuse. How is the church going to handle it if somebody claims to be abused? And so, you know, the reporting is all pretty standard and the investigation shouldn't be anything out of the ordinary there. So we ask anyone who's going to be involved with children's ministry to acknowledge that they have received and will abide by these policies by signing them after reading them, and then also a background check. So we've got an application where they fill out information if you're involved with children's ministry, and we'll do the background check and make sure that we know if there's anyone who has a criminal record in that regard. So I'll make copies of that and get that to you. All right, the other policies that I wanted to cover with you are the building use policies, on a happier note. So if you wanna use the church for any purpose, a baby shower or a birthday party, a Bible study, Tupperware party, if you wanna use the church building, here's our policies. And we try to keep it simple. Try to keep it generous. In a spirit of generosity, we desire our building and its resources to be used by all of our church members. The following rules will be sufficient to protect the church's property and reputation. Number one, the use of the building and its resources are only for those who are members of the church or by request of a member on behalf of someone else. So we don't allow outside people to make requests to use the church building, that if you know somebody in the church who's a member and they request it for you, well then we will consider that. Number two, all building use requests must be approved by a church elder or deacon. You don't have to get everybody to sign off. You get one elder to say good, one deacon to say good, you're good. Keeps it simple. Number three, the church member who requests the use of the building must be present for the duration of the event. You can't request for your friend and then not be there when the event's taking place. You're responsible for it if you're the one who's requested, so you gotta be there. And children must never be left unsupervised at any event on the church grounds. Number four, because the church is a non-profit, no for-profit activities will be allowed on the church property. So maybe no Tupperware parties after all. Number five, the church building and all of its equipment should be left in the same state of order and cleanliness in which it was found. If not, a cleaning fee of $25 per hour will be assessed. Number six, food and drink are not allowed in the pews in the worship area. Same as Sunday mornings. Events on Saturdays must be cleaned and cleared no later than 6 p.m. Non-church events cannot be scheduled on Sundays before two o'clock. That time is already taken. Number eight, neither alcohol nor smoking are permitted in the church building. Number nine, any decorations or equipment that we brought in for the event must be approved before the event. Balls are only permitted in the basement level of the church building. Number 10, usage of the audio-visual equipment must be asked for ahead of time and supervised by an authorized church representative. That's somebody who has experience that the church has said, yeah, we want you to run the soundboard. The church copier is only to be used by church members. So you're free to use the church copier as a member of the church. There's a log in there. You write down your name and what you made copies for. So just utilize the log and that's fine. You know, if you start running thousands of copies for your business, we might ask you about it. You might want to buy your own copier. But we want to be generous with what we have, right? Number 11, all of the above policies apply to weddings and funerals at the church as well. And number 12, while we desire to be generous, the church elders and deacons have the right on behalf of the congregation to refuse the church of the building at its own discretion for any reason whatsoever. Nor are the church elders or deacons required to provide the reason for refusing any requests. So if the elder says no, and you're like, well why not? I'm not telling you, I'm just saying no. You gotta say okay, you get to decide. This is important because there are certain groups out there that will target churches for lawsuits or whatever, and so they'll ask for use of your building, and if you tell them the reason why, they'll use that against you in a court. And so there's gotta be times where we can just say no, and we're not obligated to give the reason. That's the world we live in. Any questions about the building use? That goes for the equipment in the church too. If you want to borrow the tables and chairs for a graduation party, just ask. Put them back, clean them afterwards. Just common sense stuff. Great. All right, we're doing great. We're really making it through. That means that what we have left is to talk about What's next? How do you get involved in church? And that's the key, that membership is organic. Membership is what God has called you to. It's not just about voting at the annual meeting, but it's about using your spiritual gift to serve the saints. And so let's talk about some of the ways that new members can involve themselves and what some of the needs of the church are currently for service. Number one, you notice that we put out a prayer sheet every week. And is this this week's? Yeah, this is this week's. So you should always bring home a prayer sheet with you. If you don't have an official responsibility, you're not a deacon, you're not an elder, you're not a worship leader, that you're not running the sound board or teaching Sunday school or in charge of snacks or any of that stuff. One thing that we always need and that is one of the most important aspects of ministry is the ministry of prayer. So you take home your prayer sheet, you pray for it personally, you pray for it as a couple, pray for it as a family. That is a wonderful way to be serving the saints and God works through prayer. Prayer is not wasted time. Prayer is very powerful. And secondly, we have our ministry rotation. This is an old one, this is not the current one. And on the ministry rotation, you've got the worship leader, the prayer leader, the scripture reader, the special music, the nursery, the brunch, the after service, child watch, basically all the different things that need to be done on a weekly basis. divided up among different groups of people. And so then we put it on a rotation. We've recently added another worship leader to our rotation. Graham Knobby is going to be taking over the second Sunday of the month as worship leader, and that's great. That gives me the ability to focus on other things on Sunday morning and not be quite so overwhelmed. I love worship leading, but we've got to get other people involved. And the prayer leader, again, this is a man's role, and you see mostly it's elders that are the prayer leaders on our list, but it doesn't have to be an elder. And if you would like to be a prayer leader, if you're the type of person who does take home the prayer list and pray regularly for the congregation, then you might be someone who should be a public leader. But you shouldn't be a public leader in prayer if you're not a private prayer. That's something Jesus warned us about. And so, I've got some great prayer leaders in the church, and if you're interested in prayer leading, I do have handouts also as a prayer leader guide. And in fact, doesn't hurt, pass those around. The prayer leader guide. You might find this encouraging and helpful, whether you're officially on the rotation or not. Scripture reader, again, doesn't necessarily have to be a man according to the Bible, but we follow the practice of making it a man. And so we like to have the men in the church step up as scripture readers. And so if you would like to do that, talk with one of the elders and we'll consider that and see about putting you on that rotation. And then the special music. Doesn't necessarily have to be music, that's why it just says special. Sometimes people will do a reading or something else for that special time. If you have the gift of exhortation or encouragement, we could slot you into the special and you could have a few minutes on a monthly basis or bimonthly basis to exhort and encourage the congregation. So that's an opportunity. If you are involved with music, then we would love to get you involved with that as well. The nursery rotation. We've got always needs for more ladies for the nursery rotation. We do like ladies to be in that role. Most sexual abuse is done by men, sadly. And so just an added measure of protection. We don't put the men in the nursery. And so if you'd be interested in nursery, that is a great ministry to the moms. And you notice a lot of the moms are doing the ministry. And so you get some of the older ladies to sign up for the nursery also to serve the younger ladies in that way. The brunch, another mostly ladies ministry there. Not that a man couldn't bring brunch if he wanted to, but you see that the ladies have been doing a great job with that. And the after service child watch, that could be either. We got some men, some women on that list. I was doing it for a while, but it's, I can't do everything. So that's why we have ministry rotations. That was great to see people step up for that. And I think that's an area we need to shore up and keep on training and getting even better at the child watch because sometimes people forget. Yeah, so the child watch is that the person basically goes downstairs and outside wherever the children are gathering and playing. And it just keeps an eye on the children so that if anyone gets hurt, there's an adult nearby. If any strangers are around, there's an adult that's watching and making sure that nothing bad happens. Because the parents are often up here fellowshipping, the children go run off, and we want to have at least one adult designated to keep an eye. Especially when it used to be kids would go to the park more, and the adult would go to the park with them. Not necessarily. You know, if they have a group that goes to the park and a group that stays here, then you might have to grab somebody and say, well, I'm going to go to the park. You watch the kids that are here. So that's the ministry rotation. And then also I wanted to talk about Awana. And we do have some of you here that have already jumped into the Awana ministry, and I'm very excited about having some more men, and I do appreciate the women involved with Awana, but seems like with children's ministry, sometimes the women are more involved and the men are kind of absent, so that's why I get excited about having more men. Being a boy myself, having some men who were teachers meant a lot to me, and I think that it's good to have that healthy balance of men and women involved. As far as Iwana goes, I'm the Iwana commander, and that's not what Iwana recommends. Iwana recommends that somebody in the church be the Iwana commander, and we don't have an Iwana commander, and so that's something I've been praying for for quite a while. So if you or someone that you know would be interested in working your way up to Iwana commander, then that's a goal that we can set. I'm not gonna throw you in unprepared, but it would be a great goal to set, and I'd like to pass that on eventually. Mentioned worship leading, deacon ministry, definitely a great place to start. If you're new in the church and you're qualified, maybe not jumping into elder right away, we might want some more time to test you before we put you into that position. But a deacon is a great ministry for a godly man to start building up that reputation of service to the Lord. Also, you can host in your home, and it's a great ministry for couples to do. We have Lord's Night once a month, except for November and December when we have Thanksgiving banquet and Christmas Eve instead. But in most months, we have our Sunday evening fellowship, and you can host that in your home. And you don't have to have a million dollar home in order to be a host. And it's wonderful when we're not self-conscious and thinking, well, are people going to judge me for my house? But instead, we're just graciously using what God has given us to provide a place of fellowship. Another way to be involved with the church that I think is much needed would be in missionary support. We don't have a missions director in the church. We don't have somebody whose job it is to keep communication lines open with the missionaries and to be sending care packages and to be passing on prayer requests and just really keeping that hand on the pulse of our missionaries and being that connection. So if you have a heart for missions and you have some administrative ability, then a missions director would be a position in the church that is open and would be much appreciated. don't think I'm being selfish by bringing this up, but just biblical, giving is an important New Testament ministry. And we have our offering box there in the back of the church that you are able to give in any time, before service, after service, during the week, you can put things in the offering box. You can also give online, that's why I handed that out, if you'd like to make your giving automatic. The downside of giving automatically is that you kind of, don't consciously enjoy the act of giving, but it just happens and you don't even notice. The upside of electronic giving is that you don't forget, and it just happens. So you decide how you want to give and how much you want to give. God loves a cheerful giver, and the scripture does teach that those who are taught the word should share all good things with those who teach, and this church does an excellent job of that. I've never had to ask for giving, and we've never had a giving drive, or I've never had a series on giving, or anything like that. If the passage brings it up as I'm teaching through a book, I'll teach on it, but that's about the only time that you'll hear me talk about giving. And I don't even like to talk about it here, but I had those forms, and I was like, well, I'll pass them out. If you want to use them, you're welcome to do that. All right, so what comes next? You read the bylaws that I've handed out. You read the doctrinal statement, because we didn't cover it all. And you bring those with you to the elder interviews if you have any questions. And please feel free to discuss. Don't feel bad if you have differences of opinion. I do not hold that against you at all. Also bring your personal testimony with you to the elder interview. If you've never written out your personal testimony before, I can send you some guidelines on how to do that. Just send me an email and ask for some help on preparing your personal testimony and I'll get that to you. I've done that before. Personal training testimony was part of what we did to prepare for the evangelism event at Norris this week. So it's been on my mind recently as well. You can share your personal testimony, not only with the elders, but also, if you like, with the congregation when you're voted in as a member. And so if you would like to share your testimony with the congregation, let me know. I'll arrange a time for that. You can either do it on a Sunday morning, or we could do it at a Lord's Night. That is also a great time to be sharing testimonies. And if you've prepared it, and it's great to be able to use it, and it'd be a great encouragement to people at a Lord's Night, or even on a Sunday morning. We'll also ask you if you've been baptized at the meeting with the elders, and that's a New Testament command. We don't believe in baptismal regeneration. We believe you can be saved without being baptized, but we still want people to be baptized because it is an encouraging thing, and it's good for your spiritual growth. And so if you haven't been baptized, we'll encourage you to do that. So yeah, then we'll announce your membership candidacy. We'll vote in February, and then on a Sunday morning, we will recognize you as new members. Any questions about the process? Well, a couple of concluding exhortations, and then I'll let you go. You guys have been great doing this marathon. I will send you a message on Matthew 28, the Great Commission, on how to make more disciples and how to make better disciples. And that's the goal of many churches, the understanding that our goal here is to make disciples. But the devil is in the details, quite literally. And so good intentions have unintended consequences. How exactly do we make more disciples? How exactly do we make better disciples? So that's what that message will be about. And I think it's a good one for new members to listen to. So that's why I'm going to assign you to listen to it. As far as what you should keep in mind, we've talked about a lot of this already, but just a final reminder. Protect the unity of the church. Don't gossip. Put other people first. Follow the leaders. You do that, you'll get a good commendation from the Lord. You don't do that, Christ will not be pleased with you. And so let's protect the unity of the church. It's been so good to have such a united church for so long. I was talking with one of my pastors that I grew up with, grew up at his church. He'd been there for 40 years. I told him, well, you know, 10 years in ministry and we've had great unity. And he said, well, that's the way it was for me. And then I had all kinds of problems after that. So now I've made it to 15 years without any major problems. Well, we'll see when they come. But he assured me that they would come. Be a friend to those who need a friend. You know, when you come to church, be looking out for who the Lord wants you to befriend, because that's really what church is. Church is a family, and you've got to make friends. Don't just come and sit and then leave. I'm not the most friendly person in the world. I'm kind of a loner, kind of an introvert. But I do my best to look around and see who needs a friend and who I can be a friend to and have an open heart to say, okay, that person, I really think God wants me to talk to that person. So even if you're not an extrovert, just be looking around thinking, who does God want me to be friends with? Who can I encourage? Not selfishly as to what I can get out of it, but what I can give. That's very important. I was watching an old movie with my kids last week, Anne of Green Gables. And the old spinster didn't want to adopt Anne because she said we got no use for her. And her brother said, well, I think we could do a lot of good for her. So they adopted her, not because they needed her, but because she needed them. And that's how we should be at church. Be looking around. Who needs you? And who can you serve? And then finally, I'd ask you to give me your feedback, your impressions on the church. It's always great to see the church through new eyes. I've been here a long time. I don't see everything that new eyes see. And so if you see things that could be better, don't be afraid to suggest it to me. I won't be offended. A lot that's in the church is not my doing to begin with. I've been here 15 years, so a lot of it is. But a lot of it was already here before me and things that I'm fine with. If you have some suggestions on how they can be better, don't be shy. You have wisdom, and I want to hear your wisdom. So are there things that are odd to you? Things that are like, well, why do they do that? Just let us know. How can we minister to you and your family better? All right. That's everything I think that I wanted to share with you today. We got done in less than three hours. That was unusual.