Amen. Thank you for singing. That will likely be the last time we sing that this month. You are welcome. Thank you for bearing with me. All right. All right. Let's read Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter 1 and our purpose this afternoon is to provide you with a end of year update to generally go through many of the things that we've done and what the Lord has helped us to accomplish, and to allow that to sort of set the standard and the tone for what we're gonna do in the coming year and what we hope to accomplish in the coming year. It's good to have, as our first end of year update, I'm starting this in a thread in my note-taking system that will allow me to refer back to it yearly and see what we've done and where we're going, and hopefully, Lord willing, be able to improve year by year. Let's start by reading verse, we'll read verses 15 through 23, verse 15. Wherefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe. According to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head, the head, over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness. Pray you'd help me this afternoon as I try and provide this report to your people who have been faithful, who through ups and downs and hard times and good times this past year have remained and stayed and show no signs of wavering. I pray that you'd bless them. I thank you for their courage. Thank you for their dedication. And pray, God, that you'd help them this coming year to see the fruit of all their work and all their labor. It sure would be a tremendous blessing. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Now, just over one year ago, our small family with young children set out to move to Lousdale, Mississippi. I'd never heard of Lousdale. I'd never been to Lousdale. This was all new to us. It was almost, I believe it was almost harder to move here from Africa than it was to move from the U.S. to Africa. mentally and, you know, just trying to think it through and get an understanding of what you're doing and where you're going and what's going to happen. Are the people going to receive you? Are they going to do like so many other churches? You know of a brother who started pastoring the same month I did just an hour west of here. And in three months that church had kicked him out. as their pastor and we're looking for somebody else in a very short period of time. You just don't know how these things are gonna go. When it comes to taking over a church and trying to rebuild a church, it is not an easy task. It appears from the outside easier to rebuild an existing church than it is to start from scratch and just build one. I don't know that that's the case. Maybe it is. I haven't had to build a church from scratch. I've had the liberty in Uganda. In Florida, we worked with an existing church. In Uganda, we worked with an existing ministry and got to be a part of that. And here, this church is already in existence, though it was down to six people. So I don't know. I don't know if it'd be easier to just start from scratch and build a church from the ground up. I don't think there's a cookie cutter answer to that or a direct answer to that. Sometimes it might be, sometimes it might not be, which is not the answer anybody wants to hear. They want something definitive. Which one is better? Well, yes. Is that one better or that one better? Yes, just depends. It's never easy, and so that's where we are. It was costly, long, difficult, but exciting. The past year has been no less exciting. We have had the opportunity to get settled in Losedale and make this place our home. From this point forward, we have no plans of going anywhere. especially when we bought a house. So I hope no one has any plans on us leaving. But our goal here, the only reason we are here, is for a church. And if there is no church here, there is no reason for us to be here. So that's the reason for this meeting this afternoon. That's the reason that we are in this town or in this city. We love Lewisdale. We'd love to stay here the rest of our lives and raise our families here. That is all entirely upon the idea, the premise, that there will be a Bible-believing church here that we can be a part of, preferably with me pastoring. But I don't have to pastor. If God builds this church and we get to have a thriving church here, that'll be a dream come true for me. But if it doesn't work out and it doesn't happen and I have to go sit in a church somewhere, then that's better than That's better than having my family suffer through trying to build something that just doesn't exist. I know this is not an exciting start to the update. We'll get to the other stuff in just a minute. Just bear with me. More importantly, we've had the opportunity to settle into Go Forth Baptist Church, and we love this church. It is our desire to build this church into a thriving Bible-believing church with a focus on biblical quality. We can make a lot of changes that would, I have no doubt, that would cause people to start flooding in those doors rapidly. I'm not willing to do that. It will be a detriment to the quality. It will not be good for this church long term. It will reproduce what the church has already had. This church got up to 60 plus people on a Sunday there for a while and trouble was brewing. And as soon as that trouble was called out, it fractured the whole thing because there was not a strong spiritual foundation. And you say, well, how do you know that? Well, when there's a strong spiritual foundation, that type of fracture doesn't happen. So when people have to be confronted for the sin in their life and you're in a church that has a strong spiritual foundation and a strong biblical foundation, the people of that congregation are going to hold true to the Word of God. They're not going to fracture and then form posses and then break up the church and leave and take them all with them. That's unfortunately what happened. I've had the privilege of talking to many of the people involved in some of those things and getting their side of the story and that's just... This church never got to grow to spiritual maturity. And because of that, it has been broken up and fractured over time. And we want to try and stop that. The Word of God will prevent that. And so that's why we place such an emphasis on going line by line, verse by verse, through God's Word, and doing things accordingly. And so that's how we're going to move forward. Our focus is quality, not quantity. Now, it's nice to have the quantity. There's a feeling of, okay, it feels like we're doing something when we see the quantity. but it's not worth sacrificing the quality to get the quantity. Over time, the quantity will come if you will remain focused on the quality, but that is a slow, slow, it's a slow but sure road, but it is slow. It is not gonna come quickly. I hoped it would. I thought coming back that people would hear that there's a pastor back in town in this church and that some of the people would come back and we'd have a decent group to work with, and initially we did. We were up to 25 people there for a short while, and then it went back down to about 6 to 10 pretty quickly. So that's just how it is. It's just where we are. I was hoping this would turn around sooner, but it's just not going to happen. And as we go through the detail, the notes that I have here, I think it'll help you possibly understand why. The start, we already talked about the lack of spiritual foundation, the inability of the church to really properly get going without being destroyed. You know, not long after the church got started, we ran right into, you ran into Two families in the church having problems, whatever those were, those are before me, so we're not gonna hash them out here. And then, along with that, not long after that or during that, COVID-19. And so, just as this church is really trying to get up and going, it just gets hit with all of that at the same time. That's a heavy load for a young church, and it did not survive. Now, a few people remained and loved the place so much that they were willing to put their all into it and keep these doors open and keep somebody preaching, which is a blessing. But, with God's help, we'll see where it goes from here. Now, as we talked about, the church had, you know, struggled to really get going in its younger years. And it turns out, many of the people who left were angered over previous issues, some valid, some invalid. Some have moved to other churches, and many just went home and stayed home. They don't go to any church. Some go to other churches, and for whatever reason, again, I have no idea why, they despise this church. You run into them in town, and they told Ms. Susan, if you want a real church, you come to our church. I was like, well, OK. If people like you are there with your attitude, then there's a good chance I'm not coming. But look, whatever their beef is, whatever their argument is, whatever their problem is, they haven't brought it to me so that we can address it. So there's nothing I can do about it. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it was. I don't know if it's valid. I don't know if it's invalid. There are obviously people in this town who are frustrated with some things that happened in this church with certain people in this church. I don't know what it is. Now, it's not, as far as I have been able to determine, nothing has been bad enough that we need to change the name of the church or move locations or anything of that sort. So these people are just going to have to either get over it or move on or do what they've been doing. They're going somewhere else. Why say something like that to someone you don't know? That means bitterness is deeply embedded in that person's heart. And we're not going to have any part in that. We're not going to treat others that way. You go to another church, praise the Lord, happy for you. Move on. We're not going to cause problems for people of that sort. Now it is our primary responsibility to reach out to Lewisdale and George County. That's the primary responsibility. Then beyond that, America and then the uttermost parts of the world. And we did that in large part in a big way this past year. And we're gonna plan to continue to do it in 2025. We wanna do it again and again and again and again and again and again, over and over and over. Now there are certain details I wanna review with you this afternoon. Number one, I guess the most pressing detail, the church loan, this thorn in my side. When we arrived in November of 2023, the church loan was just under $60,000 that they owed. It was about $58,000, $59,000, somewhere around there. Today, the church loan is just over $48,000. In one year, we paid down $10,000, which is pretty good. While, I mean, that is a great accomplishment and not to be, with the small group that we have had, that's pretty good. That's great that we were able to do that in such a short amount of time in a one-year period to knock out $10,000 of that loan. But we have a serious problem and we have a short amount of time to address this problem. Now, I did not take out this loan. I inherited this loan, as did probably most of you, if not all of you. I don't know that anybody here had any part in helping to obtain this loan. It was not the wisest decision. This is what happens when there's not a pastor in place who is concerned about the longevity and future of the church, rather just people trying to plug holes instead of, no, how are we gonna take care of this church long-term, not how can I just pass the buck for a few years to somebody else? I wish that had not been done, but it's done. There's nothing we can do about it. If I want to pastor this church, I have to resolve this. It falls on my shoulders now to make sure this is taken care of and we've got to figure it out. This debt has to be taken care of in an honorable fashion. Otherwise, it will harm the name of Jesus Christ in our community and will be counted among the many churches who go and take out a bunch of debt and then don't pay it back. And we're not doing that. That is not an option. The problem is that the loan that the previous men of the church signed up for was a five-year business loan. The terms of this loan would allow the debtor, go forth, to pay a minimum balance for the life of the loan. Why would you do that? So the minimum balance at the end of the five years does not cover the cost of the loan. In May, the loan does not balloon, the loan is due in full. In full. Which is going to be somewhere between $42,000 and $45,000 by May. Yeah. May 2025. Yes. So as you can imagine, this is weighing heavy on my mind. Therefore, for the life of the loan, Goforth paid the minimum balance of $570 some odd dollars, give or take a few, to the bank, and in May, the remaining balance will be due in full. At that time, the amount due will likely be around $42,000 to $45,000. Unless God sends us a big check, we don't have $42,000 to $45,000, and we'll not have it by then. So, I've already made phone calls and spoken to pastors and business people about the best way forward. First, we need to pray that God will just bring in the money and we don't have to worry about it, which could very easily happen. It's not outside of God's ability. If He wants to resolve it that way, then it's very possible. But if you don't pray with us that this happens, then it's certainly not possible. But if we'll bring it to God and pour our hearts out, it's very possible that that could happen and would be a tremendous blessing. We got a lot accomplished with a small group of people and while paying this loan. Imagine what we could do if we didn't have to have that extra $600 a month going In fact, several months, we didn't pay $570, we paid $1,600. So I got here in November. November and December, the church was giving me, or trying to give me as best they could, $1,000 a month to be the pastor. Well, starting January, I redirected that money to pay the loan, so for several months we paid $1,600 on the loan, rather than just $571, until the church got too... until several people got mad and left, and so we reduced it back to just paying the minimum balance. I did not know at that time paying the $571 a month would not cover the full balance by the end of the term. If I had known that, we probably would have handled things a bit more drastically. Now, number two, we will likely have to refinance the remaining balance to make sure we cover the obligation to the bank. The loan we will seek out this time will be a mortgage on the property. It will not be a five-year business loan. That was a ridiculous idea. I'm not sure why they would do that, but it It's done, it's over. This will allow us to extend the payment period for a longer length of time, which will reduce our monthly financial burden and also allow us the liberty to pay the loan off in a timely manner. I've spoken with Nikki Merritt, she was our realtor who helped us buy our house. Sometime after the holidays, she's gonna come by and do a market analysis on the property so we can get a general idea of what the property is worth. and that'll help us shop for loans. When we have that info, I can start approaching banks about refinancing the debt that we owe. Now, my father-in-law, he's been here a couple of times. Some of you have met him. He's an expert in these things. It's what he does for a living. And he does church finances and does them extremely well. So he is also looking to see what options we might have in terms of a mortgage on the property. NCLL is also going to be doing a search on our tax ID just to make sure. Now we've done a search on the property. There are no liens against the property other than the one business loan that we have. So that's it. There's nothing else. The property was clear. My father-in-law suggested to me, and I didn't even think about, but we also need to do a search on the tax ID to confirm there are no liens or debts against the tax ID that someone may have used to, you know, to do whatever. So NCLL is going to do that. Right now, everything's just at a standstill because it's the holidays, which frustrates me because I want to get stuff done. But it is what it is. People, you know, anyways, we won't get into that. He's looking to help. My father-in-law is looking to help see what's available that we could use, which would be a blessing to see what he could find and come up with. He knows what he's talking about and what he's doing with those things. And then, There is a church has offered to help, but they made this offer before and nothing ever came of it, so I don't want to... First of all, they have no obligation to help us with this loan. It's not their responsibility, not their problem. But the pastor of that church has said that he and his board might be interested in helping. No, there's no strings attached. Now, help could be they give us a loan and we pay it back, or help could be that they pay it off. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what they have available to them. I don't know what they're thinking. I can't make you any promises or really tell you what it is that they could or would or intend to do. He has just indicated that they would like to help and that he would let me know sometime soon. He was thankful that I called him, not to ask him to pay off our loan, but this church has dealt with large amounts of debt on church properties and things of that sort. And so I wanted to get his perspective having dealt with that. And then he made this offer, the pastor made this offer, and it would be a tremendous blessing. you know, but if they do, wonderful. If they don't, that's okay. It's not their responsibility. It's ours. So pray about that. We'll see how it goes. So I've approached NCLL as well to not only do a search on the tax ID, but also to see if they have any relationships with lenders or banks or anything of that sort that specifically work with churches, and then we may possibly be able to get into a better business situation with an organization that's more in tune with what we do. So the goal ultimately is to get rid of the debt, period. But right now we're going to have to find a way to extend this so that We don't end up being put in a hard situation of being forced to pay $40,000 up front, which we cannot do, genuinely. We just don't have the ability to do it. So I have until May to work this out, and I need to have a solution in place at a minimum by April. So please pray about this. First, pray God will just pay it off and we can be done with it and don't even have to worry about it. Second, if the Lord didn't want to do it that way, pray that I can find a suitable situation that will help us to maintain what we've been doing and also honorably take care of the debt that, for some reason, our church is in. Now with that, our finances. Our finances have been steady and even steadily increasing. Again, it's a small group. We took a big hit when people got mad and left over the sign. That's okay. If they would get mad and leave over something like that, they don't need to be here. They're shallow. It's childish. And if the sign didn't do it, something else would, and that's just not what we're looking for. Either you can get behind what we're doing here as a church, or the best thing to do is what they did. They quietly left. They didn't cause any problems or anything of that sort. That's fine. But with the group that we have, the small group of people for now, and as long as we keep our expenses low, especially if we get to refinance that loan or pay off that loan, financially we're actually in a pretty good spot. As soon as I got here, I had the church open two savings accounts, One is a missions account, the other is a savings account. So we have a checking account, missions account, and savings account. 20% of all the money that you give goes into missions. 10% of that money goes into savings. And our missions and savings account have steadily increased over time. They're not reducing. Now, obviously, when we put money out, when people come and visit or, you know, we have a missionary come in or a guest preacher, then it reduces, but generally over time, they are steadily increasing, all right? And so we're doing okay financially. We're not where I would like us to be, and obviously if we can get rid of the $600 a month debt, that would greatly help. And of course, as the church grows, assuming it grows with people who give, I have no doubt, I have no doubt. Then that will help as well. For now, we're maintaining our finances well and our emissions savings accounts are growing slowly and surely. That's all good signs. That means Lord willing, it's all uphill from here. So that's a great start. And here's what's encouraging is, um, you know, today with the people who attend loosely, there would probably be, I don't know, 12 to 15 people in this room if they had all come somewhere around there, but literally only about five or six, four or five give and show up to what we're doing. And so, With that small number of people and with what we have been able to accomplish, that's pretty incredible. We haven't even got to all that stuff yet. So a steady state of finances, $10,000 on the debt, plus all the other things that we're about to talk about, all good and positive things. For what we have, the people that we have, this is incredible. As it grows, hopefully with faithful people, we'll really be able to accomplish a lot. If I had 20 people like the four or five who faithfully come and are involved in everything, I feel like we could turn the whole state upside down in no time, which would be tremendous. So right now, we just gotta stay faithful to keep doing what we're doing. Let the Lord bless us as He sees fit. So it's going well. Could be better, obviously, but it's going well. For now, there will be no changes to paying the pastor. We're not in any position to do so, and the Lord has blessed me with a great job. And a few other churches also continue to support us financially, so we have... My family's finances are perfectly fine. We don't have any issues right now. in a good position. No changes to that. It is a church's responsibility to support their pastor financially insofar as they're able to do so. And if they're not able to do so, then like the Apostle Paul, the pastor should get a job and work. So that's what we're doing. And the day will come right now. I have no doubt, but it encourages me to have all the participation we have. I would much rather have the participation that we have from the small group that we have than money. If I had the money but people who didn't want to participate, that is not an even trade-off. I have been working to restructure our church from a legal standpoint. I'll be talking with Ms. Pat and Ms. Phyllis about that, and then after speaking with them, we will make the new information available to the entire church, to everybody who needs to know, or maybe even some who want to know. Maybe. So well, I'll get back with you on that in the coming weeks that all that should all be be complete and ready and finished so Look forward to that in February something else that I have to work on in February our Insurance is due and it went up by about $600. So it's going to be about $2,200 for our our insurance. I'm going to try and find a suitable, less expensive replacement if possible. If not, then we just got to be ready to pay that bill when it comes. So then that means by May, we need about $47,000 rather than $2,200 in February and then $4,200 to $4,500 in May. So there's a lot coming up. We just, you know, Your giving is up to you. Your responsibility is my responsibility to give to the church, to give financially, but it's between you and God. If God wants to support this work, it will happen despite you, or it will happen with you. It's entirely up to you. And so I leave that in your hands. I don't look at who gives, I don't know what you give, I don't know why you give, how you give. I don't even like giving my initials to help count whatever came in that day because I just, I don't want any part of it. But sometimes I have to, it is what it is. But overall, I don't know what you give to the church, but it is everybody's responsibility to give but it's between you and God what you give. It's not up to me. It's up to me to batter you or to push you or to fight with you over it. I believe if we will faithfully evangelize and faithfully preach God's word, that God himself will support this church. And that's what we want and that's what we need. Now, growth expectations. I've tried to think this through in light of our rapid influx of people, then sudden disappearance. We came expecting six people. Our first service had 18. From there, we got up to anywhere between 15 to 25 on a Sunday morning. Even the Bible school classes we were having on Monday nights, we had as many people for a while on Monday nights as we had on a Sunday morning. It was great. But here's the problem. And again, I don't know those people. I don't know their motivations. They haven't spoken to me. Only one, out of all the people that left, only one came to me and talked to me face to face and attempted to inform me of why they were leaving. The rest just disappeared. And I don't think a fundamental Bible-believing church is what they're looking for. Once they found something that they thought was an excuse to help them get out the door, they took it and they left. That's fine. They didn't cause any problems. They didn't damage the church. I haven't heard of them bashing us or talking bad about us. Maybe they said a few things to a few people, but they're not on Facebook spreading lies about us or tearing the church down or anything of that sort. It just, it is what it is. So we got up to 25 people fast. I really thought, okay, you know, this is going to go really well. Then we were back down to, I mean, some Sundays we had Miss Pat, Miss Phyllis, and my family here. And that's fine. I told those two, as long as they come faithfully, then I'll stay here and preach until we have to close the doors. It is what it is. We'll put our all into it until that day comes. Though I believed within six months of being here that we would have a goodly number of people, I really thought that. I thought that was possible. And even though every man I know who has taken over another church, spent between two and five years cleaning up messes, fighting with church members, and trying to rebuild that church before they finally got to a stable position where there was a stable core group of people who came faithfully, it seemed like we were going to escape that period of growth or lack of growth. But we're not. It's just how it is. And that's okay. It looked like we were going to kind of slip by all that and we were going to be the rare instance of people who got to take over an existing church and didn't have any trouble. And then it came. So it is what it is. Now we have what I believe is a strong foundation of a small number of people. I believe we have a strong quality of people right now to help build upon. That is, for me, that is great. I don't have a bunch of people that I'm fighting with every week. What are they gonna do this week? What are they gonna say this week? What, you know, are they gonna try to, I know brothers that every week that men in the church are trying to kick them out. They just, you just brought the men to be your pastor and then every week they're trying to kick you out as the pastor. And we don't have any of that. We've really got it great. We just, I would like to see more people here. That'd be nice. But that's just not how it is right now. That will come in time. Let me see where I am. So I have studied several Bible-believing churches. A few in particular come to mind. And these churches are, I believe, two of the greatest churches in existence right now. I mean, incredible works of God in existence right now. One of which I just learned last year. We were a part of this church's missions conference for a couple years in a row when they broke $1 million in giving to missions, only to missions. Then it went to 1.2 million. Last year, they gave $2.3 million only in missions, specifically to missionaries to be on the mission field. That is unbelievable. And that church is in a town smaller than Lousedale, far more obscure than Lousedale, and way more off the beaten path than Lousedale. It's very hard to get to. There's really not a highway. We've got 98 going through here and a few other. You've got 26 and 63. You've got all these highways coming straight through Lousedale and around Lousedale. They have nothing. And yet that church is pushing 300 plus people now and giving $2.3 million to missions. Just to missions while paying cash to build a new building. All right, so all this is possible, but here's the caveat, and I guess this is where we need to adjust our thinking. The two churches I'm thinking of, one I know for certain, the other one I'm not sure if the pastor worked full-time in the beginning or not. The other one, the pastor worked full-time for nine years before the church came to him and said, we want you to quit your job and just pastor full-time. And for a huge amount of that time, they were meeting in a women's club. club, a women's club, renting a room in the women's club, and they would just meet there for church. So, on top of that, both of the men who are pastoring those two churches are far more talented than I am in many ways. So, Our expectation should be a minimum of 10 years before this church is really moving in a solid direction if our focus is on quality and not quantity. That's just how it's going to be. And I'm okay with that. Are you okay with that? God can do all sorts of things. And if we'll put in the work, I have no doubt, the Bible says there is profit in all labor. So if you put in the work, there will be profit. But to get to the point that I want to see, which is a thriving Bible-believing church in this, right here, in this spot, that's giving, you know, a minimum of hundreds, you know, half a million dollars to missions, but preferably far more. We're talking 10, 15, 20 years down the road. Now, again, I'm okay with that. But will you become weary and tired with that? That's what you have to think about, and will it wear you out? Because that means you're doing the work along with us. I know. There's enough preservatives in Burger King's food that it'll be all right, I guess. So we eat that food to help pre-embalm our bodies. It's already done by the time it gets there. Now, the one church that's giving $2.3 million a year, when they started, they bought a building that had holes in the floor and had church with holes in the floor. And then just over time... built upon it. The other one, I told you, was renting a room. And then when they finally bought a church building, the people who were selling it, the church had folded, they were in a lot of trouble, and they approached this church about buying it, and they wanted an insane amount of money. And when the pastor who was renting a room in the women's club, ladies, whatever it is, offered them a tiny fraction of what they were wanting, he laughed in his face and then called him back months later and said, I'll take it. You never know what God's going to do. We have a great building. We have a great property. It needs to be cleaned up, needs some work, and we'll do that over time. But we're really starting, I believe, with a great group, core group of people, a great property, a great building, in a great location, in a great town. That's all good news to me. And so we just need to make sure we're being faithful to take full advantage of it all and to serve God properly and faithfully and let Him give the increase. Now, here's a slight negative on or one of my concerns about building a church in Lewisdale. When we get to the sermon audio section of this update, we'll talk about numbers, and that'll give you more of a clear perspective. We love Lewisdale. It is a great town, it really is. Compared to other places we've lived and things that my wife and I have been a part of, this is a unique place. It's a very special place. You may not see that since you grew up here, but coming from the outside in, you've got something very unique and very special here. But I haven't seen a ton of evidence that Lewisdale, George County, or Mississippi is all that interested in a Bible-believing church. And that's where the work is gonna be even harder and where we gotta make sure that our perspective, that we're clear about what is gonna be expected of us and what we should expect in return. Now, that's not to say that we are the only chance or opportunity that people have to be part of a Bible-believing church. There are other good churches in the state of Mississippi. There may even be other good churches around here. I believe Brother Justin Bogart is a, Jacob Bogard. I don't know why my wife made me say Justin. Brother Jacob Bogard, I believe, that's a good church. He's a good brother. But you go to that church and you'll see that it's small. It's very young. They have a lot of young people, a lot of children, and so that means that church has a bright future, but it is small. And that's after him pastoring for 12 years. So we just have to make sure that we keep our expectation in check so that we don't get frustrated when we don't get the results that we want, but as long as God is giving the increase and we are getting results, then we need to stay busy and keep working and do what the Lord wants us to do. The growth of this church is going to be slow and steady. It is not going to be fast and booming. The day may come when it is booming and this room is just packed out, praise the Lord, but I'm certain that's probably gonna be down the road a good ways. Now again, I'm okay with that. I just wanna make sure that you understand that and that you're okay with that. After this first year and seeing all that we were able to do, I think that's just how it's going to be. Now, we're in the holidays and nobody's looking for a church during the holidays. Nobody's moving around thinking, what church am I gonna go to this Sunday? It's just not happening. They're traveling, seeing friends, taking time off from work, hiding away, doing that kind of thing. I am hopeful that all the work we've done the past three to four months will bear fruit in January, February, and into the spring of next year, and I think it will, and we're going to keep doing it. So I would not, even on Sermon Audio, in October, and we'll talk about Sermon Audio in a minute, and it'll help give you a picture of what I'm seeing in terms of numbers. On Sermon Audio, in October, we had more than 5,000 people listen to the sermons. Leading up to October, we were averaging between 1,000 and 2,000 per month. In October, there was 5,000. In November, there was about 2,300. In December to date, there's not even 700. It's the holidays, and nobody's listening to sermons, nobody cares about church. You know, it's Christmas. Well, the problem is it's not the birth of Christ. It has nothing to do with the birth of Christ, and yeah, it's supposed to be. Ideally, if you go by their own mentality, that's what this is supposed to be, and yet, the interest in Jesus couldn't be any less. It's pretty amazing. So, anyways, with that, the growth of this church is going to be slow, and this area, Mississippi in general, and this area in particular, is not showing a ton of evidence of, hey, I'm so excited there's a Bible-believing church in town now. It's just, I'm not seeing that. Now that doesn't mean there aren't people here who aren't looking for it and hadn't heard about it yet, and that's why we gotta remain busy and keep faithfully telling people about Jesus. But just to help frame your perspective, this is gonna be, you're gonna fight for every bit of growth that we get, and it's gonna be slow. That's just how it is. And the sooner we can come to terms with that, myself, most importantly, because I want to see this church grow. And it frustrates me. It bothers me when I don't see continued growth. It eats at me. It's my responsibility. But I also have to set a proper perspective so that I'm not being unrealistic. And I think the reality is it's just going to be very slow. Now, tract distribution. This year, with the help of Victory Baptist Press, we were able to distribute right about 19,000 tracts and church invitations. That means that about 7,000 of that you did. 12,000 went out in the form of mailers. The rest we gave out by hand to people, either putting it on their door, mailing it to them, parades and events downtown, standing on street corners, shopping when you're at the register, so you give them one while you're at the register, whatever the case may be. Just us passing them out, we passed out about 7,000 tracks. all together ends up being about, tracts and church invitations end up being about 19,000 that we got out this year. That's pretty incredible. Beside that, we sent out nearly 200 handwritten postcards inviting our neighbors to church. So on top of the 19,000 tracts and church invitations, there are about 200 handwritten postcards that we have sent out and still have more to send out. It'll end up being about 250 when it's all said and done. BESALT estimates that to build a church of about 150 people in a three-year period, give or take a few, you need to make contact with at least 10,000 people per year. We almost doubled that in the first year. So, according to their numbers, if you reach out to at least 10,000 people per year, preaching the gospel and inviting them to church, in a two to three year period, you would end up building a church of about 150 people. That'd be a blessing. That'd be great. If in three years we have a church of 150 people, now I'm not telling you that's going to happen here. And again, you'll see why in just a moment, or why I think that in just a moment. First of all, what we've seen makes me think that. But there's another reason, and you'll see in just a minute as we get to these numbers. So we hit 19,000 last year. This year, I want to try and make it 20,000. So 19,000 last year. This year, I want to try and reach out to 20,000 people. Now, that doesn't count the people who saw your street signs while standing on the street corner and all the people who listened on sermon audio. Again, we'll get to that in just a minute. Mission, Mississippi, the towns and cities we went to, I meant to count the number of cities that we've done. Do you have an idea? Oh, so in the time we've been doing it, we've preached the gospel. That's the next topic, Mission Mississippi. With the implementation of Mission Mississippi, we have been able to preach the gospel in 26 cities so far around Mississippi. So 26 different places got one hour of ministry in their town, you know, within 45 minutes to an hour of ministry in their town, depending on where they are. If it's on a dangerous highway, I usually shorten it a little bit, so we... trying to get my family away from the highway before something stupid happens. But if it's somewhere safe, then we stay the full hour and try to spend some time in the town and pass out tracks and visit the town and talk to some people and all that. And it ends up being a great time. But 26 cities, let me see if I can add that here. We went to 26 different cities, which is a tremendous blessing. That's exciting. Now, that means we've only got 174 more to go. We got about 200 that we're doing, so just under 200. Now, sermon audio. This part's very interesting to me. In the past year, we covered a lot of ground, passing out tracts and doing our physical work and also in God's Word. We preached Romans 1-3, those three chapters, we're nearly finished with chapter 3. Ruth chapters 1-12, that'd be interesting if we found eight extra chapters in Ruth. But we made it to Chapter 2. We're about halfway through Chapter 2. All of Matthew, all of Mark, the first three chapters of Luke, a series on Bible doctrine, and there were several in that series. I mean, we preached for several weeks on that. A class on the Kingdom of Heaven versus the Kingdom of God, and 11 sermons on the Lord's Supper. And all that with a handful of guest preachers in between. That's The book of Romans chapter 1 alone had more than 50 sermons that we preached this year. So that's a lot of ground to cover. If you were here through all that, you got to be exposed to a lot of Bible during that time. It's all Bible-focused, Bible-centric. That's the point. That's the purpose. We don't have programs. I'm not going to give you a book, and let's follow along together in this book. It is my responsibility to open the Word of God and teach you what it says. And if a man can't do that, he should not be standing in the pulpit. It is not reasonable. that I go and find someone else who's done all the work and then come give you their work and then we just follow along together. That man's not the pastor. Now I study several different men and learn from them and use a lot of the information that they taught as it appears to be correct and aligned with the Word of God. I adopt that same information, but it's my job to do that homework and then come back and then teach you what I have learned from God's Word And so that's what we've been able to accomplish in large part this past year. We'll continue this pace as long as the Lord gives me the strength. I work full time, I have a family, and I have to, at a minimum, prepare four sermons. Four sermons a week? Yeah, four. And so the best The way that has worked best for me is to get up at 5 a.m. and on Monday I study for Wednesday. Tuesday I study the next sermon. Tuesday morning from 5 to 8 I start work at 8. So from 5 to 8 I study for the next sermon. And then just throughout the week try to knock them out. And as long as I go to bed at night on time, my wife doesn't keep me up all night playing silly games and stuff. Usually I'm keeping her up, it's usually not her keeping me up. But as long as I get up and do that, I can keep that pace and I enjoy it, I like it. I don't get weary or tired of doing any of this. I enjoy the job that I have. I enjoy pastoring the church. I love my family. I get to work from home. I'm either at home or at church, literally, almost all the time. That's it. I couldn't ask for a better life. My wife and I were spending time with the family the other day, and I was telling her that I don't know that we could have designed a more perfect life than we have right now. The only thing that could be better is a thriving church. Now, the church is doing well. I don't want to discount how well things are going. I would just like to see it going well with a lot more people in here. And, Lord willing, that day will come, but that's just where we are. Now, the number of sermon audio listens in 2024 to date, up to this day, today, since I last checked a few hours ago, In 2024, 21,657 people listened online, which is pretty good. Excuse me, 21,657. Now, if you relate that back to what I said about reaching 10,000 people per year, that means with our track distribution, we reached about 19,000 people. With the sermon audio, we reached another 21,600 people. So, BESALT says if you reach out to 10,000 people a year, you should be able to build a decent-sized church in two to three years. Well, that's what? It's over 40,000 people that we've reached this year. I have no doubt some of them are, yeah. And the churches I was talking about earlier that took them 9 to 10 years to really get up and going, they are the same churches I've told you, if you go there today and you walk around that auditorium and you say, are you from this town? 80% of them will tell you, no, I moved here to come to this church. So over time, I hope more people from around here will come, but the majority of the people who come here will probably be new to Lousdale or they will have heard about what's going on here online and will come here because of that, because they want their family in a church of this sort. But they're not gonna start doing things like that until they know that I'm staying, until they know that this is solid, and they're not gonna move their family here, and then now what? The pastor left, the church fell apart, and it's over. And so until they see that stability, people aren't gonna be willing to move. But we'll see, that's where we gotta stay faithful. So, now here's the concerning part again. We reached 74 countries on Sermon Audio. That's a blessing. We reached 48 states last year on Sermon Audio. That's a blessing. Mississippi, in one year, an entire year, out of 21,657 listens, 150 of them came from Mississippi. which means Mississippi is not interested. Well, here are some more numbers. I appreciate the positive outlook. It is reality, but listen to this. In contrast to that, Ohio, the state of Ohio, you think they know who I am? 4,393 listens in the past year from the state of Ohio. 4,393. Washington State, you know that good conservative Bible-believing state? 2,430 listens in the past year. North Carolina, 1,833. Virginia, 1,561. Oregon. Oregon, 974 the past year, which is a blessing. California. 835. Under California is Texas. 772, then New Mexico 494, then Alabama 332, then Utah, then New York. New York State has 212, Nebraska 202, Pennsylvania 168, Iowa 163, then Mississippi. So Out of 48 states, they're pretty low on the rankings of the number in terms of listens. And some of that is obscured. Some of that, about 2,000 listens, the way Sermon Audio counts them, they just call it USA because they're using, say, a VPN or something to hide where they're listening from. Sermon Audio is not able to determine exactly where they're listening from. Could be possible some of those are from Mississippi? There's no way to know, probably all of them. Everybody in Mississippi's using the VPN. So now what that means is we're trying to build a thriving church in an area where people really aren't concerned about having a church. They go to a church, it's more of a family thing. It's more of a cultural thing. It's more of a country club hangout type thing. They're not really looking for a Bible-believing church that's going to expect things of them, like standing on a street corner or passing out tracks or hanging door hangers. church workday and all those types of things. Now, I believe there are a lot of good young men or men in general in this county who would love to be a part of something like this if they can get their head into it. I think it's many of the men that I've met around here, they're just good old boys who would do anything to help you. And I think if they got settled into something like this, they would find it's probably just what they needed. But they're not here. And so we have to get them here. We've got to pray them in, first of all, and then we've got to go out and do the work. We've been doing the work. I hope we've been doing the praying. If you're not praying, you can work all you want. If you're not relying on God to give the increase, it's not going to go very far. and we've got to rely on God to give the increase. Now, these numbers do not make me feel like Mississippians are all that interested in Bible-believing Christianity. I hope the next few years prove me wrong. Now, the numbers we have, let me find this real fast. Something interesting about the Missions Mississippi numbers we have. Do you remember where Loosdale was on the list? Oh, I don't have it like that. 100? All right, I can do that. Let's see. So there's Poplarville. Oh, Losedale. All right. Now it's number 91. Only the number 90 is Escatawba. Yeah. Yes, Escatawpa. That's that Cajun influence. But Lousdale has a population, in 2024, the population of Lousdale was 3,116. In 2022, the population was 2,988. It's growing rapidly. The census of 2024 showed that Losedale had a population of 3,116. In 2022, it was 2,988. 3.2%. No, a 2% increase. 2% steady growth. Now, most of the cities and towns in Mississippi, most of them, are in a steady state of decline. In the top 200, in the top 190, how many are on here? 195. All right, in the top 195, most of them are in a steady state of decline. Losedale's among the several dozen that are steadily growing. And so what that means is there's gonna be new faces coming in, new people coming into town who are not part of this current circulation of churches who have all known each other for 100 years, who hate each other, love each other, don't know why they go there, but they're just staying because that's just what grandma always did and all that kind of thing. Which means it's gonna be up to us to try and let those people know that we are here. And there's a way to get on the USPS mailing list. I guess I have to figure it out. I don't remember how. But when someone moves into town and changes their address, you can be notified of that, and we could send them a package or something of that sort. There's a way to figure that out. There's a way to learn to know how, you know, that people have moved to town. I just don't remember how to do it. But it's something we should figure out, and that way when a new family comes to town, we can send them a care package or something of that sort, just telling them that we're here and inviting them to church. So if anybody wanted to figure out how to do that, Good, you need something else to do. But if we can figure that out, that would be a blessing and would be another aspect of our ministry that we should take up. So that's where we are. Basically, in 2025, we've got to get our insurance squared away, we've got to get that loan squared away, and then we've got to give out more tracts, pray more, and teach more Bible. It's all part of it. That's the key ingredient to make it all function and work properly. You've got to pray. Amen? Any questions? Concerns? Gripes? If you have gripes, there's a trash can over here. A box, yes. There's a donation box in there. Just write it on there. No, just playing. If you had gripes, I would at least listen before I told you to throw it in the trash can. But we got a lot of work to do. Kristen last night was, not last night, night before last, in the past few nights, one of these nights, she was, we printed out this list of cities that we're preaching the gospel in and she was highlighting them and helping separate them in South, Central, and North and all that so we can try to make sure we're covering everything. But it's been a blessing, it's exciting, it's fun. Our family enjoys it. We try to make the best of it. Not always, but sometimes. Sometimes I have too much to do and we gotta get back. But when I can spare the time, we try and do something with our family and want them to enjoy it and not dread it. Like, great, we gotta go do this again. And I want them to be exciting about it. But it's been wonderful. We are here to stay. I have no plans of going anywhere until the Lord makes it very clear to me that there will not be a thriving church here, then we're not going anywhere. I came here with the intent to be here to raise my children here. So it would help if this worked out so I didn't have to go find another church. Not with the Lord's help. Well, me either. Well, we'll have all that in the future. All that's coming. First we need people in the seats before we start bringing missionaries in and getting their hopes up that we're going to be a part of their ministries. But we will have missionaries in, but at some point we want to have a missions conference. At some point we're going to have a Bible conference, we're going to have a family-focused Bible conference, and we're going to have a missions conference. All that is in the future, but first, we need people here. So, for now, you're stuck with me. Sorry. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your goodness, for your love, for your mercy. Lord, thank you for all that we were able to accomplish with such a small group of people this past year. What that means is that The small group we have is dedicated, is faithful, is wholly given over to service to you. And that sure is a blessing, sure is encouraging. I pray that you bless their efforts, bless their work, and Lord, let them see the direct correlation between their investment, their physical, hard-working investment, and new faces showing up here at the church. Lord, we do pray that this church would grow after a quality sort. While it is nice to see the quantity, it is nice to see new faces flourishing and coming in those doors, it is not worth sacrificing the quality of a Bible-believing church. And so we pray for your help that as we labor, as we do our best to tell people about Jesus Christ, to get the Word of God into their hands, to pray for them, interact with them, talk with them, write cards to them, mail things to them, whatever we can do, Lord, we'll just trust you to give the increase when you see fit. We pray for your help, we pray for wisdom, we pray for encouragement. We pray about this loan, Lord, that you would help us to handle it the best way possible. In my mind, Lord, the best way would be to just have you provide to pay it off. And if you see fit to do so, we sure would thank you for that and praise you for that. But if not, pray that you'd give me wisdom and discernment on the best way forward so that our church can, Lord, our church can faithfully, with longevity, the long-term in mind, move forward and take care of the debts that we are responsible for in this town. And then, Lord, to never get in debt again and never go this route again, we pray for your help, pray for guidance, we pray for wisdom. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.