So we're continuing with our new members class, our introduction to our church this morning. I want to finish up from last week, kind of introducing you to the various aspects and ministries of our church ministry. I think we went through seven or eight last Sunday morning, and I have another 10 this morning. as I brainstormed with someone else about things that I had missed in my original list. So I have 10 more to go through today. And then how I see this progressing is I can think of one more broad topic to cover. And that would be kind of a frequently asked questions kind of discussion next week. So I would really love to hear your input if you've been here for most, if not all of these lessons. This is lesson 10. If you can think of some glaring thing that I missed in going through an introduction to our church, or if you can think of a frequently asked question to address over the next week or two. I don't know if that'll just be a one Sunday morning thing or be a multiple Sunday morning things. I can think of two or three topics to address. You might have some that I haven't thought of. Anyway, I'd love to hear from you about either of those things before we wrap this up and and have it all recorded and done for the future. So, let's seek the Lord together and ask his blessing on our time and our day. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your grace and we thank you for the Lord's house. We pray that you would sanctify to us this day and that you would help us to sanctify it. This is the day which you have made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And so we pray that your word and your promises, our savior, would be the source of our joy, that the joy of the Lord would be our strength, and that you would bless our gatherings, bless the Sunday school hour with the children as well, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so last week, I left off in my list, remember how random this list is. So we went over the school, and we went over the Free Presbyterian Youth Camp, and we went over the men's prayer meetings, the ladies' Bible studies, and the Sunday school offering that we have, and just various random things last Sunday. I thought of three tangential things to the school to bring up. Again, these are some acronyms that we might use around here that you might not know what they mean and what they're all about, so I'm just going to bring people in to know if they haven't been around here for a while. And so, these are more, these should have been discussed when I talked about the school last week, but I wasn't thinking this direction. So, there's three tangential things to the school. First of all, I think you're aware that we operate a homeschool umbrella. And that homeschool umbrella is very busy. Christy Smith and our congregation leads that umbrella. employed part-time by a homeschool curriculum as a curriculum coach, and she's very, very good at what she does and at counseling homeschool families. And so she leads our umbrella. I think there are over 70 students in that umbrella, so you add those to the 560 that are here, and you just see the broad footprint and the many, many young people they're being ministered to by our church. And so, just to let you know that there is a homeschool umbrella. I believe, I forget how the rules work, but it's either Maryland or Pennsylvania that has requirements about a family being attached to an organization like that for oversight and for coming together at least once a year for a curriculum evaluation. So, it serves a legal purpose as well for families. Another tangential thing to the school is the Harford Christian Educational Foundation, so HCEF, one of those alphabet soup things that we often talk about around here. So the Harford Christian Educational Foundation is basically an endowment for the school. And so they oversee an endowment. Everything that is given to the foundation is invested and that principle cannot be touched for perpetuity. Only the interest from that endowment can be used. And so the foundation has a board of directors that discuss a annual grant to the school. It used to be in the days when we were you know, underwater budgetarily, that that grant would go toward the budgetary costs of the school to help us stay afloat. These days, all of those grants are going to the new school building for the last several years. And so, that foundation is, you know, one of those things that goes on behind the scenes, tangentially attached to the school, that's HCEF. And then another acronym is the Maryland Association of Christian Schools. We call it MACS, M-A-C-S, MACS. And our church ministry has had a longstanding history of leadership in the Maryland Association of Christian Schools. I'm our founding pastor. was one of the principal founders of that organization and leading, like I talked about in our history lesson of our church, leading a lot of those early battles in the Christian school movement in Maryland. Right now, Brian Wilson, our administrator, is the president of the Maryland Association of Christian Schools. John McKnight is also a board member of that organization. Shane Burge takes part in it as well. I think he's the treasurer or at least does the bookkeeping for it, unofficially or officially, I'm not sure. But so leadership here has a big part of leadership, the Maryland Association. That Maryland Association is part of the American Association of Christian Schools that represents hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christian schools throughout the United States and is the way that our school is accredited. So our school has accreditation through the Maryland Association of Christian Schools and the American Association of Christian Schools. It's a body of accreditors that are like-minded that just come together and evaluate everyone else, each other's schools, so you're not under the thumb of secularists that are coming in to talk about your curriculum. We evaluate each other and keep each other accountable that way. And so that's one of the functions of the Maryland Association. We just on Friday hosted the Maryland Association of Christian Schools Fine Arts Competition for high school. There was a busy, busy day here on campus with many schools, hundreds and hundreds of people here. And that day went very well, very smoothly. But we were here until 4, 4.30 or so with an award ceremony at the end of the day. So from 8 in the morning, I'm sure people were here much earlier than 8 setting up and getting ready until 4. So it's a good day. But that's one of the things the Maryland Association does. And then we also have our annual Annapolis Day where we meet with legislators and talk to them about our freedoms that we enjoy and ask them to protect us. So those are the three tangential things that I should have covered last week. The homeschool umbrella, HCEF, and and MACS, M-A-C-S, the Maryland Association of Christian Schools. All right, other things that I had last week that we didn't get to, our summer day camp ministry. All through the summer, our church and school operate a series of summer camps. There are seven of these summer day camps, and most of them are under the auspices of the Christian school. Things like basketball camp and volleyball camp and STEM camp and chess camp. and fine arts camp. So those are under the auspices of the school, basically, and a staff from the school run those camps and are remunerated for running those camps. Our church is the one who runs what we call Bible camp. And Bible camp is just the way that our church ministry does what other people would call vacation Bible school. So if you're familiar with VBS, we just call it Bible camp in order to make it fit into the scheme of the basketball camp. Volleyball camp, Bible camp, and the way, and I tried, I led the Bible camp for 18 years or so, and I tried to really harness those other camps in explaining what Bible camp is. So I would tell the kids first thing on Monday morning, all right, so if you go to basketball camp, what do you expect to be doing the entire time? If you go to volleyball camp, what do you expect to be doing the entire time? All right, well, here is Bible camp, so what are we gonna do the entire time? Right, so our philosophy really was to get as much scripture into those kids as humanly possible in 15 hours that we have them through the week, Monday through Friday, nine to 12. And the fun aspects of things that you normally think of with a camp and the games and the silly songs and everything were just, minimal enough to give them a mental break and then back to scriptures. So we memorize scripture, we do Bible quizzing tournament, we teach them hymns and psalms, and we really try to harness that. that whole camping paradigm with the other camps and then just apply it to Bible camp. So we have close to 200 kids these days coming to Bible camp. That's usually the second week in July. It's now led by Wesley Peters and Miles Carper. and it's one of those all-hands-on-deck kind of things for the church ministry. Any of you that are available to help in Bible Camp the second week of July, I know that Wesley and Miles would love to have your help. The more adults helping as possible is great. It used to be in the old days when I did this that it was all just me and a bunch of teenagers that ran it, And I would have a couple adults, I remember Mr. Dave DeVos helped me several years and it was so good to have another adult, another man with me helping. And so it's one of those things, it's all hands on deck. Last year we actually ran short on helpers and we had to put out a desperation plea to the school staff to see if any of the teachers would come back and help us for that week and a few of them graciously did and we were so thankful for it. I'd love to see that week be really supported by the church ministry. So when those announcements come in July, if you're available, it's not one of those things where, you know, you think about a camp and you have to be like in physical shape or whatever to be able to do this. It's not really like that at all. It's listening to verses and basic supervision of kids. There's enough youthful energy in the two directors and in the teenagers of the church that they can accomplish all the things you think about with, you know, counseling at a camp. The adults can be along for the ride and really be a help, but they don't have to necessarily be running around with the kids and getting sweaty and everything. So anyway, those camps are remarkably, remarkably popular. I mean, it's to the point where, I mean, you saw my email, was it last week, early last week, and what had happened. We had an open house coming up. on Saturday, last Saturday, and so our web designer, you know, got the page ready for registration for summer camps, and we didn't put out any emails, we didn't put anything on the front page of the website, we kept it all quiet because we wanted to tell the congregation first. that, hey, camps are gonna be open, so register, and then make an announcement to the public. And some mom in the community was fishing through the website, found the page that had been created but was unannounced, put it on social media, hey, Hartford Christian School is, their camps are open. And Fine Arts Camp filled up in two days. Two days. So I sent that email on a Monday morning. By Wednesday night, church, it was full. There was no more spots. And so it's been full, you know, for a week and a half now already. And so, and soccer camp only has like 10 slots left. And Bible camp we don't have a max on, so they can, you know, we can pick as many as will come. It's an outdoor event, so we don't have the, you know, the capacity restraints of other camps. But anyway, remarkably popular in our community. And it's, God be praised for that ministry opportunity. All right, something else random. Our relationship with the Upper Darby Church and Mark and Michelle Leffert, Upper Darby Church, the name there is the Free Grace Missionary Bible Church. Mark and Michelle were members here starting in 2010, worshipped with us for seven or eight years, went out from us to plant a church in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. which is kind of a daughter church to our church ministry. There are no official ties between us. There's no financial ties at all. There's no financial dependence of that ministry on our ministry. But Mark and Pastor McKnight and I do meet on a semi-regular basis just for accountability and for counsel and for help. And of course we pray for them. and support them. So, you know, when you hear anything talked about with the Upper Derby Church, that's kind of the loose relationship that we have with the Lefferts and with the church up there. It's about an hour and a half away. Mark's service up there is at 2.30 in the afternoon on the Lord's Day. That's because they rent a facility from another church, so that's when it's open. And there was also, in the beginning, the idea that a 2.30 service there makes it possible that you can still be at both services here and make that service. Makes for a real busy Sunday. But that is something to remind you of, a way that you can be an encouragement, or a way that you can minister on a Lord's Day. Obviously, that's not the kind of thing you do every Lord's Day, but maybe once or twice a year, if you wanted to You can leave the service here, pack a lunch, you can get to Upper Derby in time for the service there, be an encouragement to the little group that gathers in Upper Derby, it's 20 or 30 people, encouragement to the Lefferts, the service ends, you come back here in time for the evening service, it is possible to do that. And I do think I want to arrange maybe a church van one of these days in the spring and try to get a group of us up there just to be an encouragement to the church up there in Upper Darby. So that's the relationship as it is with the church up there, if you hear about the Upper Darby Church. You have an insert in your bulletin today about the American Council of Christian Churches, and so that's one of those acronyms that you sometimes hear, the ACCC, American Council of Christian Churches, and you see the insert about the spring rally that's being held in Ohio in a few weeks. that Jonathan Peters will be doing a breakout session for. And so the American Council of Christian Churches is a group of churches, an interdenominational fellowship of churches that stands for the truth of historic fundamentalism and separation from false teaching and from apostasy. And so the American Council of Christian Churches is an organization our church has had a longstanding relationship with. Our founding pastor was president for many years. Pastor McKnight was president of the organization for many years. Jonathan Peters right now is a member of the executive committee and on the resolutions committee, tasked with writing those resolutions that are published every fall on current events. theological issues. I'm a member of the executive committee. So we just had a long standing history with those men of the American Council of Christian Churches. They have two events a year, the spring rally, which is a kind of a minor event. You see it's just a day and a half kind of a thing. And then they have a fall convention that is I'm usually a three-day event. Two out of the last three fall conventions I've had the privilege of preaching at. Jonathan Peters nearly always has a breakout session for one of those meetings. So again, a... a relationship with those men. We do pay financial dues. We have a financial arrangement with them. It's minor, but there is finances involved in supporting the American Council of Christian Churches. They have one full-time employee, their executive director, Dan Greenfield, who leads the organization. So that's what the American Council of Christian Churches is. Some of the ministries that we have throughout the year. One of the things that we really enjoy, the highlights of our year as a congregation, is our caroling at the homes of our seniors in shut-ins. that we do at least twice every year. We do that at Christmas time and at Easter. That's the minimum and sometimes we'd like to plan one even for the summer or the fall, but at least Christmas and Easter we'll gather and we'll go out to the different homes. We'll sing Christmas carols or resurrection hymns at their homes and then meet back here for a fellowship. We call it Soup and Song. It's just been the traditional name for it because we typically come back here and people bring crockpots of soup. It's easy to do that and we have a fellowship meal. Look out for that opportunity. Usually that's the last Wednesday before Christmas and then the Wednesday before Easter. And so Easter is late this year. We still have at least a month yet until Easter, but there'll be a Wednesday evening where we don't have our normal prayer meeting, but instead we're organizing to go out to our seniors and shut in. Pay attention to those announcements and take advantage of that great opportunity of serving those folks. Another thing we look forward to at Christmas time is lessons and carols. So our lessons and carols ministry is a traditional Advent service of scripture readings followed by Christmas hymns or psalms, carols on the theme of that scripture reading, usually a series of seven is traditional. and it's something that our choir works hard at, that Wesley Peters does such a good job at leading, and we have our instrumental ensembles that are a part of that evening as well. And speaking of those instrumental ensembles and the men's ensemble and the choir, those are always open for new members. If you'll see Wesley Peters about that, he can tell you when those rehearsals are. It's not the kind of thing where they're doing tryouts and only once a year and people get cut and that kind of stuff. So any interest at all in being in the choir, I'm sure that Wesley would be glad to have you. I suppose when it comes to the instrumental ensembles, there'll be some follow-up questions about skill level. But those are always open for people to join and to have ministry in. So feel free to talk to him about those things. We have special designated offerings twice a year. This has been a longstanding tradition of our church. I don't know when it started. It may be the very beginning, I don't know. But twice a year, we have a special designated offering, a Christmas, excuse me, a Thanksgiving offering and an Easter offering. And so on those days, everything that is put in the plate goes to those designated offerings. So the church budget operates off of 50 Sundays. and then the extra two Sundays are designated. So the Sunday after Thanksgiving and then Easter Sunday are those two special offering Sundays. And so typically the way that works is Patrick McKnight and Brian Wilson and I The three elders will talk about what the Lord has laid on our heart regarding a designation. We'll take that to the Board of Stewards for informal approval and consent about that plan. Typically it involves foreign missions, that's normally what it has to be, but just typically it does involve foreign missions project from one of our missionaries that we already have a regular relationship with. And so that's just one of those things that happens twice a year in the life of our church. And so normally there is a letter that's sent out a few weeks prior to the offering that is a combination devotional kind of a letter on either Thanksgiving or Easter theme. And then the second half is regarding the designation of the offering, introducing you to the need. So I just this week wrote the rough draft, at least, of the Easter letter that you'll receive in a couple weeks. I think I've already told you that the Easter offering is designated to helping our three spring missions trips. It'll actually be the case that by the time Easter comes around, two of those trips are already back. and completed. One of them will be, of course, in Jamaica at that time, but those three trips are Kenya, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica. Kenya and Jamaica, we're seeking to fully fund with that offering. The Dominican Republic trip that Mark Leffert and Marcus Reyes are leading, we want to reimburse travel expenses for our missionary Marcus Reyes and his son Josiah for that. So it's a minimal expense, but still we're putting that in with the other two missions trips. So it'll be a designation that'll be, you know, those trips funded and then anything left over will go towards saving for the new building for Hartford Christian School. So that's the kind of thing that happens twice a year, Thanksgiving and Easter, with those special designated offerings. And then every fall, we have a special emphasis on the Protestant Reformation. And so that's typically on the last Sunday in October, sometimes first Sunday in November, depending on how the calendar falls. And we call it Reformation Celebration. And the way that I've approached this in the last couple years is to have a special invited guest speaker for a series of meetings every other year. And so, and then in the off years, just to have a one night special weekday meeting with somebody local. And so this coming year, we have the privilege of hosting Pastor Colin Mercer from Northern Ireland, the father of Lois Carper. And he'll be with us for a Lord's Day and a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday evening meetings to celebrate the Protestant Reformation with us. And so it's our year to have a bigger Reformation celebration this coming year. But that's something that we do every fall as well. All right, so those are the 10 things that I had on my mind. The homeschool umbrella, the foundation, the Maryland Association of Christian Schools, the summer camps, the Upper Darby Church, American Council, our shut-in caroling, lessons and carols, special designated offerings, Reformation celebration.