Member Meeting (March 8)

I have a voice filter on today so sorry if I drip on the mic or sneeze on it or something I am on decongestance, I'm going to try my best. I've been encouraged lately by my own study of the church in the New Testament and I'm mapping out what is the church and I think an appropriate question for us at a members meeting to consider that what are we part of what are we doing here and I've found that 80% of the uses of the word church in the New Testament speak about a local church. It's just kind of mind blowing and 15% approximately speak about the universal church that is all people in all times in all places redeemed by the blood of the Lamb so 15%. It's this weird little group of words that it says like the church in Asia, they're clearly not a local church, it's also not all believers in all places, it's like a regional church united but maybe by geography or ethnicity and so I think it's right and good that each of us as obviously I'm preaching to the choir here is connected to a local church, that's where the bulk of all the Christian life that you're going to have is going to be in the context of a local church, you're going to obey the commands of God to submit to elders, you're going to do the one another's a scripture, there's just like we're going to love one another, I mean it's really hard to do to an abstract group like the universal church, right? How do I show love to like the Apostle Paul, kind of hard to do in the local church, that's where that can happen and yet I think even as we gather here as a local church it's good for our faith to be built up as we consider the universal church and maybe even in a broader sense than we're used to thinking about it. When we consider what have the even the Old Testament saints affirmed together with us, those that will be around the Lord's throne, worshipping together on the great day of the Lord come in, what will we have in common, what will we have affirmed and believed together in our own lifetimes that we have shared. So I wanted to read just for Isaiah to encourage us that we are actually part of something way bigger here. We're just trails and nox and Winnipeg and Calgary or just Canada or even just New Testament era. Guys, we're part of a story that God has been weaving together through all of human history. And so I'd like to encourage you that you're part of that group and to hear from one who's also part of that group and that's the prophet Isaiah. So I want to read more than I comment, but I want to read for Isaiah 26. And I want you to listen to or listen for a couple of key things. There's an expectation if you watch for the words like dust and the enemy being underfoot. There's an expectation that the curse of Genesis 3 will be reversed. I want you to also listen for an expectation that God will be glorified as the wicked are judged and justice is finally done on the earth. I want you to listen for a confession of sin and utter inability of even Old Testament saints to accomplish any deliverance on their own power and total dependence on God to save. And then I want you to hear the resurrection hope of the Old Testament saints, specifically Isaiah here. Let's just read it, Isaiah 26. In that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. He sets up salvation as walls and bullworks. Open the gates that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. That's in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. He lays it low, lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, in the steps of the needy. The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous in the path of your judgments. O Lord, we wait for you. Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness. In the land of uprightness, he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord. O Lord, your hand is lifted up, they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people and be ashamed. Let the fire for your adversaries consume them. O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works. O Lord, our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance. They are dead, they will not live, they are shades, they will not arise. To that end, you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them, but you have increased the nation, O Lord. You've increased the nation, you're glorified. You've enlarged all the borders of the land. O Lord, in distress they sought you. They poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them, like a pregnant woman who rides and cries out in her pangs when she's near to giving birth. So were we because of you, O Lord, we were pregnant, we rived, but we have given birth to wind, the awkward metaphor. We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen. Your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust awake and sing for joy, for your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. Come my people, enter your chambers, and I believe this is a call to die well. Strong in faith, the earth will give birth to the dead, so go enter your chambers and shut the doors behind you, hide yourselves for a little while, until the fury has passed by, for behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it and will no more cover its slain. That's resurrection hope. It's a confession. We, you've done all our works for us. We've labored and labored and labored and ended up, it was just a fart. But God, when you work on our behalf, you bring real deliverance, and the earth gives birth to the dead. They rise from their graves. So would you bring your justice, and would you allow us to close our eyes in the sleep of death with great hope, knowing that in the end, you will reign on the earth. We will reign with you. It's a great hope. This is Isaiah. This could be a trail sermon, right? It's just straight out of that test. It's just like, "Man, we're part of. " Yeah, we're part of something way bigger than just Winnipeg, Calgary, or even New Testament era. We're part of a group of people. It's going to be around the throne one day, confessing the very same things. Jesus Christ is Lord. He is our Savior. We didn't do any of this. And yet here's our glorious inheritance and our precious Lord. So now let's zoom back in to the life of our body, the life of the local church, which is the bulk of the New Testament's teaching on the church. And let's do that in the context of just this glorious eternal plan. And now you can sanitize the mic. So Lord, God, I thank you for our unity with your church and in the saints throughout all ages. Help us to really be your people here in this age together. Amen. Hope you feel better, my friend. Thank you for sharing that with us. Well, it is really great to be together. One of the things that if you're new around our member meetings, one of the things that we do every time that we gather together as members is to remember what we have covenanted together as members to do. And so if you have your membership document on your phone somewhere, you can pull that out or you can just listen to it. But these are the things that we are committing to doing together as members. So this is what our membership document says. It says, "As those who have experienced the grace of a life changed by the gospel of Jesus, we have the opportunity to reflect the character of Christ through the pursuit of certain attitudes and actions in the rejection of others." The scriptures refer to this reality as living by the Spirit Romans 8. The requirements of this membership commitment are in no way intended as an addition to the biblical obligations of a believer. Rather, this document functions primarily as an accessible yet non-exhaustive explanation of what the scriptures teach about the obedience that faith produces. So this is what we covenant together as a body. We commit to submit to the authority of the scriptures as the final arbiter on all issues. We commit to pursue the Lord Jesus Christ through regular Bible reading, prayer, and fellowship. We commit to follow the command and example of Jesus by participating in the ordinances prescribed to His church by being baptized after our conversion and by regularly remembering and celebrating the person and work of Christ through communion. Thus we remember the gospel bodily. We also commit to regularly participate in the life of the trails by attending weekly gatherings, engaging in gospel-centered community and serving those within and outside of this church. We commit to steward the resources that God has given us, including time, talents, spiritual gifts, and finances. This includes regular financial giving, service, and participation in community that is sacrificial, cheerful, and voluntary. And we commit by God's grace through the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in holiness in all areas of life as an act of worship to Jesus Christ. We have a next section that says Christians should also strive to put certain attitudes and actions to death while stirring and simulating love and good deeds through the Spirit. So, additionally, we commit to refrain from such activities that the Spirit would deem foolish to take seriously the responsibility of Christian freedom, especially actions or situations that could present a stumbling block to another. To submit to the discipline of God through His Holy Spirit by following the biblical procedures for church discipline where sin is evident in another, the hope of such discipline being repentance and restoration, and in receiving righteous and loving discipline when approached biblically by fellow believers. And then to do the following when I sin, firstly, confess my sin to God and to fellow believers, and secondly, to repent and seek help to put my sin to death. And then to submit to the pastors, as far as they are submitting to God's word and upholding our statement of faith, and diligently strive for unity and peace within the church. And then to do the following, should I leave the church for righteous reasons, to notify my smogred leader and pastors, and to seek another church with which I can carry out my biblical responsibilities as a believer. Now, we believe it's important to remember that together, every time we gather, to remember what we actually have come into with together, what we are saying to one another as members. I think one of my favorite components of that is being committed, not only to discipling one another, to checking out on whether and carrying about the spiritual good of one another, but also when we need to, to also confront one another in various things. And we walk through that on Sundays, as we listen to sermons, we kind of all have the edges of our life, you know, taken off a little bit by God's word, and then in small groups or women studies or men studies, but then also in conversations with one another. For it's in these kind of relationships where we actually sin against one another, you know, it's an easy thing to say, yep, I'm a sinner. But then when I sin against you, you're like, Aaron's a sinner, yeah, I am. And then it's a great opportunity for us to walk through that together, to repent of things and to move on together, having asked for and received forgiveness and restoration together. And so I want us to just remind us of that as we do every time, just for us to remember that which we've covenants together as a church. The second thing, I just have three things or two of the things before we get to our prayer request. The next thing is actually in two weeks. Hey Sam, will you grab one of those books? I was going to ask Matt, but he's germy. I love you, but you're germy, just unclean, so because we are in first Timothy, so not this week, but the next week we're going to be in first Timothy chapter three. We're going to be looking at the role of elders and deacons. Now we've taught extensively over the years on kind of the role of elders in various capacities, but the role of deacons is one that up to this point, we have zero deacons. We have a couple of people functioning in a deacon-y kind of way. Praise God for you, as you're deacon-ing. But as we move forward as a church, striving not only to, in the future, pray over and accept and bring in new men that God is raising up into places of serving as elders and pastors, but one of the things that we're also looking is how do we then also bring in this incredibly important office in the life of a church. So there've been a number of things that as we are growing as a church, that we're looking at and considering into the future of how can we help give certain kind of things away to church members help oversee both for the fiscal and the financial going on of our church so that some of our pastors aren't spending, not spending like 10 hours a week going over financial things because it takes me 10 hours a week to do it, where it would take so many, like maybe like 10 hours a week to do it. It would take so many, like maybe like you, if you're really good at finance, it would take you 45 seconds, because this is just not my realm. And so, you know, there might be roles in the future where you might be able to use just the way that God has gifted you and brought you in life of our church. And so the office of a deacon actually is a beautiful and a wonderful office that I think oftentimes in churches is very misunderstood. The office of deacon is it kind of like another elder, does that mean that somebody who's just like on a board somewhere, is it mean like there's a lot of questions on what it means. And this book is incredibly helpful and actually explaining what is deacon. And so we bought a whole case of them so that we can give them out to our members at meetings like this so that we can begin to process through what actually is deacon and what does God's words say about deacons. The way as we begin to kind of the next couple of months begin to install deacons as a church that we're like, oh, I know who you are and what your job is and what your role is because the Bible told me so. And so that's going to be a great thing for us as a church. And so I'm really excited for us to walk through this book together and then also to begin seeing men and women serving in various capacities. And so make sure you grab one of these books before you head out. The other thing I wanted to let you know if is that a little internship update is that we do have two people that are going to be our trails youth interns that was just confirmed yesterday. I'm not going to tell you their names yet though because I don't want to introduce them to you yet because they're also not here. But just to be praying for us because we do have another meeting this coming up this week actually with someone who applied to be a trails kids intern. And so just to be praying for us is we're walking through that as a church. As you know, this internship role is really just meant to help someone understand kind of what does it mean to have a church? What does it mean to then help with the church in various kinds of roles like kids ministry or youth ministry as we're hoping and praying that not only as this group to Calgary is sent out. But then Lord willing into the future as other churches are then sent out that will constantly be as a church training and equipping people so that we might equip you for whatever it is that God's calling you to do. That way we can either have you serve here or if you're like, hey, I'm going to go elsewhere like praise God go serve there. And so that's one of our big aims as a church. Any questions on deacon books or internship before we move on to the next thing that we're going to be talking about? So one of the next things we're going to do. How many of you guys were at our January member meeting? So January we started doing this and this is newer for us. So one of the things that we wanted to do at meetings like this. Was it you who brought this up about prayer? I think it was Matt. Matt said, hey, I think it would be really good if we also open up times for us in members meetings to just open the floor for anything that we need prayer for and then for us to then pray immediately for that person. Either laying hands on them and praying over them or praying together for whatever it is that they're bringing up. And I was like, man, that is such a great idea. And so we did that very quickly. And so what we want to do is just open the floor for that. Now, primarily one of the main things as well that we want to be thinking through kind of in times like this as a church is also thinking through as we talked about on Sunday. Even people that we know that aren't Christians that were praying that God would save. That's a huge thing. But also like, you know, other things that are going on, like I know we have that prayer signal chat and we share prayer things in there. And I'd love to see that even more so in the last couple of weeks. I feel like more people have been putting little things in there as things are kind of going on in people's lives. But you want to open the floor for anything that we want to pray for as a church. So, does anything about I have anything kind of going on in their life or something you like the spirit is bringing to your mind from the prayer discussion thing that you're like, oh, I want to really pray for this as a church. The floor will be open and this will go on just as long as this could go on all night. Or it could just go on for 15 minutes. So, whatever the Lord is laying on your heart that we can be praying for. So, anybody want to share anything that we want to be praying for? Okay, so my heart instantly like starts throbbing. But anyway, you can be praying for me while I tell you. A little bit of background information. I'm from upstate New York. And when I say upstate, that just means that I'm north of New York City. I'm not from New York City. I'm more than towards between Catskill Mountains and Berkshire's, but you guys from Canada, it doesn't matter. I'm the youngest child of nine. I grew up in a lack of better way of describing it at a dysfunctional home. Even just by saying the youngest of nine, I got to watch a lot of them choose a variety of ways to cope with the dysfunction. So, in the beginning, I kind of chose all of the opposite. I was like, oh, they did that that way. Well, I'm going to do it this way. My mom is a firm believer and she's encouraged us to go to church and she always tried to have us go to church because she always said that God saved her life. My mom is 40 years sober so God really didn't transform her life radically but she never really got good biblical teaching which was hard because we may have gone to a variety of churches for free childcare for good teaching because you were taught to be a good person and that's kind of what my definition of Christianity was. I knew that it was important and I knew it was good but I made my own definition of good person whatever that looked like and because I saw this dysfunction in the ways that people chose how to live with the dysfunction I was like okay well everyone did that way I'm going to do it the opposite. I said the sinner's prayer when I was six years old but that may have just been because I wanted to be with the rest of my siblings and the big kids class but I knew that I wanted to live this Christian life because it saved my mom's life and my mom always tried to make a really safe environment and environments that weren't safe so I just kind of saw my siblings choose all these ways that were not healthy and it was very evident so I was like okay no one went to school I'm going to school I'm going far away I'm going to choose a four-year school and I'm going to go there and stay there because none of you have done that so I kind of put my identity in all of my achievements put my identity in being an athlete put my identity into relationships and especially in school when I had no Christian community didn't even go to a church I kind of just followed our church that we were attending online we all know how that goes not very well so I was just doing it by myself and I was like okay I'm going to be this sport kid that's not fulfilling and empty I'm going to put all my effort into this job that's emptying okay what about this party scene what about this relationship and is my second year at university and my mom was actually having like a prayer meeting and I called her after that I was like mom I'm just empty like I don't know what I'm doing here and she's like just pray and I lay down on the floor and I literally surrendered I was like Lord I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what it looks like to live this Christian life because I'm just fine to figure it out by myself and that's when the Lord really changed my heart to crave him more and I was like my eyes were open into understanding scripture and I went back to my church and I was just trying to be as intentional with people as possible I was like I'm going to know everyone's name and I'm going to go to everything that we offer which I was like the only young person in our church so it was a dying church just went to just talk to everyone who was older than me which is probably why I work with the elderly now and you who I knew I wanted to do study a broad program and the Lord was teaching me to really trust him and because I surrounded my life I was just like okay if the Lord wants to happen he's going to let it happen when I went to New Zealand everyone that I met was telling me about Jesus it was crazy it was the first time I ever had Christian community is the first time I got involved with the church that actually read the Bible we went through the book of the Exodus for the first time in my life and I was like this is what it says like this is awesome and I met with a girl we went through Hebrews and it was just like I was I couldn't believe that Christianity was unheard of in New Zealand because everyone I was meeting was telling me about Jesus I was like this is all I want to do so I went back to my university and I didn't care about basically what I was studying with I just wanted to finish school because all I wanted to do was tell people about Jesus be with Jesus because that was now the most important thing ever and I went to a very liberal university Christian community was kind of underground but I was able to find that and that's where Chris and I met and decided we wanted to serve the Lord together ever since so it was really hard for the last two years of school because I was like I just want to be done with this because I just want to work at the chapel and all sorts of things but in the short of it the Lord has really saved me from a lot of ways of figuring out this world and I have such amazing freedom yes we are continuing to learn freedom be sanctified but I think about it and in high school I struggled with depression and anxiety really bad I get anxious moments but I have not had a panic attack since my second year of college and that's amazing so go ahead and give glory God for that what's up party people do I really need this oh gosh all right make me hold a microphone okay all right I was born on the lawless streets of New Jersey yeah I grew up just outside of New York City and my mom and my dad were it was my mom actually was not a believer when I was born my mom's whole family is Italian Catholic and my dad he grew up Lutheran joined evangelical free church when he was a teenager got saved through their ministry and so I grew up going to mass on Saturday night with my mom church on Sunday morning with my dad my dad my mom's also worked at a synagogue for the last 35 years so I also would spend the week at a synagogue you know so just a Abrahamic religious cocktail and yeah so it was definitely like you know confusing you know I was getting all those different things I mean I'm a child right but one of the things that I look back on and think about is how much my dad in my early life was discipling me where he was very intentional about making clear the most important things spending time with me every night praying and I would just ask him questions and my mom would come in and be like you're still awake because we just be talking and I'd really find the look it back and realize how important that was in retrospect that he made the important things clear to me and I make sure made sure I understood the gospel and as I grew up he also was very intentional about getting me involved with the various things that a young boy could be involved in at our church and so there is a it's in Canada but no one's ever heard of it out here it's called Christian service brigade it's like a Christian Boy Scouts thing you've heard of it oh awesome okay that's fair but oh nice that's dope yeah yeah so Christian service brigade you know a Boy Scouts kind of thing and I was involved with that as I you know into high school and I was going to one of our meetings and it was it was holy week so it was the Monday before Good Friday and so it being holy week we're talking about Jesus's death and resurrection and so we watched like a movie film thing about it and had a lesson on Jesus's passion and his resurrection and it was the first time that I remember like I emotionally responded to the reality of the gospel and I remember going home and specifically like the reality of Christ's sinlessness just destroyed me like that it's like he did nothing wrong he did not he was perfect and yet he stood in my place just that still blows my mind that he the most undeserved was the one who bore my sin and so I I believe that was when I was saved I was in fourth grade at the time and so I continued to walk in my parents leading however controversially I very soon after ended up like telling my mom that I didn't want to go to mass anymore not only was it super boring it also I just was so frustrated by it because they tried to get me like you know I tried to get me in the confirmation classes sort of thing and I was just tired of like asking questions and these people just unwilling to answer them like it was just wild and I and I even as a child I was like you both of y'all are saying that you believe the Bible is God's word but only one of y'all has ever told me to read it and it was my dad's church and even John go free church that they told me to read my Bible like what a crazy on. So, I continued there, I mean that really like when I told my family or when my mom told her parents that I didn't want to go to mass anymore kind of a problem, didn't go super well. And so, in that I'll try to be quick here. But so, in high school, I still was just, I realized it's because I went to public school, I stand before you as a Christian product public school, believe it or not. It's possible people, the Lord's grace is sufficient. But I was just like bulldozed by like just what high school was. I grew up in a very like rough urban area, and so the school was like pretty intense. And I realized I was just like, I don't know anything about this. And it just, I realized I just didn't know what the world was like at all. And in that, my freshman year of high school, my dad, and my mom separated, my dad also through that had shared admitted to our family that he was an alcoholic. And it was like, you know, one of those moments where like, it kind of, it was rough because the news of that is so hard to hear, but it also was so clarifying. I can see all the problems and why they're there. It just made all the sense in the world. And that was really hard. My parents were separated for almost four years. It was like spring of my freshman year of high school to fall of my senior year of high school. My mom lived with my grandparents, and it took both of my grandparents dying in two months for my mom to finally like move back in with my dad. And then that was when they finally started to like reshape their, you know, and reconcile their marriage together. And so I was so grateful for the Lord preserving grace in my parents' life. And my dad also got sober. My dad's been sober now for 11 years. And my mom and my dad, my mom got saved when I was in college. So that, it's all amazing that that's happened. But in that season, walking through that in high school, I just was so destroyed and just looking for community, family, relationship, validation, and just everything at school. And so I, by like my sophomore year of high school, I just wanted nothing to do with Jesus. I didn't say that I wasn't a Christian. I still would have said that I was a Christian, but I didn't live as one. I didn't want to be, but I wanted to keep a status quo. And so it was until my junior year of high school. After that, when the Lord used these men pretty tremendously in my life to call me back to himself, where I really was just awoken to the foolishness of the previous two years and needed to repent seriously of some of things. After that, it was just a real growth spur of maturity. I got baptized as a senior in high school. And that was a huge, a huge change. And it was through those men that the Lord continued to shape me and call me into ministry and all that. So thanks guys. All right, I'll be actually quick. No, I don't have much to say. So I just wanted to give an update like what's going on in regards to the planning Calgary. So me and my family decided to move. We were planning to move in September, but we're going to actually move in August first because my wife is pregnant over our fourth kid. So we want to be in Calgary before the baby is born. And so we can be like set up there and have the house and everything before the baby comes. But it doesn't change the plan play much. It's just like a month before this month. We hopefully the pastors would be assessing the people who are willing to go to Calgary as well. I think we have a 12 people or 13 people, something like that. And then in April, my hope is to start doing like some, some, I would say classes or meetings, something like preparing them for the plant in there and kind of like casting more specific vision for the people who are there. And who would be more interested in knowing specifics of the things we be doing there. And I think that's it. We're going to have like one last vision night coming this month in which I'll share some more details about the church plan and answer questions. And if you want to know more about the church plan, if you want to participate in some way or even by praying for us or are giving to the church plan to come with us, you can come and talk to me and I'll be gladly sharing this. That's it. That's how I got. I really don't want to get sick. A sickness in my house. Last thing that we're going to talk about for tonight is a financial update. That's one of the things we always do at our member meeting. And so let's you know about January and February, before I do though, one of the things that just as a rule of thumb that we always strive to do as a ministry is to have three months of kind of anything that we need as far as a ministry and salary budget and that kind of stuff. Always in our bank account at all times. And then over and above that as a ministry kind of what we do at the very end of the year is kind of like what we did this past year is any of that excess over and above that we didn't say, how do we just give this away. And so just so you know that just as a rule of thumb kind of as a church, we always have three months of operating budget in the bank at all times. The only difference that we actually started with 2023 with though was we decided to bring on those two different staff roles both in youth ministry and in kids ministry. And so with that with with some of what we were looking at in October November of last year looking into this year. If you remember where gas prices were in October November and with everything that we were seeing about inflation coming in the cost of everything. So make sure that those two roles that we brought on that we were able to pay them for the whole year even if everything else went to kaput that they would still be taken care of. And so we actually had $40,000 that we actually set aside in addition to our three months so that we can be able to pay them for the entire year regardless of the craziness of our economy. And what that does especially with different shortages that might look like this coming year with people wanting to like give to the church like if all of a sudden all of our everything costs 19,000 times more than probably our donations to church would go down because people need to eat and live. That was one of the additional things that we did kind of walking into 2023 and as I was looking through all of our budget stuff with some of our bookkeepers. This year so January we wrapped up the month of January and all of our tides in our giving at 15,000 606 and 23 cents which is about 70.78% of our budget for that month. And then February we were $12,368.80 which was about 56% of our budget for our church. And so now historically if you ever looked at church finances January and February are usually the months where you have the least amount of donations for the entire year. I don't know if that's Christmas or something but historically that's kind of when that happens and then usually what happens is throughout the year you have more months where more is given so that kind of at the end of the year everything usually kind of pans out especially with the end of the month of December when everyone is like oh man I forgot to give this all year I'm going to give everything right now or something like that. And so I actually went back and looked at last year of 2022 and last year in January we had I'm not going to even you can see the numbers if you want I'm just going to be percentages because that's easier to understand so last year so this year January we are 70.78 of our budget last year of January we were 57.38. So that's like 57 to 70 that's that's great and then last February we were 49 whereas this year we were 56. So if you kind of just look at some trends, we're following kind of the same trends, but they're higher percentages, which if you like finances, is just an interesting thing to kind of put on a plot course and just see kind of what the Lord does. Now, you might wonder, we always get that question, well then, how are we able to maintain cash flow and not lose all of our reservoir of like the three months and then the money that we have set aside? Well, that is actually where outside donors are a huge blessing into the life of our church. So, I raise about oh, 50, around 50,000 for our church every year. And then Charles actually has raised, I think about six, oh, he was in here. I think he has about 6,000 that he's raised for his salary and then we have other people that as we meet them and we're sharing about kids' ministry or various other things. As I'm out and about with some of our donors or partners or church partners that we know of and they're like, hey, do you guys need money for anything? I always say, of course we do. And so we chat about things like that like last year, we actually had a donor that heard about our church and they said, hey, do you need anything for kids' ministry? And it was back in June and I said, like after we had voted on a kind of salary and all those kind of things for the rest of that year, for that ministry and we said, I don't know how God's going to provide for this. Some man said, well, how much are you trying to pay this person for the next six months? And I said, about 3,000. He said, great, and he literally just wrote a check and said, here you go. And I said, praise God. And so stuff like that happens to pray for that. Pray the God would send people, they have lots of money, they just ask us questions. But outside of that, we have some outside donors, those inside of Canada and outside of Canada. And so kind of when we add in those donations, January goes from 70.78% to 94.77%. And then February goes from 56.09 to 84.98. And so that's kind of what allows us as a ministry, not to just completely like things go downhill, especially on months kind of like January February, which are typically lesser months for us. And so yeah, so we just wanted to let you guys know that. Overall, I think in looking at all of the finances and those kind of things as a church, you know, going out of last year when we were able to give away. And actually, in total, it wasn't nine. In total, it was $15,800. That were able to give away, which was wild. If you had ever asked me as a two-year-old church, if we would ever give away almost $16,000, I would say, I don't think so, or yeah, or $5. And so that was just really cool. So I just wanted to thank you for giving into the life of our church. And I think too, that's a really great thing for us to think through and kind of what even started this year with us looking at base camp at talking about how to be faithful stewards as a church, not just financially, but that's part of that, but really with our whole life. And so we just want to thank you for giving both financially but also your time and your talents and for serving one another. I think one of the coolest things as the pastors of our church to see you open up your homes to one another and love one another and support one another through suffering or times of sickness or those kind of things, actually being the church for one another is a really beautiful thing. And to know that there are men and women that you can count on that have committed themselves to you, that love you, that support you, that want your best, and that when you need them, they're gonna be there. Is really cool. Any questions on anything? As a church or anything you have that you wanna bring up or talk about? Beautiful. There's gonna have to be cool. Well, let's sing one more song together before we take off and then as I mentioned as well, again, if there's anything that you might just want prayer for or want to have someone ask something, do that, and then as well be sure to grab these deacon books before you head out. So if you're married, just take one for you and your spouse and we'll have some more of those as well for some of our members that aren't here tonight, but yeah, be sure to grab that book and then read through that either with some friends or find maybe a couple of people that are reading through that as a church, and then we'll be talking about that as I said, not this upcoming Sunday, but the Sunday after. So look forward to that with you guys. Sorry, here's this for you.