I'm Alex Mark. I get the privilege of serving as one of the pastors here at First Scots. And so there are a handful of folks that are planning to take it towards membership, but couldn't be here today as well. So it'll get a little bit bigger as we go through the weeks. Now we are really, really grateful to have all of you here. We've done this class through the years. We've done it in the afternoon. We've done it in the morning. We've done it during the week. It always seems that the best time of day to do it is during Sunday school, so that those who need childcare can have it. And so thank you for doing it. It'll run for the next two months, every Sunday during September and October. Now I know the likelihood is some of you will miss at least one Sunday and maybe more, and we can talk through that. But before we get started, I just want to give thanks to the Lord. Father in heaven, thank you for being so good to us. Lord, we exist to both relish and proclaim your goodness. Lord, to enjoy it in the core of our being and then to declare it to others. God, what a great God you are and what you've done for us in the gospel. And so I pray, oh God, that as we come together this morning and we think about particularly the church, the bride of Christ, and the way you have established the church to be the vessel through which you are going to carry the gospel to the nations. We pray, oh God, that you would bless our study. Father, I thank you for everybody in this class, and pray that your blessing would rest upon them as we come together. In Jesus' name, amen. Open your booklets, if you would. Those are yours to keep. If you've been through this class before, there will be slight changes to this, especially if you've been through it in recent years. But if it's been a number of years since you took it, then the booklet has probably changed some. But on the opening page, you'll find a table of contents. This is a big picture of where we're going to go. But you'll also find a schedule in there. And that's going to be the more micro picture of where we're going to be. So Sunday by Sunday, you'll see what we're going to cover. But let me start just by explaining the purpose of this class. You can look at page three, and you'll see this written out. The early church, as people were getting converted and following Christ, one of the very clear needs from the beginning was training because the church is unlike any other institution on the face of the earth. There's nothing else like the church. We have organizations, we have other religious groups, but the church is the body of Christ. And so from the very earliest history of the church, Classes teaching principles of membership have been vital to the church. In fact, this is an eight-week, well, it goes to a nine-week class, but we may not need the ninth week. We'll see how our pacing is. But any guesses on how long this kind of class went in the life of the early church? Yeah, typically at least a year. And they would do, it was, the purpose of it was to acclimate people with not only just the church itself as a unique institution, but the unique beliefs of Christianity. And so we could argue about whether a year is too long, but we actually, one of the really neat things is we have this book called the Didache. How many of you have ever heard of the Didache? The Didache was a, effectively it was a manual for the inquirer's class in the early church. So you can go back and see almost 1900 years ago what the early church was doing in bringing in members. And so that's a really neat practice. And we follow in the footsteps of that. And there's a number of reasons that are very practical as to why we do this. And I listed them for you on page three in that letter. But the first thing is it builds unity. At one point a few years ago, I counted how many different churches had fed into our church, how many different churches people had come from, and it was 26 at the time. So if you were to poll our whole congregation, there were 26 churches that had fed into our congregation. So that means that every person in the congregation has a little bit different thought about what the church is supposed to be doing, what the mission of the church is. They had different thoughts about what makes a good church and what makes a bad church. They had different thoughts about just the role of tradition in the life of the church. We all bring these different presuppositions into the church, and one of the things that an inquirer's class does, or a new member's class, I'll use those terms interchangeably, But one of the things that this class accomplishes is to let us all be on the same page as we move forward as a church. Now, you might go through this class and say, you know, there's certain things that I'm not sure I agree with that the church practices. You may not agree, for example, with baptism, the way that Presbyterians practice baptism. There are many folks who have come through this church that maybe at first didn't agree. Some still don't agree, but are able to survey the issues and say, okay, I at least understand why we do it this way. And it helps even if we're not totally in agreement on mode of baptism, for example. It helps us to be united in our understanding of why we do what we do as a church. So the very first thing is it builds unity. It doesn't necessarily build uniformity. So some of you may come through this class and say, you know, I agree with this church on 98% of things, but here's the 2% I'm not sure I'm on board with. And what we'll do is talk through are those 2% essentials or are they secondary matters? On the essentials, we need to be in agreement, and if there is something that you go through this class and you realize, you know, I'm not sure that I'm in agreement with this church and I think this is an essential of the faith, then we need to have that conversation because this may not be where God's calling you. If you go through the class and you say, you know, I agree on all the essentials, But there's some secondary issues. I'm not sure where I lie on those. Then it probably is a good opportunity for you to move forward toward church membership and still study those issues. So it helps to build unity. Second, We do this class because it shows you what we believe on the front end. I could give a lot of critiques of modern dating culture. I just think there's a lot of weaknesses to the way our culture approaches marriage. But one of the biggest weaknesses is that in modern dating culture, we show each other all the best stuff about us. We don't show each other what a mess we are. And then we get married and people wake up and go, who is this person that I've married? Who is this person that I thought I knew? And a lot of times, I can't believe he rolls the toothpaste up from the bottom. Everybody knows you roll it up from the top. you know, that kind of stuff. Oftentimes it's secondary stuff, but when two centers are thrown together, those things can feel like a big deal. I believe with church membership, we need a better approach than sort of the dating approach, where you see all the good stuff, you see all the things, you're sort of sold the church. I'm not here to sell you the church. What I want to do is show you who we are as a church, what we believe, and that'll give you an honest opportunity to discern, is this the place God is calling you? This has always been my belief. So my wife and I were pursuing marriage. This is kind of an embarrassing story, and I'll tell you several embarrassing stories through the course of this, but this is a pretty embarrassing one. About six months in, I wanted to know, you know, I had always put my best foot forward with her and kind of tried to be the man she wanted. I thought, you know what, I'm just going to be my real self. I'm going to give her all the worst about me. And so I decided for about five days I wasn't going to shower, I wasn't going to shave, I wasn't going to do anything. I was just going to be me at my worst. And I wanted to see if she went running or not. Now, for some reason, she didn't go running. She stuck with me. That isn't the practice that I continue. I think it is good for me to take care of myself. But at that point, I just wanted her to see me for me. This is what we do in this class. Show you who we are as a church. We don't hide anything. There's no bait and switch. We just want to lay everything out about our beliefs and our practice and let you make the best decision you can. Third, it helps new members get acclimated with how we function. How many of you have a background with Presbyterian churches? Okay, good portion. Presbyterian church government is different from Episcopal church government, which is different from Baptist church government. And it's really important for our membership to know how we work. How do things function? How do I, if I have a question about something, who do I go to? If I have a concern about something, who do I go to? How can I be heard about my concerns? That sort of thing. So this class will help you be acclimated with what we're talking about with Presbyterian church government, because we're gonna tell you what's going on with Presbyteries and with our denomination at the global level. So those things are gonna be part of the conversation that we have in our church, and we want you to be familiar with all those terms. So that's the third thing. It helps new members become acclimated with how we function. And then fourth, it gives you an opportunity to get involved. Take your Bibles if you would. I want you to see kind of our foundational statement for how you can get involved in the life of this church. Look at Ephesians chapter four. In the first section there, well look at verse 8, therefore it says, when he ascended on high he led a host of captives, he gave gifts to men. This is talking about Christ's resurrection and how he gives gifts to the church and these are spiritual gifts. The picture there is a king who is a victor at war and then he gives the spoils of victory to the people. Well, this is a similar but different picture. Look at verse 9, and saying he ascended, but what does it mean? But that he also descended in the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all things, far above all the heavens, that he may fill all things. Now listen to this. Here's the gifts. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the building up of the body of Christ. excuse me, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. In other words, our kind of foundational belief of how church works is God has established the church body for the building up of one another, equipping you to then go out into the world and do the work of ministry. One of the things that I think the church in America has really lost, that the Protestant Reformation had recovered, was the idea of the priesthood of all believers, that all believers are to be about the work of the ministry. So prior to the Reformation, the thought was you either did sacred work, you're a monk or a nun, you were in clergy some way, or you were kind of a normal person. If you're in clergy, then your work really mattered for God. If you're a normal person, your work wasn't such a big deal. It might pay the bills, but it doesn't labor for the kingdom. The Protestant Reformation said, actually, there's not that sacred secular dichotomy. And no matter who you are, if you are a believer, then your work is sacred. what you do is to be done for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. And so as the preaching of the word happens here, and as ministry happens at First Scots, our desire is to give you the tools to then go into your workplace. How many of you work right now? All right. Rachel, how many co-workers do you think you have? Okay. It's reasonable. Do you know how many kids are at the school? Heather, you've got around 70, and between the preschool and the big school, close to 400. That's a pretty big reach for two people, isn't it? In fact, I could never get in there and do all the things that you can do just by living out the gospel in your classroom. All right, how many people do you work with? How many coworkers do you have? Okay, so you have a unique opportunity to reach people that those of us who do this vocationally could never do. Our philosophy of ministry at First Scots is to equip the saints to go out into the world to do the work of the ministry. That means we're not very program driven. We're not very big on come get plugged in in this program, that program. Certainly there are things that have to happen to keep the church going and we try not to hire those things out. We like to do those in house and we're gonna talk to you about some of those ways that you can serve. But our biggest desire is to equip you with the gospel to then go out into a lost and dying world. You have much more reach than we do as the clergy. There's two clergy on staff here at this church. With 170 or so members, your reach is far greater than ours. And so as we go through this class, it gives you a perspective of how you can get involved. And a lot of the ways you can get involved are coming here, growing, investing into one another, and then going to the ends of the earth with the gospel. That's what we want you to see as you go through the class. And so the class, as I said, it's really designed to be an eight-session class. We've got nine Sundays. Anybody know what often happens in the fall in Beaufort? Why you might miss a Sunday here and there? And if you say football season, I'm going to be mad. I mean hurricane season. All right, we try to build in an extra Sunday. And so we may need to have that last Sunday. And I'm going to the schedule allows us to go that last Sunday if we don't. Maybe we'll just do breakfast together and enjoy fellowship with each other, but we'll see as we get closer. For those of you who are discerning God's calling about church membership, whether this is a potential church home for you, we really want you to attend at least seven of the classes. We know that conflicts may come up, and so we'll touch base with you about that. We do record the classes so you can go back and get classes that you miss. But we just thank you for your willingness to attend. Look at page four if you would. This is for those of you that are new here, and several of you are, and are looking just to understand the various ways and opportunities to get involved. On Sunday, we begin with Sunday school every morning. And again, Sunday school is a vital part of equipping the saints to do the work of ministry. So just in the last year, Pastor Walton has been teaching a class in this room on our theology, looking at the Westminster Confession of Faith. I've been teaching a class in there where we've been looking at the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, and we're seeing how the first book of the Bible speaks with incredible relevance to the modern issues that we're facing today. So we've discussed issues from abortion, to homosexuality, to burial versus cremation. We've discussed so many different moral issues. That's part of equipping the saints. We use the scriptures. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, all scripture is breathed out by God as profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So we believe that the more we expose you to the word and the more the word is taught and proclaimed, the more equipped you are for the work that God has called you to do in this community, in your family. And so Sunday school is an opportunity for equipping. Morning worship begins at 1040. Evening worship at 5 p.m. In the morning, we do offer nursery, but as a church, we always welcome children into worship. What might be some of the benefits of children of any age being welcomed into worship? Why might we make that decision? Yes, ma'am. Good. The earlier they're there, the earlier they hear the gospel and learn to worship. What other benefits might there be to children being welcomed into worship? Okay, good. Parents as an extension of them. Good. What else? It communicates, even at three and four and five years old, this is for you. The gospel matters to you. Stephanie and I, our family served for a while in Scotland. And one of the things that we were amazed at was just the pitiful health of the Scottish church. And you would go into any church in Scotland, and if you saw anybody under age 60, it was kind of a shock. What was interesting was we found out children in those churches, if they had children, they went to children's church till age 16. So call to worship happens, children go to their own class. And then at age 17, you're now trying to teach children to sit through church. You're teaching children, hey, I know it hasn't applied to you for your formational years, but now this applies. We became very convinced there that that was a poor approach. We do offer nursery because we want parents to be able to, especially young moms who maybe are caring for children 24-7 right now, we want them to be able to focus during the worship service. But some choose not to, they choose to have their child sit with them and we welcome that. It can be a little bit noisy at times, we know that. I'll encourage you to be patient with that because baby sounds are good sounds for the health and future of the church. It is our, those eeks and cries are our reminder from God that he is a covenant-keeping God who is building up future generations, okay? So we do offer nursery during morning worship, but parents do not have to take advantage of that. We're going to talk some about the sacraments as we go. All I'll say now is the Lord's Supper is observed the first Sunday morning of every month and the third Sunday evening. We have on Wednesday evenings prayer meeting at 6 p.m. right here. It's been a sweet time of fellowship. It actually started right when the lockdown started with COVID. We actually didn't have a building for the first couple of weeks of COVID, because we were not able to meet in the school where we had been. This building, we had not yet gotten our certificate of occupancy. And so for just a little while, everything went virtual. That's when that prayer meeting formed. Everybody was isolated. And so we at least said, let's do what we can. Let's connect via Zoom. Then we got into the building. We realized it was okay for us to come together. And we began meeting together every Wednesday night, and we've met together every Wednesday night for prayer for the last two and a half years now. A wonderful time of fellowship and prayer. We pray for felt needs. We also really pray that God would pour out His Spirit for revival. in Beaufort and throughout the world. We have Bible studies. These are a little bit seasonal, so they do take breaks over the summer, but they're getting ready to resume. The women's studies are going to resume this week. Men's study meets every Tuesday at lunch. There is a seasonal Thursday evening men's study, but that is not ongoing right now. But if you are not able to attend the regular Tuesday lunch study, and you would like to get integrated into a study, let us know and we'll figure out how to work that out. All 6th through 12th graders are invited to Fired Up Youth Ministry. We do not see youth ministry as something to replace the family. We see youth ministry as an opportunity to supplement and build up the work that the family does. So our youth ministry, it's led by two families, the Marquart family and the Purser family. They do a phenomenal job. And I say that as one who, I was a youth director for a number of years and I did not have the healthy component of seeing it as an extension of the church, teaching children to love the church through the work of the youth ministry. Oftentimes it sort of becomes its own entity. They've done a great job. It's fun. It's great fellowship time and really outstanding teaching. They've been teaching through John's epistles. There's other regular events that you'll see, and they'll be listed in the bulletin, so please look at those and figure out opportunities to get involved. There's plenty of formal ways to get involved, and then obviously there's the informal way of just showing hospitality and spending time together as a church family. Our session and our diaconate meet together, our elder board and our deacons meet together the last Tuesday of every month, and so if you ever have needs or if you want to be praying for the leadership of the church, you can do that on that schedule there. Tell you just a little bit about our church leadership, so you're familiar with everybody. As I said, my name's Alex Mark, and I have the role of senior pastor here, which it sounds funny to even say that, because not only is Pastor Walton my senior in terms of his lifespan, but he's an incredibly wise and godly man, and I would gladly follow his lead. He has humbly followed mine. I've been here since June of 2013. I actually grew up about four miles from here. So if you're familiar with Pleasant Point and Beaufort, I grew up right before there. My parents still live there. I grew up actually in a nominally Jewish family. So my dad grew up in the synagogue. My mom was raised Baptist. When they got married, one of the things they agreed on was not to allow that difference of religion to separate them. And that seemed like a great plan until they had me and I got converted. And then I started injecting a biblical worldview into things. And by God's grace, my mom is a believer and is part of this church now. My wife Stephanie and I got married in 2004. Our firstborn was born in 2006. When he was three and a half years old, we went to Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. I had been discipled by a man named Doug Kelly, who is really one of the great theologians alive today, and just a very godly man. I wanted to study under him before he retired from teaching. And so I went to RTS, Reformed Theological Seminary, in Charlotte in 2010. I was his assistant or teaching assistant, and I was there for three years. Right about the time that I was about to graduate, this church was looking for a pastor. And I'm going to talk about the history of the church in a few minutes. But in God's providence, and it was incredible timing that only the Lord could orchestrate, God brought me here in 2013. In 2014, I was ordained. We have now three sons, two have been born since we got here. Charlie is almost nine and Samuel is six. If you haven't met Stephanie, all men can call their wife their better half, but she's really much, much better. I'll say better 98% than me. In January of 2020, God called Pastor Steve Walton and his bride, Hillary, to Beaufort. They had planted a church, really about the same timeline as we were here. They had planted a church in Stuttgart, Germany, and served very faithfully there, and God blessed their labors. But through a number of circumstances, they realized that it was time for them to transition back into a different role in ministry, and God brought them here two months before the pandemic started. And so y'all had a very strange entree into ministry in Beaufort, but they've done an absolutely tremendous job. Pastor Walton went to Greenville Presbyterian Seminary. They have two sons, Branch and Sam. They have one daughter-in-law, Leanna, and have just been a tremendous blessing to the life of the church. Look at page six, if you would. Presbyterian government, and we believe per biblical government, and I'll make that case as we get there in the coming weeks, but Presbyterian government has two offices of leadership. Now, we do not believe that offices are kind of positions of exaltation. They're positions of humiliation. They're positions of service and laying down our lives for the sake of the sheep. And so when you see men, greeting and holding doors and all that. And they have a name tag that says they're an elder here. That is not a position of where they're seeking glory in any stretch. It's a position where they're seeking service and to lay down their lives as under shepherds for the sake of the flock. Our size church needs more officers than we have. Well, let me say that differently. In my opinion, we need more officers than we have. In God's providence, we have what we have. So we have four elders. These are wonderful and godly men who go through a training class, a 12-week training class. They go through written exams, they go through oral exams, and then they are voted on by the congregation. So Michael Moore, Mark Sinn, Bo Warren, and then Ron Warnley is here with us today. We have one deacon right now. We really need more. We had two and the other just moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. Deacons, if you want a kind of broad generalization at First Scots, the elders really try to focus on the spiritual care of the church, the shepherding aspect. And the deacons care more for the physical needs of the church, the felt needs of the church, if we were to create a dichotomy. But the real easy dichotomy to keep up with, if they're over about 5'10", they're a deacon. If they're under 5'10", they're an elder. That's the way it has worked out in the life of this church. God's sovereign. We'll talk more about elders and deacons, but as elders, these are men who have been called by God. The calling has been evident, particularly 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, Acts 6, we see the criteria for calling as officers. These are men who not only meet, but I think exceed that criteria in a number of ways. And so we've had the privilege of men whom God has called. How big a deal is it for a church to be pretty relentless in examining and discerning the call of an officer? Is it a big deal that we get that right? A lot of you have been in churches where officers were chosen based on, what was the kind of normal criteria in a lot of the churches that maybe you've been in that you maybe raise an eyebrow about? You have a pulse. Good. Yeah, there's a vacancy where you feel it. What else? Money. Oftentimes, the assumption is if somebody is wealthy, that means they would be a good leader in the life of the church. What else? Yes. You know, there's benefits to having somebody that knows business, that knows administration. You know, we believe God is sovereign and he trains people through certain ways. So, for example, Carol Ingram is our church administrator, does a wonderful job, but God prepared you for this job through many, many years as a school principal. And so she is a blessing to us in part because of that past experience, but that past experience is not what gives her the credentials to help us in the office of the church. You look at officers of the church and the elders and the deacons, those men are not in those offices because they have a strong resume of vocational work. They're in those offices because their lives seem to line up with the qualifications that are laid out in scripture. What happens typically when you lower the expectations of church leadership? Whether it's issues of piety, godliness, whether it's issues of character and the way the person lives their life and interacts with the outside world, what are some things that can go wrong when the church lowers its expectations? The gospel gets watered down. How do you think that happens? the word of God, then how, if the preaching may suffer because of that, because they're not really worried about how you're preaching or what you're preaching, just that you're preaching. And Jesus may be left out, salvation may be left out, and the gospel really is left out, and then you just have a feel-good, ear-tickled church service. A lot of people in our church can speak from experience about that, by the way. They've been down that road before. What else? What else can happen when expectations for leadership in the local church don't match biblical qualifications? Good. If there's things to hide, if people are doing things that need to be hidden, they're going to be less and less open with the church. Good. What tends to happen, kind of the big picture of what happens is pragmatism reigns. When you become pragmatic about the kind of leaders that you choose for your church, You become pragmatic about everything. And so here's how pragmatism affects the life of the church. You know, I know Hebrew says some kind of hard things for people to take in. So why don't we sort of back off from that? Alex, don't preach those things that might offend people because we don't want to drive anybody off, you know. that kind of stuff. That's what pragmatism looks like, or pragmatism can look like, you know, we should really stop giving to missions, because we need to make sure that we have all our needs taken care of here at the church, and we could use this, and we could use that, and so on. When you choose officers through a paradigm of pragmatism, the church falls prey to the idol of pragmatism. Pragmatism is probably the greatest golden calf in the American church today. If it works, let's do it, rather than does it please God and build up the saints. Any questions about that? We're going to spend time talking about officers and their role and your role in relationship to them, but any questions before I move on? In 2012, There was a group of folks who had been members for many years of the mainline Presbyterian church, and for those of y'all that are not familiar with Presbyterianism, it turns into an alphabet soup, but you've got two that I just want you to track with. the PCUSA and the PCA. Both are Presbyterian, both claim a structure of church government rooted in biblical, what I think is a very biblical position. But they've gone two very different ways through the years. The PCUSA has begun to play very loose and fast with the scriptures in terms of, is the Bible the word of God? Well, yeah, but not all of it is inspired and infallible. What's the mission of the church? Is the mission of the church to proclaim the gospel or is the mission of the church to feed the poor and stuff like that? And PCUSA has historically said over the last 50 years or so, the mission of the church is really to feed the poor and to do benevolence ministry. It's not so much gospel proclamation. There's a lot of other divisions, the role of women in ministry and so on. The PCUSA started in the, going back to the 1920s, went in the direction of theological liberalism. The PCA is a much more recent denomination founded in 1973. And it is a denomination that aims to be self-consciously committed to scripture and to the historic reformed faith. Do we do it perfectly? By no means. Do we have our issues? Certainly, as all denominations do. But my experience with the PCA, and I've been a believer since 2003. My experience, excuse me, since 2000, I've been a member of a PCA church since 2003. My experience has been that the PCA is a denomination that seeks to exalt Christ, that believes the scriptures, and wants to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. We are a PCA church. There was a group, though, that were members of a PCUSA church here in town, and they saw a need for a new church that was Presbyterian in government, because they believed that was the biblical form of church government. but one that needed to be relentlessly committed to the scriptures. One of the things that they had seen in the PCUSA was that same-sex clergy could be ordained. So same-sex practicing clergy could be ordained. And this group is looking at the scripture saying, we do not see a way that you can justify same-sex activity and the Christian life at all, much less the calling into ministry. It was actually October 31st. You might know why October 31st is a relevant date. Halloween, right? Well, there's that. But probably more relevant to us is Reformation Day in 2012. Reformation Day, October 31st, going back to 1517, when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. October 31st, 2012, my mom sent me an article. I was finishing up seminary. Sent an article about a group in Beaufort that was looking to start a new Presbyterian church. And through a series of events, a group of leaders were established within that group. They were called the Steering Committee of that group. They reached out to a church in Savannah called Independent Presbyterian Church. In God's providence, I had a relationship with that church and through a series of events, I was hired to be the church planter here to work with that core group. I started in June of 2013. I've given you some more history there. The original name of the church was First Scots Independent Presbyterian Church of Beaufort. It doesn't fit on letterhead. It doesn't fit very well on business cards. So it became, as we joined, initially it did start as an independent church, but as we joined the PCA in August of 2014, our name became First Scots Presbyterian Church of Beaufort. The thought behind the name First Scots was the idea that Presbyterianism has become so corrupted in the modern world, we want a return to historic Presbyterianism. Now, I would argue that Presbyterianism was established in scripture, but historically, the place that is most synonymous with it is Scotland. And so much of the great theology and practice that we have as Presbyterians came through Scotland. So the thought behind naming it First Scots was it's a return to historic Scottish Presbyterianism rather than what we see in the modern world today. In 2016, This property was bought. It's 4.7 acres, and we are most grateful for it. Ladies Island is the fastest growing part of North Beaufort County, and so we wanted to be here. Our thought is actually that Beaufort could sustain probably three PCA churches, one on Ladies Island, one maybe in the Burton, Shell Point area, and we would love really eventually to have one on St. Helena. So there are opportunities for growth here. This building, we started working with an architect in late 2017. We had hoped the building would be done by the end of 2019, but how many of you have ever done construction with Beaufort County before? It's like a roller coaster. And it's a roller coaster that doesn't strap you in. So you can actually get thrown out about halfway through. That's what it felt like at least. But we were hoping to be done with the building late 2019. We actually didn't get done before COVID lockdown started. And so it took us a little while afterwards to get our certificate of occupancy. But we began meeting in the building in either April or May of 2020 and have been able to be here ever since with no interruptions. We don't believe that it's ever appropriate to cease corporate worship. It's the highest priority that we have on earth. And so we, Lord willing, will continue to make this commitment every Lord's Day until Jesus returns. One thing I'd love to do is be able to give y'all a tour of the building, but there are other things going on in other rooms. So just broadly, this is the educational and administrative wing. Pastor Walton's office and my office are down this hall. Sunday school classrooms are down this hall. The administrative offices are down at the end. And then this is our fellowship hall. Just to tell a story of God's kindness to us, our initial plan did not have a fellowship hall. We believe since worship is the most important thing we do, we wanted to have the sanctuary, the worship hall. And we just didn't think the finances were there to be able to build this addition on. Well, our architect disagreed with us. And what he did was really smart. He drew a room that came to about here. And he said, I'll just add on a little bit of space for y'all to fellowship. And we said, OK, that's reasonable. That's good. And it makes the building more symmetrical, that kind of stuff. That's good. And he said, but you know, for what it came out to the equivalent of 1 25th of the cost of the construction, I can add this whole room on here. and it was a no-brainer. We use this room about five to six days a week normally and are extremely grateful for it. Long term, our desire would be to convert this to classrooms and to have a standalone fellowship hall because this room cannot accommodate the whole church right now. We would like a fellowship hall, if the Lord allows, that would accommodate the whole church to be able to gather for meals and those things. Right now we have covered dish meals, but this room is full and then we fill up the classrooms with tables. We love that privilege, but if the Lord opens the door eventually we'd like to have a bigger fellowship hall so we can all be together in fellowship Feel free after the service to tour this side of the building Or you can come by anytime this week, and if you have any questions about the architecture We love what the Lord allowed us to do here. We wanted a building that when people looked at it They wouldn't be able to tell Was that built in 2018 or 2018? We wanted something that was timeless because we serve a gospel that is timeless. The gospel doesn't change day by day. And so as churches are more fad driven and trend driven right now, it leads necessarily to a reworking of the gospel to keep it relevant. And what we wanted to say is the truths we preach are timeless truths. You're not going to show up tomorrow and we've changed our mind about something because the gospel is permanent. It's yay and amen in Christ Jesus. And so we wanted a building that reflected that. And so that's why we did the sort of architecture that we did. And we're really thankful that we did. I'm going to wrap up in just a minute. The PCA, as I said, it's a conservative evangelistic, evangelical Presbyterian denomination going back to 1973. We have lots of extensions throughout the world. We have a world missions arm called Mission to the World, MTW. We have a domestic missions arm called MNA, Mission North America. We have a campus ministries arm called RUF, Reformed University Fellowship. How many of you have had involvement with RUF, just out of curiosity? All right, good. We have a lot to learn about it. I never was involved in it either. The college where I went to campus did not have RUF. I was actually involved in campus outreach like you guys. But RUF is the college ministry of the PCA. The PCA has about 2,000 churches throughout the country and into Canada. Around 400,000 communicant and non-communicant members. And our budget as a, all of the churches combined that God has stewarded us with is about a billion dollars that we're responsible for. And I think we do a good job as stewards of it. Our missions organization has about 630 career missionaries in 85 countries, faithfully ministering the gospel, in most cases at great expense to themselves. As a church, we support missionaries in Germany, in Italy, in South America, and one that we supported in England just came back to America. But we as a church are committed to to world evangelization. We believe that Christ's commission, a great commission, still applies to us today. My request for you guys is to do a little bit of reading after today. The article that starts on page 10, excuse me, page 11, if you would read that, it does not take long. And then it's about the necessity, the importance of church membership. And I'd be glad to engage with anybody more if you have questions just about the role of church membership. There are many biblical arguments for church membership, but if you would read through that and then There's also an article on page 17 about how we do ministry. And then starting on page 18, just a couple of pages about kind of our distinctives as a church. And this was written by a man named Ligon Duncan, who's a very good leader in our denomination. He was the president of the seminary where I went. If you would read through those things, I'm not going to quiz you on them, but it'll help you in terms of your familiarity before next week. Just a word to those of you that are considering church membership, I want you to track with me and keep me updated on how you sense the Lord may be calling you. If you believe this may be where the Lord is calling you. We'll keep that line of communication open and hopefully, As we come to the end of the class, either Pastor Walton or I would be able to meet with you and hear your testimony, your sense of how God has worked on your life to this point and brought you to this point that you're looking for a church that proclaims the gospel. And then the next step would be for you to meet with the elders. That sounds much more intimidating than it is. They're a very easy group to get along with. They're excited to see how and where God is working. So they would just ask you some basic questions, a lot of them about how you want to use your gifts to strengthen our church and our reach into the community. And then if everybody senses that this is where God's calling you, then you would take vows of membership. during a worship service. And we're going to spend time looking more closely at those vows. But before we do, you're welcome to give them an overview. They are on page 14. Any questions before I let you go? All right. Ron, would you close us in prayer? Amen. Thank you.