Episode 30: Elders, Deacons, Members (Biblical Distinctives of a Healthy Church Part 3)

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast.

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We've done it, Eddie. What have we done? We have reached episode three -zero.

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Hey, is this as many as we did the first time that we did this podcast?

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How many did we do the first time? Yeah, we're close, man. I think we might have done like 34. Okay, so we're close to doubling ourselves up.

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Yeah, and we're full steam ahead. That's right, man. We're not going to quit it. Thirty -four podcasts this time.

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. I'm Allen Nelson, pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church.

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With me is my brother in the faith, co -laborer in the ministry, Eddie Ragsdale, First Baptist Marshal.

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How's church going, Eddie? Man, it's really going great. I know we're going to talk about something else, but I thought about mentioning this to you.

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I think both of our churches are in this stage right now where the Lord is just blessing us with many infants.

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And if we were paedo -baptists, man, our baptism numbers would be exploding. But I'll tell you what is awesome about it.

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It is noisy and it is raucous, but it is so amazing to have all of these blessings, these children in our service every week.

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And I know that some people would say, well, isn't it a disturbance? And I would say, no, this is what a household is supposed to be like.

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Yeah. And that's what the household of God is like on the Lord's Day meeting.

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We'll talk about this. We'll talk about this. Let's hold that thought. We'll talk about it.

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But I do want to mention one thing. We had a hard thing with our kids. We've got new kids coming and young kids.

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And in between Sunday school and our morning worship Sunday, man, they were just running laps.

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I had to tell them. And a couple of the kids, a couple of the regular kids, they're like, oh, we can do this.

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And I got on to them. I'm like, y 'all know you can't be running here. And, you know, I made a couple of them cry. They're little, you know, they're like three, you know,

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Gunner's son and then my son and which he's five. But anyway, they knew better.

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But these other kids are running and they're like, all of a sudden, they're like, like, whoa, you know? So anyway, you know,

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I looked at your speaking lineup for the for the next couple of months, and I'm not sure about everybody you got preaching at your church.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've actually only got one guest guest preacher coming to my church, but that's right.

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You are going to be here at the end of March. So that is what

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March the 26th. We're looking forward to it. Yeah, man. I'm excited. I'm excited to have you here with our folks and just spend a wonderful Lord's Day together.

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Well, we've been talking about biblical distinct is of a healthy church and our church has gone through what you might call a bit of a reformation.

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And so we've. Gone through five of these already in two episodes, we've gone through biblical sufficiency, biblical holiness, biblical preaching, and then we skipped a few.

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And last week we did, we did biblical missions and biblical evangelism and people can look these up on their label pretty clearly on past episodes today.

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We're going to start out with biblical leadership. And we will probably won't spend a lot of time here, but let me read this and then you all just because we've talked about this before, but it says we believe local churches are led by qualified godly men who are able to teach and the scriptures.

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These men are referred to as elders pastors, bishops, overseers these different titles make up the one office ordinarily referred to as elders or pastors and the new

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Testament. Each local church had a plurality of elders who are responsible for shepherding. God's flock as churches are able, they ought to have a plurality of elders as well.

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These pastors are equal in oversight over God's church, but each is gifted differently.

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So the main preaching duties will ordinarily fall upon one man, particularly in smaller churches.

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We believe the only other office besides pastors in the local church is that of deacons. All church members ought to be ought to serve the church, but the office of deacon is particularly designed by God for qualified men to assist elders with the physical needs of the church.

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So as to help free pastors for labor in the ministry of the word and prayer thoughts, comments.

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Yeah, you know, a couple of things I would want to mention, you know, a difference between the way we would view it and even our

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Presbyterian brothers. I'm thankful for them, but you know, they would have a distinction between what they would might call ruling elders and teaching elders.

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And I would say, if you're not a teaching elder, you're not an elder. Yeah. Because all the elders are to be able to teach.

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Now, I do think as you, as you said there, that there can be, you could have a brother who is more gifted in, you know, in the preaching and teaching of the word for the main gathering who does more of that.

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I have seen churches that tried to like perfectly divided out so that, you know, if they had three elders, you know, one every three weeks you were hearing from one of them so that they each taught exactly the same.

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I don't think that a church has to do that. Of course, I think that you, that you can have different brothers with different giftings focused in different areas, but they all should be men of equal oversight and authority.

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In the body life of the church. And the reason I would want to point that out is because I don't think there's any biblical warrant for things like lead pastor or senior pastor or associate pastor or youth pastor, or I think that you can have one of the elders who's, who's working with the youth, man, that's great.

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You can have an elder who, man, he he's, he's leading your worship, your singing time.

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And, and he's really spending a lot of time planning that part. But I think all of those are just elders pastoring and shepherding the whole flock, not, not the counseling elder and the preaching elder.

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They're just all elders. Yeah, that's right. I think, I think that's good, brother. And I think we're in agreement there.

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I think that Alexander Strzok is pretty helpful. You know, his book on, on elders pretty helpful.

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And I think that it's just, it's okay. It is okay. If you have a few elders, it's okay to say, look, this guy's, this guy's a better preacher.

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He's just better. That's right. Yeah. You know, and that's okay. And maybe he's doing more of your preaching, but the authority aspect is, you know, functionally, functionally, it will turn out that you might have an elder that has more influence as it were.

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But, but the oversight that they share, they share oversight responsibility.

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And I, I even would say a church, there's more to be done in the, in the worship, in the

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Lord's day meeting than just the preaching of the word. So I look at our service, the way that we do it now.

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And if we had three elders, all three of us could be involved in the Lord's day meeting the way that we do it now.

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Like it's unfortunate that I'm the only elder as it is, because there's more work to be done than what

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I could do. And I'm saying, even in our words, they meeting. So I have another brother who opens the service leads in a prayer, reads a called worship and all those kinds of things.

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An elder could be doing that. Now I'm thankful. I don't think an elder has to be doing that, but another elder could, you know, we do the

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Lord's supper every Sunday. At the conclusion of our service. And I, and I would actually prefer that the preaching elder and the one doing

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Lord supper were different. But right now, but just because of where we're at it, you know,

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I'm doing both, but I think it would be healthier for the church if there were, if we were able to switch off on those things.

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And obviously we both agree that it's okay for a church to just have one elder.

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It's not, you know, wrong, but it's not the best. And depending on how it, it might just be out of necessity.

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If you have a church of 10 people there, you know, there might only be one qualified man, but, but as you get a little bit bigger and as you have qualified men, there should be, there should be plurality of elders.

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Yeah. And I'll just tell you from where I am, from where we are as a church and, and I will readily confess this could simply be the inadequacy of the current pastor.

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But I don't feel like I could shepherd anymore. I don't, I don't sometimes feel like I'm shepherding well enough.

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The people that the Lord has brought to us, I need help. And so I don't know why any,

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I can't imagine why a pastor wouldn't want other brothers to help with the work of shepherding

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God's people. Yeah. Let me just read a couple of spots. Acts 14, 23, when they had appointed elders for them in every church elders, plural church, singular, when they had pointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the

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Lord in whom they had believed. So that's acts 14, 23 and Titus one, of course,

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Paul says verse five, this is why I left you in Crete. So you might put what remained into order and appointed elders in every town.

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As I directed you elders, a plural town, the singular, the churches in a church and in each town, of course, then in acts 20, you remember that verse 17 now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus.

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They called the elders of the church to come to him. And then you have, of course,

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Philippians one. And this, I actually just preached on that on Sunday. Yeah. To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons.

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So, and that idea of with there is the idea that the elders and deacons are included in this greater body of the saints there in Philippi.

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Oh, you mean that you mean the elders should be members of the church. That's right. Well, and, and I think this is important because I've known pastors before who almost speak about their church.

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Like it's a separate group of people from them. Those people at, you know, first Baptist Marshall.

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Well, no, no, no. First Baptist Marshall is us. I'm a part of first Baptist Marshall.

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Not like they, not like they're just those, those people over there separated from, from who, who

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I am. No, that's, that's a part of who we are. We're one family of faith. And so I, I do think it's important that the elders not see themselves as some outside class, but as a part of that community of faith, that local church.

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Yeah. Good. All right. What about deacons? Well, we all know that deacons are to be a ruling body over every

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Baptist church. They're like, they're the Senate. That's right. They're the Senate. Oh, no,

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I was just telling our church this, this Sunday, because I was dealing with that passage in Philippians chapter one, that so often that's what has happened in Baptist churches is that we've created, we've called them deacons, but they basically function like a board of ruling elders, like the

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Presbyterians would have. And then they hire a preacher to come and man, you come and you preach to us on Sunday and don't really mess with anything because the deacon board will run everything.

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And that's not the case here at our church, but I know that that is the case in many Baptist churches, but it is not the case in the

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Bible. Grow the church preacher, as long as it's people that look and act and think like us. That's right.

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And, and it doesn't make us uncomfortable. Yeah. It's just, and I'm going to say this. One of the reasons that has happened is because of bad pastors.

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Pastors have come into the church. They have stayed a year or two years, three years, and then they've left and that's happened and happened and happened.

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And so you look for these men of stability, because you always look at, you know, there's a vacuum of no power is probably not a great word, but there's a vacuum there.

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Like there's stability. There's be stability. So you look to these men, these older, be responsible.

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It's really about responsibility. Who's going to take care of us. And so you look to these men as the leaders in the church.

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And so one asked, one problem is with pastors go and stay, you know, and then another issue is, of course, deacons misunderstanding.

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They really, our friend, Jim Ellif wrote a great article. You look it up on CC is a CCW today.

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Ccw today. But he wrote a great article on deacons. How essentially they are like the office.

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You ever watch the office. Yeah. Dwight. You're not assistant manager. He's assistant to the manager.

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Okay. Yeah. That's what deacons. Right. I mean, they are assistants to they're not assistant pastors, but they're really in a large part assistance to the pastors.

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To help with some of these, I don't want to call them mundane, but, but physical tasks that would kind of detract the past.

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You know, like for example, you're going on a mission trip. Deacons ought to be able to step up and say,

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Hey, let me take care of the plane ticket. Let me help take care of the plane tickets and their arrangements and those kinds of things.

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Or you're doing an event. Let me help take, make sure that I get the table set up. You know, you focus on your studies and your prayer or they ought to be, they ought to be people in the church are helping put out fires, you know, not causing them.

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Yeah. And all sorts of things. But, but I do believe, actually, we didn't talk about this before. I believe that deacon is office for men.

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I know there's some. Yes. In there because of first Timothy three, but I have two that talks about wives, their wives.

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I have two responses to that. So some say, well, it can be men or women, two responses. One. I don't,

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I think grammatically, I actually think that we should consider that deacons and elders wives.

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I think Paul just kind of interjects that in there. And then here's another thing because of what I think deacons do, I think it does not make sense for it to be a woman because they have to work so closely with the pastors that, that you really don't want that to be a situation where it'd be a man and a woman.

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That's right. Alone, having to work on some tasks together. So, so I think biblically and functionally, it makes sense.

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Anything else you want to say about the leadership of the church matters? Yeah. Well, one other thing

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I would point out just because I just preached from that Philippians passage, it's even some of it is understanding the language that we use, you know, in Philippians chapter one, verse one, there

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Paul refers to himself and Timothy as do loss, which the

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ESV translates as servants. The NAS translates as bond servants. The idea is slaves, right?

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The idea is slaves. And then it translates the word, the con us as deacon.

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But really the idea of that word is a servant or a minister, but not the kind of minister.

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Like we normally think of the ministry as the pastor, but it's the person to minister to, like you said, physical needs, administrative needs, these kinds of direct needs of the body so that the pastors can be about the spiritual health and oversight of the church, because right there in that passage, what does

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Paul call the pastors overseers and there to be overseeing those spiritual needs so that the

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D and the deacons, they afford that to the pastors by assisting them, by taking care of the physical needs, the administrative needs.

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I just, it's a, it's a wonderful and beautiful way that God has put together the care of his flock.

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Yeah. Well, what about, what about a pastor? Don't pastors need pastors?

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That's what you have. Doms for though, right? That's that's right. Yeah. No, seriously.

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In Southern Baptist life, this has been talked about. Well, pastors need pastors. And so these associational missionaries have been referred to as pastor of pastors.

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But in the Bible pastors do have pastors and they're called pastors.

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Yeah. The other elders. Well, yeah. Well, think about even that pattern.

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Once again, I know I keep coming back to Philippians one, one, but you know, you know, any

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Southern Baptist churches that are adamant that you, they ought to have a singular deacon. I don't know of any,

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I mean, they all have plurality of deacons. Yep. But in the same passage where he calls for plurality of deacons,

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Paul calls for plurality. I can't speak of overseers of elders.

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Yep. So why? And I think I got that argument from you, but it's, it's, it's just true.

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It's just true. We had to discuss that here, you know, and that was why are we so adamant on plurality of deacons, you know?

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And one guy told me he was like, well, because there were seven deacons chosen. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

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I was like, that isn't that argument. No. So it's interesting how we hold on to the plurality of deacons, but not elders.

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But in one sense, deacons are easier because you just, for a deacon, you just need godly men that, but they don't have to be able to teach, you know?

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So in one sense, it make, it might make sense that, okay, there's four more guys qualified to be a deacon. However, I would say this, a lot of times a deacon requirements in the church are, are terrible.

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They just gotta be maybe an older guy who's a business owner or something, you know?

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Right. And it hasn't been divorced. Yeah. A lot of churches, if they find a guy in their church that hadn't been divorced, then he's the closest thing qualified.

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So they ordain him. Yeah. And, and we, and this is what we're talking about in our conference too.

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Let's see, when does this come out? This comes out. Oh, this comes out the week of the conference. So what we're talking about in our conference, which when you're listening, this, this will come up Friday.

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Tomorrow night will be a, a, a round table at grace Bible church. And then we'll have the, we'll have the conference

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Friday and Saturday, but that's one thing we're talking about is the character of the elder. You know, we, we seem to focus on, you know, we mess up with deacons, but we mess up with elders too.

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We seem to focus on the charisma or the communicate communication.

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I'm trying to think of a alliteration, but not the character. That's right. Well, let's move on to worship.

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How about that? So it sounds good. Next distinctive biblical. Oh, actually the next one was membership.

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Well, let's talk about membership. Then biblical membership. This is what

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I wrote. We are a Baptist church, which we equate with biblical. We believe that membership in a local church is a biblical and precious privilege.

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Membership in the local church is limited to regenerate persons. That is believers who have been baptized as believers by immersion upon a credible profession of faith.

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Membership in the local church includes a covenantal commitment to weekly assembly with the body, as well as covenant team to watch over one another and holy love to discipline one another when necessary.

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And to contribute financially to the needs and mission of the church. We believe all church members, both men and women each having various gifting must serve the body of Christ for his glory and the advancement of his kingdom.

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No church will be successful in the eyes of the Lord without both holy men and holy women committed to the cause of Christ thoughts.

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I think that your, your use of the word covenanting is so important because I think a lot of the idea of meaningful membership has been lost in our churches because people don't even know what the covenant of their church is.

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And if we do not get back to the place where our churches are, the members of our churches know what they are covenanting to and know what the expectations of responsibility and accountability are in the local church that they're joining.

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And when it comes to this, I'm all for individual local churches going to the

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Bible and constructing a covenant that they believe is biblical. Like I don't think every church has to have an identical covenant, but once you've constructed it, once everyone has agreed, this is our covenant as local church, obey it, obey it, make it as simple as you want to make it, but obey it.

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If you're not willing to obey it, you might as well not have the church covenant because it is the document that you use to really look at what does meaningful life look like in this local church.

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Now we know we want to base it on everything has to come from scripture, but this covenant gives you a place where you can look and say, you know what?

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I agreed to love my brothers and sisters this way. Well, let me, let me make a one quick biblical case.

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If you want to look at Galatians six for a covenant in Galatians six starts out brothers.

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If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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Keep watching yourself lest you to be tempted, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

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Now let me stop there for a second. Not going to make the covenant argument yet, but I'm fixing to, let me stop there for a second and say, you can't really obey this without formal church membership.

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You can't understand who's really in and who's not. Unless you think bear one another's burden means you have to bear everyone, every

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Christian's burden around the world today. There is application there of course in a sense there's some application there, but that is, it's actually much more tangible application than that.

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He's talking about specifically within the local church. We are to bear one another's burdens and we can't do that if we don't know who each other are.

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That's right. But then when you talk about, okay, but really covenantal. Okay. Well, if you go down to verse 10,

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Paul says, Galatians 6, 10. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone.

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And especially to those who are, who are of the household of faith.

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Now in the scriptures, this word for household is it's used. It's just a common word for household.

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And it's used a few times. It's used a couple of times just to talk about a physical household.

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You know, like if where's that in Timothy, we're talking if a man doesn't take care of his own household, you know, he's worse than an infidel or whatever, but then it's also used like first Timothy three 15, the household of God.

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And I think in Ephesians two, perhaps anyway, it's used a few different times, but if you think about the word household in the scriptures, similar to what a household is today, except I would say a little bit more inclusive in the sense that you also talked about like slaves and we're part of the household and all that, you know, but each one of these ways to get into a household is covenantal.

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So for example, marriage, that's covenantal adoption.

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That's covenantal. Now, the only thing you might say is like, well, what about having physical offspring?

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That's not necessarily covenantal though. I would say two things. I would say that one, there is an implicit covenantal aspect to that and that you're, this is your child.

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You're promising to watch over them, to love them, to bring them up the nurture and admission of the

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Lord. But then if I can go to a modern analogy, you don't get out of the hospital, you know, without signing a bunch of papers, you know, this is, you know, and, and so all the point in that is all these ideas about a household are formal and covenantal.

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And it's not by accident that Paul uses this language to talk about the church.

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And so church membership ought to be formal and it ought to be covenantal.

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Yeah. And, you know, even going back to our discussion of elders and pastors in the church, how are pastors supposed to know shepherd the flock of God that is among them.

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If they don't know who the sheep are, if there's no identifiable way to recognize who they have responsibility for before the

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Lord, how are they supposed to do that? And coming back to this household idea, if you think about it, every home is like a little church where the, where the, the, the father is to shepherd his family.

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And every church is a collection of Christian households where the elders, the pastors, the overseers are there to shepherd.

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Well, the household of God. And so we, and that's why even in the

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Lord's instruction about the qualifications for elders, elders, elders are to be men who have their households in order, because if they can't shepherd their own families, how are they going to care for the household of God?

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How are they going to care for the bride of Christ? You know, I think it was Votie Bacchum who said something to the effect that the, you know, that today we churches look at resumes and they don't consider the home in the

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New Testament. The home was the resume. You know, and so we want to have this idea that if, if we really see the church as, you know,

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Austin, you know, we live in a day when people like to use the word family, you know, it's our church family.

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Well, that's great because it is, this is God's household. And in such a way, we ought to have elders over the family because we are all on a part of one, one family.

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And that is going to mean covenant ties. It's going to mean closer ties than just, I decided to show up this week.

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Yeah. Let me say this too. I've been in conversations before with folks just having a hard time finding a solid church.

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And I get that. But let me say this is you read the scriptures, look at a church like Corinth.

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I would not consider that church that I necessarily would be my first choice to go to.

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Right. But if you lived in Corinth, you'd go there. Cause that's all there was. That's right. That's right.

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But what some people end up doing though, is they go to all these churches. They can't find anything.

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That's what they want. And then they just like, well, I don't got to go to church. And I, and, and I would say, man, you don't understand church membership.

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I wrote this the other day. Let me, let me, let me read it to you. The expectation of the Christian life and the new

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Testament. Okay. A few points submitted to qualified elders.

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Okay. Hebrews 13, 17, for example, informal covenantal membership with the local church.

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What we just read gathering weekly with the local church on the Lord's day. Hebrews 10, 25 example, watching over and being watched over by fellow church members.

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Hebrews 3, 12, and 13 faithfully giving to the mission of the local church. First Corinthians 16, one and two having fellows, fellow church members in your home.

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First Peter four, nine through 11. And I wrote, there are other things to mention. And as important as individual prayer and Bible reading are, should be daily in the life of the

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Christian. And as crucial as family devotions are, should be a regular part of our lives. You can not have new

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Testament Christianity apart from the above. There is no new Testament Christianity outside the local church.

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And so biblical church membership is, is ought to be a priority. And so if you listen to this, you're not really plugged up in church or whatever.

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You've got to fix that. And if you can't find a church around you, you might have to move.

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You may have to move. Now, I think that there are some bad things that happen in some churches, but it doesn't necessarily make them not a church right now.

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There's some things that happen. I'm like, okay, that's not a church, but if there are things that's going on, like, okay, that's not my preference.

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I even think this is bad. I don't think it's good, but it's still a church. It's still a pastor.

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It's still, we're observing the ordinances where the word is preached. You may have to just take a deep breath and just go, but you can't just stay home.

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And another possibility, if you find yourself in a place where there legitimately are no churches, no legitimate churches.

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Well, there are probably other believers there. I mean, unless you are so rule, that there are no other people there.

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Maybe you're in the outskirts of rural Montana, and you are the only people that live within 50 miles.

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But if you are in an area with any kind of population and there are no legitimate churches, well, then maybe you should plant a church even.

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Yeah. Maybe there are other believers who are also looking for a legitimate church, and you may need to find those people, and you may need to plant a church that's going to honor the

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Lord Jesus Christ in that place. And it may be small, but that doesn't mean that it won't honor the

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Lord, especially if we're the rural church podcast, that'd be where you may need to plant a rural church for that very purpose.

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Amen. I would just encourage, go through a good channels on that. Don't just say, well, my house is a church now.

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Right. No, I'm not saying that. Yeah. And all that. Yeah. Seek a church to partner with you to plant your church elders that can give oversight over that.

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I don't know what happened. I thought we were going to get through more of these, but it's about time to close. Are we going to try to push through worship or do you want to, you want to save it?

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What do you think? Hey, you're the producer, whatever you want to do, man. Yeah. Let's, I guess let's save it.

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I guess if y 'all want to listen to worship, you're going to have to do it next time because kind of on Wednesdays, I do a zoom meeting with, with these brothers in Mexico and it's good.

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So I kind of on a time crunch, so I don't want to just rush through it, but I was going to get back to this point and we'll kind of give a preview.

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One of the things that we believe about worship, I said a whole, this thought the beginning of the episode is that children ought to be in worship.

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That's right. They learn so much. And listen, I'm just, I can tell you from experience these last few weeks, we've had a lot of kids and a lot of crying.

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Sometimes you've got different levels of maturity with parents too. You got some parents, their kids are very well behaved.

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If they get in trouble, you know, they take them outside and talk to them or whatever. If, if they, but then you have others that your kids are a little bit rowdy.

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And, and so you just have to deal with all that, but it's like, it's a beautiful sound. It's a good thing, you know, but we'll talk about that more next week as we, we talk about worship, but that's good.

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I hope it's helpful. You know, we have to get the leadership and the membership, right of the church. And, and, and here's the thing we've been saying at our church,

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Christ is worthy. Wherever you are, Christ is worthy of a healthy church in your community. That's right.

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Worth the labor to get these things. Be patient. And it can be hard.

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Be patient. It's worth it. Go ahead. That's what I was going to say. It's not going to be easy.

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Yeah. If you have this idea that, well, if, if, if it's all the product of the

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Holy spirit and the work of God, then it ought to just happen easily. No, no, it's, it's not going to be easy.

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It's going to be, there's going to be work. There's going to be intentionality. There's going to be effort.

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There's going to be really a bearing with one another's burdens. Even as we read there in Galatians chapter six, all, and that's not easy.

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It is not easy to bear with one another. It's not. If it was Paul, wouldn't have had to tell the

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Galatians that he had to tell that because it's hard. Yeah, but it is. But like you said, Christ is worthy and brothers and sisters.

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It's the best thing we will ever experience in Christ. In this life is to be in a committed, uh, godly covenanted church in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. It's, it's what he's given us. It's a blessing from the Lord. Amen, brother. Amen.

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Well, let me give one last plug. If you're listening to this, by the time you're listening to this tomorrow night, Thursday, March 2nd, there'll be a round table with Mike stone,

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Tom Askell and Owen strand at grace Bible church in Conway, Arkansas Friday.

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There will be March 3rd. There will be a pastor's lunch at first Baptist church in Perryville, Arkansas with Mike stone and Tom Askell.

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And then Friday night and Saturday morning, Tom Askell and Mike stone will be at Perryville second

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Baptist church for our Bible conference, Conway Perry association Bible conference. And then Sunday, March 5th,

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Dr. Tom Askell will be preaching the morning service at Perryville second Baptist church. So last minute for some of you, maybe, but if you're listening to this, we'd love to have you join us.

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You can go to www .perryvillesbc .org to get more info on that.

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You got anything else, Eddie? We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house.

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The church is what God's doing. This, this is his work. If we really believe what

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Ephesians says, we are the masterpiece of God. How are you going to respond?