A Truth in Love Interview

The Cross of Christ and the Call to Preach It

Cling to the cross, then put both arms around it, hold to the crucified, and never let him go. Come afresh to the cross at this moment and rest there now and forever. Then, with the power of God resting upon you, go forth and preach the cross.

Welcome to the Truth in Love Podcast

Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast. We are thankful that you are with us this evening. Tonight is another special interview. Stick with us. Welcome again to the Truth in Love podcast. If you haven't already, go to laborsconference .com.

Be looking forward to next April, April 2025, the last weekend in April, for the Labors Conference. Take up that cross. The registration is open. We would love to see you there. It's going to be in Newton, North Carolina.

So go to that website and register. The comment line is open. If you are watching now, or if you're watching or listening later, let us know. Say hi or ask a question. We'd love to hear from you. Dan and I have another special guest, and I'm grateful to have him with us, and I'm looking forward to hearing more from him.

Pastor James Lynch. James, how you doing, brother? I'm doing well tonight. How are y 'all? I'm doing good. I'm tired.

Yeah, yeah, I understand that.

We've had a bunch of weather up here, but I believe I'm most tired because we just, I just finished up a semester of seminary yesterday. So we got done four classes, got six more. Six more than you're done?

Probably not. Dr. Dan has a ring to it that I may have to go for. But so far, that'll be it for this degree anyway. Nice. Dan is a super hard worker, and I.

Look up to him and his efforts in his school and the work that he's doing. I appreciate him being with me on the podcast and the work that he does for the school and the preaching that he does and the work that he does with his family.

He's a good brother, and I appreciate him.

Testimony and Conversion

So,.

To you, Brother James Lynch, you are in Boone, North Carolina, so I'm not gonna steal any of the thunder. I'll go ahead and ask the first question. Share with us your testimony. Let us know how God saved you.

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Well, I can't point to a single day where I was born again. I know that that day happened. I know that God has given me the new birth and given me his spirit, but I don't I don't have a memory of a particular conversion experience or a crisis moment in my life where I was converted.

I mean, I can point to a lot of moments where I felt like the Lord did a new work or humbled me or sanctified me in a moment and had new experiences of his grace, but I don't know when I was converted.

When I was raised in a... My parents divorced when I was very young, when I was three, and but they were both involved in my life. They both loved me very much, lived in the same town. I spent time with both of them, but I didn't have a holistic Christian upbringing.

There was not a sense of family religion. No family worship, things like that, but I did go to church. My mom made sure we went to church just about every Sunday. I don't really ever remember hearing the gospel, though, going to that church.

I don't know if it was just because I was spiritually dead or I was very young or because it wasn't preached, because it was a Southern Baptist Church and there are many, many, many faithful Southern Baptist churches.

But since then, since that time, they had left to be part of what's called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. And so they had gone a more liberal direction, and I don't know how much that was happening then.

But I do remember the first time that I have a memory of hearing the gospel clearly. I was actually at my grandmother's house, and we were sitting in her room watching Charles Stanley on TV, and I remember him explaining the plan of salvation.

And I thought, I didn't know that's how you got to heaven. I didn't know that's how your sins were forgiven, that Christ paid for my sins on the cross, and all I need to do is trust in him. And it was eye-opening.

And like I said, it wasn't really a crisis moment for me, or I didn't, you know, see any cloven tongue descend from heaven and rest on it. It was nothing like that. But I remember hearing that and thinking, wow, something's there.

And then I got involved in a youth group in middle school that some people had invited me to. And I think I had a typical experience that many young Southerners raised in churches that emphasize conversion and revival, which are wonderful things, have where I probably said what's called the sinner's prayer, you know, a hundred times in that youth group, and went to the altar several times.

And I think I had an unhelpful focus on, am I doing this right? Am I repenting enough? Is it real and very experiential type of thinking? And then, you know, finished high school, went to college and started dating my now wife, who I had really, really liked, had a crush on in high school.

But she was more smart and wise and godly than me. So she was not very interested then. But in college, we started dating. And basically, one day she said, I'd really like to read the Bible. Do you have any suggestions for how to go about that?

I know there's different plans and approaches. And I had, you know, I had never read the whole Bible. I'd read lots of parts. But I said, well, let's read it together, of course. And let's just start at Genesis and go all the way to the end.

And so we did that in a year from August 1st to July 31st of the next year. And we just read the Bible cover to cover out loud over the phone each day because we were in different states. And so just read three or four chapters.

And it was so, so formative. And I finally began to understand the great story of God, that there was one story, that there was one people of God, that God was sovereign, that he chose his people, that he did everything to save them, that we were helpless without him.

But he still loved us. And while we were weak, he sent Christ to die for us. And it was during that year that I really began to yearn for a deeper relationship with God. It's during that year that I felt called to seminary and to go into some form of ministry.

And it was, we then, I went to seminary. I got connected to a good local church. My wife and I got in, my now wife and I got engaged. We just began serving and just really throwing ourselves into kingdom work.

And we got married. And then we had, I graduated seminary. We hadn't had children yet, but I figured after seminary, I would just kind of step right into the pastorate. I feel like that was the picture maybe that I had imagined in my head or that someone had led me to believe in seminary.

You go through this step by step process, you get your MDiv and bam, there's going to be a pastorate waiting for you at the end. And as many of us found out, it wasn't quite that simple. And so I ended up working for 10 years at a Chick-fil-A restaurant as a manager.

We were blessed with now five, but during that time, four wonderful children that we have. The oldest will turn seven next month and just kept pursuing ministry in whatever ways we could. Began to really throw ourselves into family discipleship and doing daily family worship and catechism and these crazy things that I'd never heard or encountered growing up.

But realized that in the Bible and in church history, we have this treasure trove of godly ways of the old paths that we can walk in and that God's faithful in walking these paths to bless us. And so we've just been cultivating a Christian family and which requires with two centers leading five centers, daily repentance and daily forgiveness.

But it's been wonderful. It's been busy. It's been happy. And we're super grateful to be where we are walking with the Lord and now with me pastoring a church.

Seminary, Family Worship, and Preparation for Ministry

So I'm, I'm nearing the end of my seminary journey as well. I'm also going through the process of ordination with the RPCNA. So I'm doing different exams and brightened papers and, you know, talking with folks, getting asked to preach all over the place.

So we're kind of interested in asking folks about their journey into pastoral ministry. Like, what did your preparation process look like? Obviously you said you went to seminary, but what did it look like?

You know, the type of study you did, where'd you go to school? And how did that, that, a lot of the stuff I've been finding out is that seminary, while helpful, isn't where I was getting the best. I said that the most practical training was, is actually coming through, you know, working with my pastors and stuff.

So how does that look for you? How did you get your start in pastoral ministry?

Yeah, that's, that's a good question because yeah, seminary is just, it's, it's important. I would never denigrate it, but, but it is just a piece and it's not even the biggest piece for preparing. So I did get an MDiv.

Um, and then actually I took a year and a half off and then I went back to, um, do a PhD program. And, uh, focusing on Christian ethics, I thought I might want to teach. And, uh, when I started that PhD, I had one newborn.

And then by the time I got to four children, which was less than five years later and working a overtime job and preaching every week, I felt like I can't do this anymore responsibly. So I talked to my advisor and he said, well, do you want to be a pastor or do you want to have a PhD more?

And I said, I want to be a pastor. I don't care about the letters behind my name. He said, well, I don't, I had already done all my classes and comprehensive exams and mentorship. He said, why don't you just take a THM, which is like a research master's degree, a master of theology and, and head out.

And after I did that, I haven't looked back. I have enormous peace. And so I encourage you in your pursuit of the doctorate, but I don't think I'm ever going back to seminary, but yeah, like you said, it's, it's so much more outside of that.

For me, you know, the most important thing, I think the most important thing for any young man or old man, that's considering a call or, or discerning whether they've truly been called to ministry. Is to be, uh, the three spheres that you want to really be seeking the Lord in and serving is serving the Lord in your church, plugging into a local Bible believing church, um, leading your family.

Well, I just can't emphasize enough how important daily family worship has been for us reading the Bible with your wife, praying with your children, letting them see you repent, singing together. Um, and then just pursuing the Lord in your own devotion and prayer life and studies, whether it lines up perfectly with, you know, what you're doing in seminary or not.

Um, cause sometimes, you know, I mean, seminary is a, is a shotgun type of approach. And sometimes you might not be reading the books that your pastor would like you to read or you really want to read.

And, you know, there's different approaches to that. One is save all that until you're done and just throw yourself in your studies. My approach was do what I need to, to do the job well in seminary. But if I have any extra time to spend it on the stuff that I, it was either in my local church or that I felt that would, would benefit me more.

Um, so actually one interesting thing that we did that I don't even know if in the moment I was actively thinking, well, this is what I need to prepare me for the pastorate. But, um, we were, my wife and I were both in grad school and every single month we made our budget every single month, you know, it was red.

Uh, we didn't have enough money. We were scrounging around for food and it was just a trying time as two poor students. And one of my pastors said, my lease was coming up to an end and we were trying to figure out where we need to live.

And one of my pastors said, well, why don't you just come live with us? And, you know, we were just kind of sitting around the table and we all kind of laughed. Oh yeah, that'd be fun. Wouldn't it? And then like a week later I called him.

I was like, were you serious the other night? He said, yeah, why don't you just come live with us? And so me and my wife, before we had children, we lived with, um, one of our pastors and his wife and his four children.

And it was, it was wonderful. It was just a wonderful time. And, uh, very generous man. I mean, they didn't charge us anything to live there and it just totally involved us in the family. We weren't some separate group.

We did whatever the family did. We helped with the meals. We helped with the kids. We went to the parties together. And I think we need more of that is pastors are saying, why don't you just come live with me?

And that's what Jesus did with his disciples. And when he first calls his disciples, you know, they, he says, follow me. And, and, and, uh, you know, when John and Andrew start following him, actually, they see him walking by John the Baptist says behold, the lamb of God.

They, they leave John. They start following him. Jesus turns around and says, what are you seeking? And they say, master, where are you spending the night? I mean, they're already bought in, sold completely there.

I'm wherever you're going. I need to be with you because you're the real rabbi. And so I think we need more of that. And that's, that's really important. Um, and then as I, uh, just continued to grow.

And as I got done with my MDiv and was in my other school, you know, I really started to see more and more of my work as a ministry. I worked at a Chick-fil-A, like I said, for over 10 years, I had a boss who was a believer and he, uh, he basically, you know, he didn't put any roadblocks in my way to sharing the gospel or to discipling others.

He kind of gave me a green light. So I would just see that as a ministry, whether it's a, you know, teen girl in high school, who's unexpectedly pregnant and doesn't have people speaking truth in her life.

And I was able to be there or whether it's people, I met people who had literally never been in a church before or never heard the gospel. And so one thing I did was I did all our onboarding and all our orientations.

I would just, I would share the gospel with every single orientation person that I had come through the doors and I would give them, I would, I would get tracks from chapel library. And I'd give them, um, some tracks, uh, I gave them, I mainly gave away stuff from Horatious Bonar and we would talk through it together.

And I mean, it was just, it was awesome. It was a great opportunity. Not everyone has that. I think a lot of people don't have it, but I think a lot of people might have it and they don't take it. So you're seeing everything I could as a ministry.

And then the last, well, I'd say two more things I really did to try to prepare for the ministry was one. I looked for, uh, preaching opportunities and any preaching opportunity I was ever given. I took, I mean, anything it could be.

I mean, I preached in independent churches. I preached in United Methodist churches. I preached in SBC churches, uh, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, wherever I needed to go. Um, and the way I did that and an opportunity that a lot of Baptists have before them is I got connected with our associations director of missions and, and I don't know how it is in the RPCNA, but in the Southern Baptist convention, there's always a lot of empty pulpits.

Um, and so I just told him anytime you have someone that doesn't have a preacher on a Sunday, please let me know and we'll go. And my wife was so, so supportive watching the kids. Well, you know, no, we always worked together, but strange new environment.

And I leave her in the pew with all the kids, with new people. And she just, she was an absolute rock star and that was super helpful. And then I was long answer for the last thing I'll say, I'm not a big fan of, you know, there's a movement.

I feel like in some of our circles to go to all the conferences, to meet all the people, to do all the podcasts, to do all the blogs, the local church is where it is. Um, but I also have one exception.

Um, I had a very, very sweet, um, couple, uh, Lutheran Missouri centered, conservative, godly couple, elderly man and woman who I was preaching at this church. I only preached there four weeks. Um, and at the end of that time, it was Christmas and they gave me a Christmas card and inside the card, it was a check for a thousand dollars.

And they said, just use this for whatever you need for your ministry that you want to do that you can't do otherwise. And I had been reading a lot of books from banner of truth. And I said, I want to go to the banner of truth ministers conference.

And so I went and, um, that was, that was transformative too. So I go to the banner of truth ministers conference. I'll give them a plug every year. And I've met, uh, some really amazing brothers. Um, two of them there ordained me, um, that I had met there, uh, got connected with great opportunities and I'm on text chat with.

With a couple of those brothers, we talk multiple times every single week. So find godly, like-minded brothers, even if they're in other States. And those are kind of all the things I would say for how I've prepared.

Did you go to the one at Elizabeth town college?

Yes. Yes.

Yeah. I went there, I think it was 2019, 2018. So yeah, yeah, it was, it was great. Great.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

It's good stuff.

Yeah.

Well, I hope you, I'm going next year too. I hope you can come next year. That'd be cool.

I don't know if I will be able to or not, but.

It's a lot. I mean, yeah, you have to, you got to pick and choose.

Kings Cross Reformed Church, CREC, and the New Birth

Well, you were at Kings cross reform church in Boone, North Carolina currently. So tell us, tell us about how you came to Kings cross reform church. And also from my understanding, talking with you, there's a link there with CREC.

And you may want to explain what that is.

Sure.

And you were, you were, there was an association and now there's not the association anymore, so let us in on some of that.

Sure.

Well, um, I had done a year of pulpit supply at a church that didn't have a pastor in Durham where we were living. And if there was ever a Sunday where I wasn't preaching, um, we were looking for another, uh, church home.

We had been part of a wonderful church there in Durham, uh, first Baptist Durham pastored by Andy Davis and a great church, but, uh, we had come to more reformed convictions over a few year period. And during that year of stated supply, we had really become convinced of.

Essentially Presbyterianism and all that that implies we'd become convinced of pedo baptism, baptizing infants and, uh, and other things. And so we knew, uh, it was important for us to find a church home where we could flourish within those convictions, serve, um, well, and be served well.

And so we had been visiting some other churches and, uh, we'd visited one CREC church and we liked some things about it, very friendly people. And they had let me know they were planting a church here in the mountains.

I said, oh, that's great. And, uh, the pastor said, we're really looking for a pulpit supply because we, we, we haven't found a pastor and we need someone to fill the pulpit. He said, you think you could do that?

I said, absolutely. You know, sign me up anytime. Uh, and so I come up here to this church plant just to preach and wonderful connection, I mean, really love the people, love the area, I loved the worship and just, I gave a few messages.

And so the church, uh, some of the families in the church, they really felt like we had a good connection and thought that it might be a good fit to call me as pastor. Um, but the sending church and, uh, was not as much in favor just because we had some doctrinal differences, uh, that I would say are pretty important.

Um, and I think the biggest doctrinal differences really boiled down to an emphasis on, and a clarity regarding the new birth, what it means to be born again. And the way we understand scripture at King's cross, and we're very clear about this, this is a very top tier issue for us is that, uh, the new birth is a sovereign work of God.

Uh, it is done totally by his spirit. When God's spirit, uh, enters in to a center, takes out the old dead heart, gives that center a brand new heart that will love God and obey God is a total work of grace and it's irrevocable.

It can't be undone. When you get born again, you're never going to be unborn again. You're never going to spiritually die again, that God who began a good work in you is going to carry it to completion.

There's an absolute guarantee of perseverance for those that are truly born from above. And the sending church, uh, just wasn't quite as, as clear on that. And I never, I never got an exact nailed down answer.

You know, is it more baptismal regeneration? Is it more what's called presumptive regeneration? I don't know exactly where they would fall on all the details, but I think the big difference was the focus that a lot of people have in the CREC and not all of them, um, but especially in what's kind of known as the federal vision camp.

It's such a focus on the corporate reality of being drawn into the regenerate body. And this idea that if you're a part of the church through her sacraments, through baptism, especially, then you are part of the born again body of Christ, which of course we would say, uh, yes, the church is corporately regenerated.

That that's true. Um, but in the circles that we were connected to and the people that we were associated with in that church, those church planting days, the corporate realities and the objective realities were really clouding out that inner subjective individual experience of the new birth.

And that was just a big concern for us. And so that was brought up in, in a number of conversations with the sending church and some of the, uh, men in our church plant. And we just saw things differently.

Um, we, we held, we hold to a evangelical historic church view. Uh, we believe what the Puritans believed about the new birth. Um, we believe what reformed Baptist and Presbyterians have always believed from, from what I can understand from history.

And they just had a different view. And so it, that was important enough for us to part ways on it and go a different.

Way.

And because of that, um, once the member families that were on that more, I would say traditional evangelical side, once they were no longer part of that CREC church plant, they were released, uh, on their own.

Uh, they said, well, let's not give up. God's called us to do this work. God has put this desire within us. God's opened up doors for us. And look, now we have a man who we think could possibly serve as a minister of the gospel.

And so they reached out to me again, after having some conversations with the home church and said, can you just come up on Sunday and every Sunday after that and preach for us and we'll have conversations and we'll discern is the Lord really in this?

Are we really going to go forward? And that was in February. And then in April, we moved up here and, uh, we have been sharing the gospel, living in community, uh, seeing God's spirit work. And it's just been a unexpected providence of God.

I never thought it would work out this way. And so it's wonderful. And so now we are independent or non-denominational. We may join a denomination in the future or, or another network, um, just in the reformed stream.

But right now we, we're happy to be where we are. If I didn't answer some aspect, I know I kind of rambled, let me know and I'll, we can circle back to something.

No, that was good. And, and I feel like you generated several more questions and that response, we could, we could go on for a little bit longer just on some of the things that you talked about, but we can probably get to the other questions tonight and maybe have those conversations later.

Sure.

Sure.

Hurricane Helene and the Church’s Relief Efforts

So, uh, your church, um, being up in the mountains of North Carolina, y 'all just had a, a major, uh, hurricane come through and, uh, end of September.

That's right.

Um, uh, how did that affect y 'all? Um, cause I know it hit, it hit different depending on the topography of where you were, uh, how close you were to streams, you know, what the valley looked like and the different stuff like that.

But how, how did y 'all do how the folks in your church do? And, uh, just kind of, kind of tell us how, how that went down for you guys up there.

Yeah.

In Watauga County.

That's right.

Yeah.

We're in Watauga. Um, so Watauga didn't hit, didn't get hit quite as bad as some other counties, but we still did get hit quite hard. Um, yeah, we, we, it's kind of funny because me and a few of the ladies from our church had gone out to Appalachian state to do some evangelism on that Thursday and it was raining a lot.

We were out there just getting soaked, handing out Bibles and sharing Christ and kind of thought, Oh, what a, it's kind of a funny circumstance. Like what's going on? No one knew. I mean, we had heard about a hurricane, but no one knew what was going to happen.

We went home, dried off, went to bed. And then Friday morning, I remember waking up, just the wind howling, crazy, crazy loud wind and rain. And it was that Friday in the end of September that the hurricane hit.

And it was just, it was, it was something unexpected. We thought moving to the mountains. Well, we're getting farther away from hurricanes, which occasionally would kind of touch us a little bit where we were in the Raleigh-Durham area.

Cause it's closer to the Eastern part of the state, but it was totally unexpected. And, um, we did, uh, get out that day. Uh, we lost power for a little while, but me and my family, we left the house that day to go just see what was going on in town, try to get some cell service.

So we could contact people cause we didn't have any service. And we stopped by the church just to see what was happening there. And when we stopped at the church, um, there were several church members already there, uh, squeeging out water.

Cause it had flooded about three inches. So not bad. They're already there serving just, I mean, just pushing that water out the door and had been there for hours. We had fans up. We had to take the carpet out.

It wasn't, it wasn't that bad really. And we worshiped on Sunday and we, and part of our service, when we do our confession of sin, we kneel down and we stood up, everyone's knees were all wet. You could see all the wet spots, all everyone's knees that Sunday morning from, from, cause the floor was just still wet and, uh, but it did hit a lot of people hard, um, to lay elders.

They actually own a business together and they had a, uh, fairly sizable office building. It got flooded about four and a half feet of water. Um, so totally destroyed, uh, pretty much everything there and me and, and several of the church members and other people in the community, uh, we spent a decent amount of time just busting out drywall and tearing things up and breaking things down and getting that back to square one before the mold sets in.

Um, a lot of our young men, um, at church, they drove through the community, cleared roads, checked on elderly people, checked on friends and neighbors, checked on people they hadn't heard from, figured out new ways to get places.

Uh, I mean, our congregation and our community just stepped up massively. Uh, I live in a little gravel road, uh, dead end with a couple of little splinter roads that, that break off of it. And me and the neighbors all got together Saturday morning to, uh, clear some trees and branches that had fallen.

And it's just an amazing community spirit. Um, the body of Christ, uh, was, was just present. I went to Newland a couple of times. I went to, um, just a couple of places where I knew needs were to help out in whatever way I could and everywhere I went, people were there serving and they're still here serving.

We've got people coming to Samaritan's Purse to kind of be sent out all over the place, um, to serve in Western North Carolina, showing up at our church on Sunday and say, Oh, Hey, it's great. We have another visitor.

You know, how'd you, how'd you hear about us? Do you live in the area? No, I'm just here serving with Samaritan's Purse. You know, we've had that multiple times. And the body of Christ is just here. Uh, you know, it's not, it's not the government.

It's not the, uh, you know, social services. And of course we believe civil government has a role in their good, good things being done by community organizations, but it's just been Christian stepping up.

And we've just seen that over and over again. And the churches around here have been doing amazing. Uh, there's a bigger church near us. That's just better resource Perkinsville Baptist, and they've been doing wonderful things.

There's a, uh, Franklin Graham's home church Alliance Bible fellowship. They've been doing wonderful things. And so we were hit hard on the whole, but in our congregation, no one lost their home. No one lost their life.

Um, everyone's healthy, everyone's dry. And we're just working on rebuilding.

Prayer, Recovery, and Samaritan’s Purse

So you kind of answer the next two questions. Um, how are you all doing? How's the community doing? Uh, we, uh, those of us outside don't always, um, we get fake reports, reports, uh, so, so we don't know everything that's going on.

And so I appreciate you letting us know, um, how you guys are doing what happened. And, um, the next question would be, um, because I know the work's not finished.

Right.

In your opinion, those of us outside of the mountain area, your extended church family, how could they be of service? What, what are things that, that those who are able can help you and the other folks in your community?

Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question. I mean, the work of rebuilding is, is in one sense, really just beginning. Um, I was at a meeting of pastors the other day, and there's a group forming called the long-term recovery group.

There's several of them in Western North Carolina, but talking about, uh, just how, how long it's going to take. And, and the immense effort that is, has to go into rebuilding. Uh, there's different things with making sure you're up to code.

There are houses that now, because there's changes to floodplain determinations have to be elevated before they can even be rebuilt. And it just, the amount of machinery and equipment that requires. And it's, it's more than I would ever have thought.

Like, I never thought about being in the mountains and, you know, the city or your insurance or whomever, I don't know all the details, how it works, but it says this house has to be raised six feet, you know, or, or you can't rebuild it or you can't build here anymore.

You know, we can't have a house here because of, uh, this damage. And so it's, it's, it's, it's really tough. And there are still people who are displaced, still people who are, I mean, by God's grace, living with friends and family and neighbors and church family, but there are people whose lives are not back to normal and won't be for quite some time.

I would say, you know, the best thing we can do, our first resources is, you know, go to the Lord and pray. Um, that's not just kind of like a last resort, nor is it a cop out if you don't want to do anything.

I mean, to labor and prayer for someone is, is actually hard work. And I would just ask that people labor in prayer. Um, that would be a big need. Spend time praying for safety, for health, for a favor with the government, for favor with insurance companies, uh, for, for people to be saved.

People have been converted. I mean, God has used this event to bring people to know and love him. We have seen people converted to living faith in Christ. Uh, we have a couple of our ladies at church who've been serving very faithfully with Samaritan's person.

Uh, one of them came to a Wednesday meeting the other day and said she had been, uh, serving, cleaning out mud out of someone's house where just mudslide had gone in and, uh, the lady that lived there, uh, was, did not know the Lord, did not know Christ.

And, uh, during that time of recovery with Samaritan's purse that day, uh, someone shared the gospel there and she believed and she trusted in the Lord and she was, she was converted that day. And so the Lord's using this to bring people to know and love and serve them.

And so pray that there would be more salvations. And then for people that want to get boots on the ground, um, I mean, the best, the best resource, I think the best connecting point is Samaritan's purse.

Uh, and I know some people don't want to go through a big organization, but they, they are connected to the local churches. They know the needs are our congregation. You know, we have 45 people on a Sunday morning and we're new.