Kofi is Burning Down the House

Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Responding Biblically to the Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

All right, welcome to another Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, and I have a guest with me that we're going to have some very similar conversation. A lot of similar things in our lives, but with it, we are going to do in this episode, some have been asking, where have I been?

What has been taking up my time and what has been going on that I haven't been talking about? Because I've mentioned that a lot's been going on and this episode, I'm going to get into some of that. And I got with me, my friend, Kofi, who, if you've a regular listener of this program, you have heard his voice.

I'm hoping I don't need to provide some translation, but Kofi, how are you today? Some translation, huh? Okay. It's good to be with you, Andrew. Good to be with you. So you're from that country. What is it?

Britain, UK, something like that? Yeah, something along those lines. Yeah. Yeah. What language do they speak over there? English in its pure form. Actually, Paul Taylor actually told me that his son, who used to be here in the States, was actually traveling and they asked where he's from.

He said, the United Kingdom. And someone honestly asked, what language do they speak over there? And he looked and said, English. It's where you got it from. Oh, man. You've got to be kidding me. Hey, look, look, the American educational system is not what it used to be, all right?

That's so I hear. So first off, before we get into the topic we want, I do think I want to at least address this what happened yesterday with the passing of Judge Ruth Gator Binsburg. Now, I keep saying those two letters, I flip them.

Bader Ginsburg. And, you know, I want to at least address a couple things from a Christian perspective here. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a Supreme Court judge, has been instrumental in providing this country with horrible laws like abortion, promotion of homosexuality, and all kinds of things that we as Christians would be against.

However, she has a family that whether we agree or disagree, they care for her and they are grieving her loss. Now is not a time, as I see with so many of these, so many Christians who are putting these memes out and things like this, that are almost celebrating her passing.

Anytime someone, now I don't know her heart, I don't know if she is, if she somehow heard the gospel and repented in her last days, but as far as we could tell, and as far as we know, as of right now, she is in hell and will be there forever.

And that is not something to be rejoicing over, that is something that should grieve our hearts. And I think that for any Christian that is celebrating the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, my question for you to think about, it's not one to give me the answer to, but it's something to think about.

Are you more concerned with American politics than your Christianity? It may be a hard question for you, but I do challenge you to think about it, folks, because yeah, we do want to see Trump put in another very conservative constitutionalist in the Supreme Court.

That would be great. However, that is separate from celebrating the death of someone who worked against Christianity and Christian values. She is in hell right now. That's not a thing to celebrate. That's a thing to be praying that her family will come to Christ because of her death.

That somehow we wouldn't be seeing a Christian community being seen by the world as celebrating and rejoicing in her passing. And so just an encouragement to folks with that. I know Kofi, you're very up on who she is and everything about her right here, all that.

America. I mean, I know the name and I know what she stands for, but again, I'm from the UK, folks. I know the name since I moved over here and people said how terrible she was in terms of Muslim, what have you.

And coming from the UK, I get it, but I fully affirm everything you're saying. I think we have to take a step back in moments like this and remember that, first of all, this is somebody who is made in the image of God.

And so regardless of their politics and how much you agree, there's a certain worth and dignity and value to that human life that we do need to consider. And yeah, she has a family. She has people who are grieving her at this time.

You might not be grieving her and that's your right. But honestly, it's a little, in fact, it's leaving a little early. I don't think it's appropriate to be in the memes and what have you. Just stop with that.

We can talk about her policies. We can talk about the stuff that we disagreed with as time allows. But right now, it might be good if we would just keep quiet for the time being and give the family some respect and give ourselves some respect as believers in terms of how we handle something like this.

Yeah, because if we think about it, her policies are done, right? I mean, she's no longer making them. So there's no reason to bring them up at this moment in time. I think if we bring it up in light of who President Trump might nominate for that seat, that would be fair because that's not focused on her and her passing and focused on the future and who we might get in that seat and what it could mean for this country.

But I think that it is, I almost want to say, inappropriate to have Christians running around and hosting memes where it has the appearance of celebration. So I just wanted to start off the show with that because there's no way to avoid the fact that this is big news going on.

And I do think that, folks, if you haven't listened to Voice of Reason Radio, I think Chris Honhold's there said it very well. I posted it after I heard she died, I had posted online that she had passed and the election is going to get even crazier.

I mean, we're going to have way more craziness going on. And I think Chris Honhold said it well when he said, everything you've seen, whether it's the COVID, the riots, you know, whatever, whatever it is you've been seeing, forget it.

I mean, now every second of every news cycle is going to be on the Supreme Court justice and it's going to get even crazier. And the left is not, they're not waiting. I mean, AOC already came out and is calling for, you know, this is the reason we have to get Trump out.

And, you know, we have to take it to the streets and, you know, so I mean, they're calling, it's amazing. They're calling for riots to occur if Trump loses by the Electoral College. So in other words, or sorry, if he wins by the Electoral College.

So in other words, if Trump actually wins legitimately, they want rioting. In other words, and they say Trump is the one that's not going to accept the outcome of the election. It's like, you won't even accept it and it hasn't happened yet.

You don't accept the one from four years ago. So I think as believers, the right view, and this is what this show is about, is putting a, you know, having a biblical interpretations and applications and a biblical application to the passing of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not to be celebrated.

Whether we agree with her or not, she was put in that position by God. She was there and she was serving, whether we agree with her policies or not, and we honor her. And I know there's some Christians going, what in the world is wrong?

How do you honor her? You honor the position. You honor her for the position she had, whether you agree or not. But the thing is for us as believers, I'm more concerned with her soul and the soul of those in her family.

And maybe, maybe the reason that a Ruth Bader Ginsburg got to the Supreme Court is because there weren't enough Christians worried about people's souls. They're worried about people's morality. Just maybe, maybe we need to start focusing on people's souls and where they're going to spend eternity and less on their political views.

Just a thought for us. You guys judge on your own hearts, but let's get into some topics of what's been happening with you and I. There's a lot of similarities in our life in the last few months. I will state, I'll state at the end why, if you're listening, Kofi has a little bit of an echo.

There's some noise in the background. He is not in an ideal recordings situation. We're going to explain why that is toward the end. But we do apologize. There's no way to help that. And we wanted to be able to record together.

So Kofi, let's start, you know, for me, things started during Shepard's conference. I think you met at Shepard's conference, got together, had a nice conversation. We even sat down and laid out plans of, you know, getting together and doing some, you know, coming out there and doing some evangelism training.

As two people who are serving in churches now, yours is a, is it a church plant or more revitalization? I forget.

I think the way I like to describe it is that we're a church plant that we've now had to kind of hit restart on.

Yeah. So it's kind of both a plant that's revitalizing. Yeah.

I know. I know it doesn't make any sense, but there we are.

Maybe that's the case with us. I don't know. But you and I were at Shepard's conference, which now seems so far away. It seems so long ago. Yeah. And I know for sure that you're missing the book tent, but we'll get to that later.

But, but, you know, it was you and I and Brian, we were sitting down and did you think at that, at that time, could you have had any conceivable idea of everything that was going to happen in your life and my life since then?

No. Yeah. None. So, so let's talk through that. Now, for me, I think that my situation started sooner than yours. I got back from Shepard's conference, literally. I came, I was flew in that Saturday night and came right from the airport straight to church because I didn't want to, to miss church.

I'm out of my church. So, so many weeks a year anyway, we travel. I didn't want to miss church. And we had one of, we have a retired pastor in our church and he was preaching because the, the preaching pastor was at Shepard's conference.

He wasn't going to be there for Sunday. And I, it was the first opportunity I was going to get to hear him preach. So I wanted to, to be back. So I came back and after service, I got pulled aside by the three of the men in leadership and they let me know that our pastor had offered his resignation, that they needed to know if I could preach, you know, for like ongoing.

And I was like, sure. And it was explained that there was a disqualification and they were quick to let me know that it wasn't anything immoral, you know, no, no sexual thing like that. But you know, I give a lot of credit to these guys because they didn't want to give me more information than I needed to have at that time.

They needed to know if I could preach the next couple of weeks, but they didn't want to tell me any details. They had said to me, look, we'll let you know when we let the whole congregation know, just please keep it to yourself.

And I think that was the appropriate way of handling it. I gave them one piece of advice. As you know, I do a lot of travel. I counsel a lot of pastors. I gave them one piece of advice and that was, I don't know what the details are, but whatever they are, make sure you say everything.

Tell the whole story. Don't try to cover it up or to protect someone's reputation if there's a disqualification, because it only makes it worse. So that was what I had known. And it turned out that eventually it was expressed that there was a disqualification when it came with finances, both in his management of finances and in what he was doing about his finances.

He was making very good money as a, I mean, we're a church plant, you know, I think maybe at that time we were having 30 to 40 people and we started the church really with, I would say if you include the pastor's family, you know, there were four or five core families that kind of started the church.

There were three that started it. I came in about eight, nine months later and it took me a while to transition from my old church into this church. And so, you know, that's how it had started out. And now I'm in the position where I'm like, okay, I'm going to be preaching, you know, most weeks.

And that was on Sunday. On Tuesday, as you know, I'm working with these guys to, you know, they said they're putting a letter together and, you know, I was trying to just offer what counsel I could and because I didn't have the details at that time and I think it was Tuesday that we got the call that the center that we rent is shutting down because of this thing called COVID.

I don't know if you ever heard of COVID. Yeah. I never heard of it. Yeah. It's this really little thing that affects very few people, but they shut down the entire world economy for it. Crazy, right? Yeah.

That's kind of crazy. Wow. Yeah. So I went right from Shepherd's Conference to finding out my pastor disqualified himself and offered his resignation to now being where, you know, COVID is happening. So it was one thing, it was like all within one week, we then had to figure out what are we going to do for services?

In our church, I'm the techie guy. So I'm the one that does live streaming. So therefore, I guess fortunate for the church, it made it easier, harder for me because we had to figure out, I had to prepare a message, which I wasn't ready to start doing and then figure out how we're going to do this online.

So that was really a struggle. You also, let's start with you when we'll go back and forth, how did things happen with you with COVID? And then what happened shortly after that?

Okay. So I guess I'll start where you started. So we met in March at ShepCon. We get back and I won't go into too much detail, but we've been having problems with a man who was, you know, pastoring our church plant for quite some time.

I think by that point, it had been at least five months of just like continual problems. And let's be clear, it wasn't disqualifying on his part, but they were the kinds of problems where it became apparent us trying to work together was not going to work.

Anyway, so he finally resigns, I want to say maybe a month into the lockdown. So when did lockdown start? Like end of March?

It was, it would have been like the middle, beginning or middle of March, I think.

Cause I think we met one, that's right, I think it was the first week, right? The first week. I think we came back and then we had two more services and then we went to the live streaming. So yeah, about maybe a month, actually a couple of months in, he finally resigns and I'll put this out there because that's what happened.

There was a conversation where it just became apparent that, okay, you are not the guy for this kind of work. And he actually agreed, which was surprising because it was the first time in months we had agreed on anything.

And that was the end of that. So that happens, we now go from, and I'm like, I'm the tech guy at our church. So I'm putting together the live stream, I'm trying to make it look as professional as it can on a budget because I'm kind of a perfectionist like that.

So I'm putting in all this time and effort and then he leaves, I'm like, oh great, so now I've got to do all that. Plus make sure our congregation doesn't implode. Oh, and prepare a sermon at some point.

Yeah. A sermon. Yeah. Yeah. Just small detail about church life, this thing we do every week, something like, okay. So yeah, I just kind of threw myself into that and of course there was a bunch of drama along the way, including the fact that since everything in the church was registered in the previous pastor's name, I won't go into my feelings about why.

I have very strong opinions about that, but this isn't the forum for that. We had to shut everything down. So bank account had to go, we couldn't use the name, everything just had to disappear at his request.

So at that point I'm like, yeah, okay. Oh, by the way, did I mention that I had a kid like a month and a half into this?

Yeah. I was going to say that that's another element to this. You're saying on a budget, that you're on a budget and for the Patreons who have watched the video that we have here, I'm looking at you as you're speaking with your headphones on your head and it looks like that's duct tape holding the phone.

So as you talk about working on a budget here.

This is actual duct tape. I like these headphones and I wasn't going to throw them out and they worked just fine. So I duct taped the headband.

So that's the budget part.

Yeah. Hey, look, I grew up broken in the hood. We know how to hustle. You know, you don't have to make it work. It's fine. But yeah, so now we've got to do that. I now have a son, end of May, little Gareth, who is now four, he's four months today, actually, by the time the day we're recording this, he's four months today.

So, you know, that's your new parent. That's a whole other learning curve that I was not ready for, but there we are. So I mean, we're doing all of that and yeah, I'm now the primary preacher and I'm not the pastor, but I'm doing the bulk of the pulpit work.

Doing that and a midweek Bible study is like, okay, this is interesting, but yeah, that's kind of bringing you up to where you are in your story.

Ministry Under Pressure During COVID, Church Disqualification, and Family Change

Yeah. Yeah. So both of us at this point are unexpectedly filling the pulpit on a regular basis, teaching a midweek Bible study. Now our church didn't, at the time that this all happened, we didn't really have a midweek Bible study.

The men were meeting together once a week on Wednesdays, but there was a ladies Bible study that had been shut down and a youth group that was shut down prior. And so during the COVID, we actually started, we actually were doing more ministry, I think, during COVID than we had in the year prior.

We were having more people attend online and we started a midweek Bible study. I started going through Genesis, the first 11 chapters of Genesis. To me, it seemed like a good foundational thing to, if we're going to start something new that's going to be with all the families, we wanted to have something that would equip the youth, give them some training, preparedness for what they would come in contact with.

So I mean, every theological doctrine is rooted in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. It makes sense to start there. And so we had done that. And we ended up having, which was really awkward, was to have a congregational meeting in Zoom.

And we're a grace-advanced church, so we had the grace-advanced pastors attend that to explain because really it was their decision to say he was disqualified. And they're the ones that accepted his resignation.

And so they came and explained what was going on and gave a lot of details. And wait, I'll put it this way, our local leaders provided two letters that gave way more detail than I expected because typically, and I know you know this, people will try to protect the person who left and minimize it or not explain details.

And for folks who are listening, if you're in a church, you know what it's like when something happens. And especially if you have a pastor that leaves, you want to understand why. And what our human minds end up doing if we're not given the why is we start letting our minds wander.

And usually, typically, where people go in their minds is worse than what it really is. And then what ends up happening almost is people, when they find out what really happened, start to think that, oh, it's not so bad because they were thinking the worst.

And I told the men in my church, I've probably counseled 100 churches easy, dealing with church discipline and issues of having a disqualified pastor and things like that. And I've given the same advice every time.

Don't hide the details. First Timothy 520, especially if you're in a case of a pastor, if he sins continuously, you present it in front of all so that all will fear. You don't cover it up. And these guys did a really good job of handling it.

I gained a lot of respect for them in their handling of this, because remember, these three men at the time were not pastors of the church, their leadership, they're the core families. They were elders in other churches.

And I make no distinction between elder, pastor, they're not two different roles. But they were in leadership positions in other churches, but not in this church. And it was the first chance I got to see them handling a crisis.

And, you know, it really endeared me to them to see them handling it well. You know, I know that you had a situation different because you didn't have to do a congregational meeting over Zoom, which is what we did, we did, you did the first one on Zoom.

So, so allow me to fill in a few details about what happened when the previous pastor left. So we had a meeting after a live stream on a Sunday, where we're like, okay, but well, we had a meeting the week earlier, where we he agreed to resign, but he hadn't put a date on it.

We felt it would be good for the good of the church that we could actually move on. Let's actually just put a line on the side and say this Sunday is the end. Again, he agreed. So I was like, okay, cool.

Then what needs to happen is tomorrow, we take the day and, sir, I'm going to mention his name, I'll just use the name, sir, sir, you write, you write an email expressing, you know, that you're resigning and blah, blah, blah.

You mentioned my friend Brian Larseny, who was involved in leadership, Brian and I, on the other side, we'll write a statement as well, basically saying, we're going to provide a time for some questions or what have you.

That was its own drama. We finally got that out. And we had in the message, we said, okay, we're going to have a, essentially a congregational meeting via Zoom on Wednesday, because that was our usual midweek Bible study.

To say that that meeting was an unmitigated disaster would not do it kindness. It was bad. Like he basically, he threw us under the bus, myself and Brian under the bus, without throwing us under the bus, in my opinion.

Kind of made out like, I didn't want to do this. Meanwhile, there had been lots of threatenings for months about resigning and shutting the church down. That was, in my opinion, a lie. I will, I would, I would stand up on the Court of Law and say that was a lie, in my opinion.

So, oh, I didn't want to do this, but it's for the peace of the church. And basically trying to like get people to beg him to stay on.

Yeah, in other words, playing the victim. A hundred percent playing the victim.

And I don't play a very good victim. I don't get visibly emotional like that. And so that he's kind of tearing up and being weepy and what have you. And I'm just there kind of stone faced, looking like I don't care.

Which isn't a great visual, I understand, but I'm not going to fake it either. And, you know, a few times made some accusations towards a congregation I think were unfair. Yeah, we did a congregation meeting by Zoom.

I don't recommend it.

Actually, and folks, the reason, you know, look, people have been asking where I've been and what's been, what has been going on. I wanted to share that. I figured this is a better way of doing it because Kofi, you and I had just, there's going to be a lot of similarities in what's happening in the last several months.

And with some differences. But the thing that is helpful for folks and the reason we decided we want to do this is to let you know that ministry is hard work. And it's not always what people, the idealistic view that people have of ministry.

But let me ask you a question. When you and I talked, you called me up and what was the advice that I gave you when it came to how to handle the meeting and what to say to the congregation?

Oh, you gave me the same advice you gave to everyone else. Do not hide any of the details. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to admit that first congregational meeting, we didn't listen. And I wish we had, because it did not go well.

And in hindsight, I should have sang like a canary in that first meeting. Like, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, people, there's some things you need to know. But we had another meeting the following week after the dust had settled.

And that meeting, we were like, OK, look, this is why, this is why, this is why. And that's kind of been our policy since. We've had one more meeting as a church where we kind of talked about the financial stuff, like having to lose our bank account, having to change our name as a result because the name was registered to him and he wanted the entity closed.

Having to do all of that stuff. But yeah, ladies and gentlemen, when Andrew says he gives everyone that advice, he gave me that advice. And I honestly should have listened the first time. I just made my life a lot harder by only listening the second time.

But there we are.

No, but it's, you know, this is the thing, folks, understand that for people in leadership, it is hard to share or figure out what is the right amount of information to share. It's a hard thing. You don't want to be gossiping.

You don't want and hence the reason you're not hearing us mention names. I mean, we mentioned Brian's name, you know, because he's he's helping in the leadership there. We're not mentioning the pastor's names who left on purpose.

Because it's not really about them. It's this is about us and our churches and ministry, because we want you to realize that what in your church, this is what your leadership, what your pastors, this is what they go through.

You know, think about what they've been going through with covid in your church situation, what they have going on. Ministry is difficult. It is it is something that constantly throws you a curveball.

When it comes to ministry, you never know what what is going to be happening. You know, it's it's a thing where it it's a it's a joy. And yet at the same time, it is something where you always have to be ready.

You always have to be prepared because, you know, I was you know, I had one week to prepare a sermon that I wasn't I wasn't ready. And what we wanted to do is for the sake of the church. I don't know if you did this, Kofi.

I didn't ask you this, but for the sake of our church, you know, I remember talking with the men and I said, hey, guys, look, I can do one of two things. I could preach through a book that I've preached before.

You know, sound like Philippians or James or, you know, sound I've preached in detail where I've done the study. But I think for the church, what would be better for the church, not for me? It was harder for me.

Better for the church is to continue the book of Mark. We had just started it. We were still in chapter one just to start right where the previous man had left off, pick it up from there and go. And that's what we decided to do.

It meant more work for me. But I am it's we're trying to figure out covid. We're trying to figure out, you know, I didn't have to be involved in what had to be announced because I didn't know at that time, but I was still trying to to work with them as far as, you know, how we're going to do services and prepare messages.

It was fun. And this is what ministry is like. Now, you and I ended up having some other things, you know, as so we're we're right now, both you and I are doing the majority of the pulpit ministry we have in my church and a retired pastor who, you know, 40 years pastoring.

And he's he came to the church, you know, and he is he's been able to pick up the Sunday school. So he's now that we're doing Sunday school. He's teaching the Sunday school. We didn't we didn't stop any ministry.

We continued right where we left off in Mark. We continue right where we left off in in the Sunday school material, picked it up and kept going. And that makes it difficult for folks. Here's a pastor.

He wasn't prepared to teach. And that's what he was going to he stepped up and said, I can teach through some stuff that I have. And he's been teaching the Sunday school. You know, and all this through covid, when you're suddenly having to pick up the counseling ministry, I had to pick that up a lot of counseling and discipling that the previous pastor had been doing.

And I know you did the same. These are things that were unexpected. And, you know, people want to know, well, you know, why did I you know, if you've noticed with these podcasts, I kind of I put up two of my sermons.

I've put up the talks from the Snatch Room from the Flames, and then I took a month off. And this is why I've been preparing sermons on a weekly basis. We were we were still at that time I was teaching a midweek Bible study.

There was a lot going on. Meanwhile, through that, I was I had sold my house during covid. But the problem I had was I lived in New Jersey and our churches in Pennsylvania, and I needed to move. But I had the stress of not only everything we've been sharing, but I had a house that was sold and I couldn't even they wouldn't open real estate in Pennsylvania to start looking.

So I couldn't look for homes because all of a sudden, you know, my house is sold, but they're not open. And I got into this position where once the housing market opened in Pennsylvania, there were a lot of people in my situation.

They had sold a home. They're in a contract. They had to buy another home. They needed somewhere to move into. And people were buying things like crazy. Every house we were looking at, we were offering full price and being outbid by five to ten thousand dollars.

We would go in and every week we're watching, we put in five offers on homes and every week we put an offer in, we're outbid. And the next week we'd see those same type of houses up by five, ten, fifteen thousand dollars.

It was just it was literally going up that quick. And we were watching houses were being listed on on a Friday and sold on Sunday. We had one house that we saw it went up on Sunday just after church is when it got listed.

Right after I got done preaching service closed that we saw it pop up just during our fellowship time on Zoom. And we said, let's go over there. Let's check it out. So they didn't have lots of pictures up.

They didn't had a bad write up up. So we figured maybe there's a chance that not a lot of people will look at it. We will walk to 30. We are the first couple in there to 30 on a Sunday afternoon. They had they let us in for half an hour.

Every person at half an hour. They had showings from two thirty to eight thirty. And they had 10 offers on the house. Ours was one of them. We were we were tied with someone on the offer. Same, same. The offer was the same across the line.

They just put more money down as a down payment. So they were given and it got the pressure got to where we were like, you know, we literally had one weekend where we said if we don't find something this weekend, we're going to have to rent and renting with putting stuff in storage was going to cost more than the mortgage.

And so we were not looking at a good scenario. It was so much stress that my blood pressure actually skyrocketed and I ended up in the urgent care because my blood pressure was hitting between one sixty one seventy over one hundred hundred ten or something like that.

And, you know, my sister was like, get to a hospital now because you're close to having a stroke. And so we went and I got checked out. They gave me some medicine and basically told me you need to you need to relax.

So that was like July 4th weekend that that happened with the blood pressure. And we had I think we saw this house the week before the house that we're now in for those who are looking at the video on our Patreons or look in the video, you see it's a different setup.

I don't have all the books behind me. I have two windows behind me and only one bookcase, though you can see some commentaries down over here. But I still have books pretty much all around the room. But the the thing that happens, we were only given half an hour.

Now, just put yourself in this situation. We had half an hour to decide if we like the house enough to put money down. And I mean, this is a huge decision. Half an hour. That's it. And the market was so hot that the realtor was saying, well, what you need to do is you need to you can't have your you can't basically saying, like, don't have the inspections.

And so we were we were told, don't don't look, you know, don't have inspections. So how do you know, like now you got to just trust that there's not going to be a problem with the house. So what we did was we got into the house.

We got there early. We got here early and they let us in for about 15 minutes before the people that had the appointment before us. We went through quickly and said, OK, the house could work. We came in on our appointed time for half an hour.

We fortunately, our realtor, her boyfriend is as a contractor. So he looked at the house to do like a quick inspection. And then we asked if we can come back in one more time on Monday. And we came in on Monday and he just looked at structural things and examined whether it was well, you know, well taken care of.