This is David Nakhla with the OPC Committee on Diagonal Ministries. We're bringing this to you as part of a series of special episodes of the Reformed Deacon. These episodes consist of the audio of the many plenaries and workshops presented at the 4th OPC National Diagonal Summit held in Wheaton, Illinois in June 2022.

It's our desire that deacons who were not able to attend the summit or those who
simply missed one of the many wonderful workshops offered will benefit from this
practical content. If you find this episode especially invigorating, just consider
sharing it with your fellow deacons. If it's an episode that's particularly suited to
the work of your diaconate, consider watching the video version of this presentation together with your fellow deacons and discussing it. The videos can be found on opccdm .org and now I hope you enjoy this episode and
I do have a little bit of experience doing this I was an officer in the Army and
I was called to do a couple of missions in Central and South America after some
hurricanes and to help the folks down there was a defense coordinating officer
basically worked for the governor of South Carolina, North Carolina for a disaster
response. So I know a little bit about the architecture for the federal government,
state governments deployed overseas to to help some folks that were in need but
since then getting out in 2008 out of the army.

I'm also working in a Christian ministry this has a diagonal We house veterans who,
and their families are homeless and put them to work through two federal grants, one for housing and the other for employment. And so I've got a lot of case management experience one -on -one trying to get people housed and employed and working with them when they're lowest. You know, they're in that ditch and we're trying to get them out of it. So I'm going to apply a little of that as well to what we're talking about today. It's meant to be a little interactive. We're going to hang some meat on the bones that you keep hearing in the big house, right? You go over there, they make your brain stronger. Now we're going to we're going to come in here and put some meat on those, you know, how to do some stuff, how to make things happen, make it real, you know. I'm I'm gonna get a little philosophy at the same time, but it's meant mainly so that we can focus our thoughts on what we're doing when we do some disaster response. My email is right here. If you want this slide deck, you just email me and let me know you want the slide deck. I don't know if it's gonna be included on anything, the outline that you've been given is old. I mean, that was four to a month ago.
And, And, you know, they'll saying it's only a minute of work if you wait till the
last minute. That's what I kind of did with these slides, right? So they may not
reflect everything that you're seeing in the slide deck that you got before you in
your books.

But I will send you the slide deck. It'll be in a PDF format. And that way you
can check your notes against what you've seen today. Let me get a little bit of a
sense of the audience. How many of us served in the military? I know I've got a
Navy brother over here. Good, good, good. Navy, Army, Marines, all right,
good. Over here, Navy, very good. All right, y 'all are in God's, y 'all are Baptist. Not, if you were in the Navy, you were Baptist. you're in God's Navy. They like to do everything under the water, right? So we're Presbyterians are
in God's army, right? We're on the ground. All right.
Any first responders, police? EMS. There we go.
Firefighter. There you go. So you've seen the ugliness of life, you know, the death
and destruction. You did it in the military as well? Very good.
All right.
Deacons. Hands up.
Most of you in the room. Deacons in training. Excellent. Very good.
Pastors, I got both of you in here. Steve, any other pastors? Hey, pastor,
thank you.
All right, good. All right.
Now for, if someone was to ask a question for a videographer, can they be heard or
do I need to repeat their question? I'll try to do that. Y 'all keep me on it. So
if y 'all ask me a question, I have to repeat it so it'll be on the video.
You know that I'm in the military 'cause we think in task and purpose. Okay, I
think in task and purpose, I get up in the morning, my task is to brush my teeth.
But purpose, it was, I don't offend anybody, right? You know, you, you, everything's
task and purpose. Y 'all think in task and purpose, you may not know that or not.
So our task today, as you can see it, one of the things, I was an Army officer,
had folks brief me all the time. And if one of my staff officers stood up and
started reading the slides, I'd shoot him in the forehead. I mean, them in the
forehead. I can read. I don't need to be read to. It usually tells me that they
don't know their subject matter.
I'm not going to shoot anybody here. But if I start reading to you, I will read a
couple of things to you because I think they're pertinent. But you can read that.
You can see what we're going to try to accomplish today.
The ultimate goal is get that framework built So you can put something to practice
in your particular church.
Now, I'm going to exercise the three Bs. Anybody know what the three Bs are?
The three Bs. Y 'all ought to use the three Bs as best you can.
Be repaired. Yeah, that's the old Boy Scout thing, right? Okay, good. Yeah, that's a
good one. Now my three bees are be brief, be brilliant and be gone. Okay.
That's my three bees. Now we may end up only going in, you know, 45 minutes,
who knows? But you got it. I'll give you a little extra time back. And you can go
get some sweet tea. Oh, I don't think I found any up here since I've been up
here. All right, so I'm gonna ask you to look at this task and purpose under the
task. I Want you if you got a pen and paper. I want you to write two words in
that task That would help you remember that task Just two words. You can cheat and
use three. All right, just something that will help you because we're gonna come
back to it And under the purpose the same thing a couple words that might help you
grasp the purpose. They go together, task and purpose,
because we may revisit that. I may ask y 'all, anybody remember the task and
purpose, and you got a little cheat sheet in front of you, you'll be able to
answer the question. We ready to move on? Let's keep going.
Here's what we're going to cover.
I call it deaconology. Now it's not a science. Y 'all know that if you've been
doing it. It is more of an art than it is a science. These are human beings,
God's people that we're serving. Serve the Lord, serve the people.
So we're gonna start out with why first.
I'm gonna hit that Y button. It's important to understand why we do something. How
many of y 'all have children? I'm looking around here, we're gonna get too many
youngsters. Any of them under three?
What is the question of the day? Why? Why? Why is there a telephone out in front
of our house, dad? You know, whatever. It's a Y for everything. Why? And even
though you answer the Y, if it's followed by another why they're in the why world
so are we we like to know why we're doing things so we're gonna talk about that
then we're gonna move to how where when what which will lead to a framework make
sense let me check my notes so I'm keeping myself honest okay
Okay,
I want y 'all to read that quote. This is from a deacon.
I think somebody in the room knows this deacon. Maybe be a deacon with them, a
fellow deacon in the same church, maybe not. Read that quote.
Pastor Steve's lips stop moving so I think he stopped reading So I think most
everybody's ready All right. Now. This is in the ordained servant servant. How many
y 'all get that? Online ordained serving online. You need to get on it man. This is
an OPC Periodical it is Sent to every officer in the church Deacons and elders
teaching elders So if you don't have it, you need to go to ordained servant and
sign up for it and they'll send it to you They might even send it to deacons in
training if you ask you get a if you get your deacon Head of deacons if you have
one or an elder to vouch for you. They may send it to you. It's good reading and
We have doc deacon Carl Carlson who wrote in 2017 The awesome article,
it's called "The Spiritual Nature of the Officer of Deacon." It's beautiful.
I read this thing and I went, "This guy gets it.
He understands." We're going to talk about what that means.
He's here, by the way.
Actually, he got off the plane and I asked if he'd meet me here because I wanted
to tell him I was about to use his name in vain and he needed to know it, all
right, and I was going to talk about him. He's a wonderful man. We got the
fellowship last night. So if you run into him, pick his brain.
He comes from a church that I cannot pronounce the name. Anybody know how to say
it? I'm a skater. All right. Beautiful. Something to do with an Indian waterfall and
something and something about that. It's awesome. It means fish.
Are you the fellow deacon? Thank you sir.
All right, so question for you after you read this.
When deacons provide material assistance in what context do we want the recipient of
that material assistance to understand the reason for the material assistance.
What is it we're trying to get them to really grasp when we pay that bill?
The grace of God. So the spiritual nature of the material gift,
behind the material gift is what Deacon Carlson is trying to tell us.
Now I told you, I work housing homeless veterans,
and there's many a time that
we get them housed. I have them on key, and we pay their rent for three months,
and then they get a job, and they're self -sufficient, and they pay their-- and you
never-- and we talk to them about Jesus and
they just like, "Amen, thanks for all the stuff you gave us."
And they don't get it. They don't understand why we're doing it. We're not doing it
so that they can be self -sufficient, pay their own bills. It's not the reason why.
It's deeper than that. So question does mercy ministry and disaster response in
particular we're talking about disaster response in the church Have a higher
destination
Or is it just to stop the distress that there's someone's going through? Their house
is damaged It goes beyond that right
Now it's hard for them to think of that when they are in distress. You can't blame
them, man, they're hurting. Their souls are hurting, but they need to hear from us
and all those that are working in support of the deacons to minister these people
that it's Christ first, the spiritual nature of the office, comes to them,
the deacon, and ministers to them. It's about Christ. It's about his love for us.
It's his resurrection glory. You see the empty grave,
the empty tomb.
I like how he qualifies that death does not win. So when Someone's had their house
damaged, they're thinking, they've first of all felt the effects of death,
destruction, people hurting,
and they might think that that's all their reality is right now, is trying to get
over that. And so the point that Deacon Carlson is trying to tell us is Death does
not win because resurrection, glory is the power of God.
It's what Dr. Troxell talked about. It's the supernatural.
It's not everyday life, the grind in the world. It's the supernatural.
So if we respond to disasters with the purpose of relieving suffering outside the
purpose of the power of resurrection glory, what might we be asking the recipient of
mercy ministry to place their trust in? The material world. Make sense?
They put their trust in stuff, the material world. And we don't want that.
So That's why we're getting into a little philosophy right up front when it comes
to disaster response in the local church. We want people to know that we're coming
representing mercy, mercy that our Savior gave us.
Again, I've worked With helping veterans get housed and I've had what I refer to
probably have housed about a hundred veterans And then I again went into the
training mode I've had about two of these veterans who I refer to as professional
victims.
These are people professional victims Yeah, these are these are veterans that I would
that that they knew the grant better and I did and they were looking at everything
to milk it to get as much as they could get to manipulate the system.
They were living in a material world and they had mastered getting stuff.
They're out there. You might even know a few. You might have even helped a few.
Okay? Of course, we're supposed to be. We heard it today, be generous. Be generous.
Our generosity might win them over, especially if we come in the name of our
Savior. So now we've talked about the why. Let's move on and get into the how.
How does Office of Deacon fit into disaster response. So I typed in the computer
and got a word picture, that's what they call these things. I typed in the
computer, well I won't tell you what the word was. Because the word that I typed
in is not even on there. Yeah, it's mind -boggling. But I got interested in it
because it was saying some good words. You got the big word deacon, right? And you
got the congregation. You got elders. It's got some good words on there, right?
Well, there's something missing. And that's the word I typed in there to get there.
And that word, anybody want to guess what it is? Supernatural? Good, good good yeah
close very close grace very good it's good mercy that's another good one Jesus he's
on yeah exactly relief no it's not it here it is this is how the office of deacon
fits into disaster response it's real simple
worship I'm like back up
It ain't on there. I've looked you won't find disaster response on there either, but
you won't find worship on there Okay Now Andy, that's our church, right? That's I
used to be an elder in that church Andy's a deacon in that church That's in
Gastonia now. I only put that picture up there because it is worship
The vertical remember we heard that in the horizontal. It's the vertical that gives
the person who is in distress, has experienced a disaster in their life,
the healing that they need.
So
one of the gifts of a good leader is they focus those whom they lead on what is
important and what is unimportant.
I had 27 years in combat zone, five years as I started out as self, I was an
Army Ranger and I can tell you my job every day was to unconfuse my soldiers.
Let me simply add and that's what your job is as a spiritual leader in the
congregation to unconfuse confused, because all those words that were on there, that
was confusion.
That was absolute confusion. But you want to unconfuse them? You remind them why
they were made, why they were saved, and what they will be doing in eternity.
And it's that right there. Now how simple is that? You were made, we were made by
God to give Him glory and worship Him.
Adam and Eve goofed that all up like a football bat. That's army language. Maybe
you understand football bat. Soup, sandwich, same thing. It's messed up, right?
But we were saved. God wants more worshipers. We want more worshipers for God.
We were saved to worship and we will worship an eternity. So,
deacons provide ministry of mercy
and help people focus on relieving the distress in their lives by getting them back
to worship. That's why when a hurricane blows through Florida,
I mean through the east coast of North Carolina, Hurricane Florence, I believe is
the name of it.
When we deployed the Disaster Advanced Response Team of the Presbyterian of the
Southeast, our job was to relieve the distress and point to the church so that they
are in the pews, worshiping God and healing. And there were deacons there to love
them. Make sure that they were focused again. So Deacons
create focus by saying this is important and this is unimportant. It's as simple as
that. You do it in your homes with your children. This is important. Right now
that's unimportant. Maybe important later, but right now this is important. So I
asked you to write two words down for task and two words down for purpose.
Anybody want to share what their two words are for task?
Deacons have courage. Go ahead, let's go. Sites and specific. Alright,
good. Anybody else for task? Specific and mercy.
See how we just did what we've asked to do? Insight application. There you go,
Very good.
Everybody read that task on purpose just a little bit more. Yes, sir. Insight and
peacemaking? Good, peacemaking. That's my favorite. Okay, insight and peacemaking.
What about purpose? What are those two words? Anybody else?
Disaster framework.
Say again. Development framework. Okay.
One of the things about being a military is you lose your hearing, so I'll be
doing a lot of this. "Developed response." "Developed response." Okay, so you just
did what I asked. You took a task and purpose statement, you said, "These things
are important from what I read on there." This is important. All those other words,
I'm going to park them for right now, they're unimportant. See how that works?
Simple as that. You do this every day. Okay, but sometimes all of us get very
confused and we need somebody to come alongside us and help us focus on what's
important and what's unimportant.
Deacons and training today that are in this room. As you're sorting through what the
office of Deacon is all about, you might be confused as to what's most important.
Most of us didn't go, I was the Deacon in the Providence OPC Church in Austin.
Anybody from that church, Flugerville? Okay, so I was ordained a deacon there.
I had no idea what I was doing. No one trained me. It was what I call a great
big happening.
I ain't into happenings, I'm a planner, right? So you deacons in training,
you're probably looking at that word picture and going, yeah, that's about what I
feel like right now, I have no idea what's important. So how does God unconfuse us
in this life as to what is most important? What is the most important spiritual and
physical activity we are created to do? It's worship.
In fact, the most important word, as I've mentioned, cannot be found on that slide
after I went to Google and typed in worship.
That is the Okay, that's their description of worship. So listen to another quote
from Deacon Carlson in his article, The Spiritual Nature of the Officer Deacon.
He says, "This is good stuff. This is free stuff.
Free
stuff." He said, "The Deacon is marked by strong character combined with a servant
heart." We've heard all that today, and last night, he gains biblical wisdom
instilled by listening to the word preached, studying the word,
and participating in training. You're doing it today. Then he brings those things
together and carrying out his duties to the church. He is not a mere business
manager or case worker, but a steward of all the church's temporal gifts,
material gifts. This is what I want you to listen to. He uses those gifts to
enable those under His care to fulfill their chief and highest end glorifying and
enjoying God. So He summed it up. We've said it again. What is most important?
The vertical, the worship. He uses those gifts, those material gifts,
we're going to talk about gifts and graces, to enable those under His care to
fulfill their chief and highest end and glorify and join God.
So now, what about the aware. Any questions so far? What about the where?
Let's talk about it. Worship is the centerpiece of our life as believers.
It is the highest thing we can do in our lives because we are created to do it,
saved to do it, to perform it, to
There's a, you have to understand the dynamic of the church.
So now that we've been reminded how the centrality of worship is how God heals us
and renews us, we're going to look at how God has fitted the church together so we
can better understand the role of the deacon as it relates to the church members
and the elders. How do we all work together in the offices that we hold.
Remember, who was it? Was it Pastor Shisko that said that the office of believer?
Did y 'all hear those words? That's an office of believer, okay? So the individual
believer is an office holder of self, you know, in relationship to God and amongst
the communion of saints.
So within the construct of the worship we have unity, purity and peace.
We're going to talk about unity real quick.
First we are reminded in Ephesians and Galatians how union and Christ establishes and
sustains our communion with each other, which ultimately is meant to protect the
worship of the church from what? What is unity protect the church from? Satan,
someone's over here. This unity, schism, right?
Division, splitting apart from each other.
So unity He has a destination in the sense of protecting the church and that's to
keep us from destroying each other.
We've seen it. Some of us may have been part of churches that have fallen apart
because of disunity.
Second, we are reminded in Titus 1, Titus, excuse me, in 1 Peter,
that elders are responsible for shepherding the saints. They are to watch diligently
over the people committed to their charge to prevent corruption of doctrine or
morals. They should visit the people, especially the sick, instruct the ignorant,
comfort the mourning, and nourish and guard the children of the covenant. Elders in
summary are to protect the sheep.
So elders are responsible for primarily, primarily, the purity of the church and
there to protect against what?
Wolves.
So you see the pattern here.
The communion of the saints, that's a doctrine of the church. The communion of the
saints protects and enforces unity, protects from disunity or schism.
Shepherding protects the purity of the church. Alright.
Finally, we are reminded in Galatians in Acts that deacons are called to show forth
the compassion of Christ in a manifold ministry of mercy toward the saints and
strangers on behalf of the church. To this end, they exercise in the fellowship of
the church a recognized stewardship of care and of gifts for those in need of
distress.
Deacons minister the peace,
the peace of Christ through acts of mercy to help those who are in need of care
and distress. in distress.
Who are not at peace but
are hurting and in anguish and potentially are taking their eyes off God in worship
as they trust the material to give them peace and not the peace of God in Christ
that surpasses all understanding. Worship
is central. The body of Christ encourages each other in the unity in Christ that
they have in each other to worship. Shepherds, elders protect the flock to make sure
that worship is pure. Deacons provide mercy to make sure worship is peaceful.
Make sense? Now you know why you do mercy. I mean, I got told time and time again
as a deacon, you provide mercy ministries. OK, thank you very much. Why?
Well, it helps people.
They know that we love them. No, it's because worship,
their heart needs to be totally it in a worship service. And if their mind is
worried about everything outside the church and all their issues,
they're not at peace. They don't come to worship at peace. And that's very
important.
Here's another Deacon Carlson quote. Read that.
Like I said this guy gets it He understand beautiful in it.
The work of a deacon is huge It's huge because God designed it that way
Acts 6 1 through 7 Who was not at peace the Hebrews and the Greeks and we had
certain widows, right? the Hellenists, right? The Greeks, the Jews who were
Hellenists, Greeks, right? And there, here we got all these people aware in
Jerusalem. And why are they there? There's a conference on, no.
Holy Spirit, actually. Yeah, Holy Spirit. What was the Jewish Passover? Passover,
there you go. So what you now, do you have a bunch of people there? And now they
come to faith and then no longer at the synagogue. And all those protections that
they had at the synagogue are gone. And now you have Greek,
Hellenist, Jews, widows who are distressed because they can't eat.
Are they at peace? See how simple that is? They ain't at peace. And what are they
asking for? And who are they asking of the apostles. And they couldn't do their
job. So who else wasn't at peace? The apostles.
So they, the apostles, weren't at peace.
Was the congregation at peace? No! Right? And then we had the widows. See how that
worked?
There was distress in the church. It was good distress. It was growing fast,
all right? All right.
Let's look at the win. Are we good with this? Let's keep going. The win.
We have three pastors in this room that I know of. Three
One of the most favorite parts of worship is when Chris Cash and Steve McDaniels,
sir you, raise their hand at the end of worship. Raise their hands. What do they
do?
Give them addiction, right? Okay, good.
So what's that benediction usually telling us?
Yeah, they may say something like this, "The Lord bless you and keep you the Lord
make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you the Lord lift up his
countenance and upon you and give you peace is that Steve McDaniel talking yeah his
mouth's moving his voice is being heard but who's telling us this the
Lord's minister of the gospel our pastors speak on behalf of our Savior,
His words to us and we leave there at peace and go into a messy world and we
thrive for the next time we hear it, right? We thrive.
We live from benediction to benediction.
The Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. Now does that
peace mean gas and a gas tank?
Maybe? Alright, but if you ain't got any or can you still be at peace? Absolutely.
Might be a little rough, but yeah, gotta call somebody to get some gas. But we
live a one in six week and the six days in between here and here are messy
physical and material distress disrupts the peace of the lord creation groans
we have tornadoes we have hurricanes we have wildfires we have floods we have those
are what we refer to as natural disasters not quite natural but um...
then we have made disasters. We're pretty good at that too.
Huh? Tribulation, there you go.
So,
the Lord knows that we're about to re -enter into a messy world that is groaning
from the effects of sin. He wants us to focus on Him in the peace that will calm
our souls in the midst of a messy and simple world that can disrupt his peace in
our souls and make our worship of him weak and not of all our heart and soul like
it should be. It's a battle. How about you? Monday, it starts going downhill pretty
quick.
That's kind of why at our church we meet on Wednesday, so we can encourage each
other to get to Sunday, Sunday.
That's why your shepherds are shepherding. That's why your deacons are going into the
homes and talking to people to see if they're okay.
They're making sure that the peace of the Lord continues. So we have emergencies.
Serious unexpected situation recording immediate action. That's a dictionary term.
Here's another one
Catastrophic events an event causing great and sudden change crisis time of intense
difficulty or danger or even that disaster and Natural man -made event that causes a
lot of life You don't know what a disaster is to go to, I was deployed to
Honduras, actually we stayed in Salvador and
we flew from Salvador into Honduras, Guatemala, assessing the damage of a serious
hurricane, got into Nicaragua, that was cool, got off the helicopter, looking at
communists, it's like whoo -hoo -hoo, ching -ching, they're looking at me, I'm looking
at them, you know, democracy, communism,
Staring each other down and we go to assess a couple of villages that got hit by
this hurricane Mountain slid down on the town
Didn't see the town we saw some people that were dead Pigs were eating them now.
That's pretty bad
You can't get that out your head It is ugly
And I longed, I longed for the next time I could get before God Almighty and
worship and heal and get that out of my head. Get it out of my head.
I wanted to worship the Lord and have the world come and make sense again as I
gave him glory for all the things he has done for me.
Thankfully, The Lord has provided us men who are ordained to help us do just that,
and that's you guys, deacons. They are called deacons. Deacons in the life of the
church are meant to help us remain focused by restoring us to the peace of our
Lord so we can enter in the act of worship with all our heart and soul. Now
everybody does this. I have parsed out, I have parsed out shepherding, communion of
the saints and deacons, but you can't take them apart.
We participate. Every one of us, we're a member of the body of Christ in the
community of saints. So does our pastor, so do our elders, so do our deacons.
Our community of the saints, we have members of the church who have gifts and
graces. We're going to get into that. Who can serve each other and be deacon
helpers? You got a list of deacon helpers. You ain't got to do all the work.
We got shepherders that need to be deaconed We got elders who need to have deacons come talk to them and love on them And give in its fellowship together
Make sense All right, let's keep moving All right, so you're looking at a science
project here orange axis talks about resilience and resilience is the ability to bounce back and We find that people that are highly connected to other people are highly resilient and We find that those people that are isolated Aren't connected to people are less resilient. We know some of these people, don't we? I mean, X, talk about widows, right? Then we talk about being prepared. Who said be prepared earlier, my gentleman over here? There he is. But I call it time management. Are they organized in the way they order their day or their world, or are they disorganized and very reactive. And what happens is when you find someone that's isolated and reactive you got a mess on your hands. Now I know this because I help people get out of Deaches in my job. And every time I find one that is living on an island, doesn't know nobody, they're always reactive. They live moment to moment. And it doesn't take much for their for their minds to be just confused and they go do something silly just to survive. But we know people that are highly organized. So what we need to do, the what of Deacon's preparation for disaster response is to know who is most vulnerable in your worship.
Who is most vulnerable to worship disruption in your church? You can think of them right now Now it doesn't mean get this because the Lord on occasion Providentially
we think of Job rich man had very organized Had lots of family the Lord still
allowed him to be vulnerable to prove he was God.
So it's not a science project, it's understanding how God moves providentially to
grow people in grace. But we do know that, humanly speaking,
those people that are susceptible to being in distress or on an island and always
seem to be reactive to everything that's happening around him.
So take time, think about your congregations who might fit these qualifiers. I want
you to think out through the rest of this workshop on who they might be because
we're going to start talking about some folks that might fit into that framework
we're going to talk about, we'll finally get to.
I also want to stop here and kind of let's go back in time and apply what we've
learned already. We've done that a little bit in the conference, so bear with me,
I'm going to go back.
Let me ask you this.
Under the why,
what did COVID do to our why?
- COVID isolated me, there's a lot of people.
Here you go. - Isolated a lot of people.
Did you have people guarding against trusting the means? I mean, no, they all of a
sudden started trusting the means of creation. Don't get me wrong, medicine's good.
Okay, it's a blessing. I'm not demonizing medicine. I'm not attacking the vaccine.
What I'm saying though, is that we had people who put their trust in that.
- It makes people a lot more afraid of death.
- Yes sir. - Popin also sought made this for literally the very goal for which we've
created worship. Yes. Very good. You've been hanging out with Deacon Carlson.
I can tell.
Very good, sir. Yes, sir. You're on it. All right. So what about what did COVID do
to our worship?
Complicated. It wasn't -- it was disruptive. It wasn't -- Well,
some we had people leaders, especially the couldn't focus the congregation.
This is important. This is unimportant. Remember that? We was like, we don't know
what's important right now. Well, we do know what's important, but we don't know how
to get there and make sure it's still important. Okay. Now, the good news is the
church was strengthened by COVID. In the OPC, Steve A test,
our churches went whoop because people wanted to worship.
I mean in Andy's church they probably got
five or six families that said they were from other churches and they saw that the
OPC church was in person worship and they said we're going and now they're members
Because they knew what was important, okay? And they were able to do it.
There are some that couldn't do it because of the virus. They were providentially
hindered. What did COVID do to this?
The unity,
the purity, and the peace. We could talk about this for days. I mean, the purity
of the church. We had people at each other's throats, Christians.
The wolves came out
and the sheep got eaten in many cases. And definitely the peace was totally
disrupted. See how this works? That is a natural disaster.
Okay, it infected. Now some of it was man -made after the way we reacted to it.
And then, what did our week look like?
Is Zoom worship the same as in -person worship?
So when Steve stands up in his boxer shorts, he gives us the - oh,
I'm sorry, I'm messing with my brother. He knows I am. That's because I love him.
It ain't the same, right?
I heard it best said this way. God loves to see the visible representation of
vessels of mercy congregating and he shows them off to the world.
These are my people. Isn't that beautiful?
And they receive, they hear God's word from God's servant, His minister,
and the Holy Spirit moves.
So when we gather, and He's in the midst of us, and I think it's zooming, I mean,
I think we've got to figure out zoom, you know, where's the, where's the spirit,
you know, all right. So let's get back to deacons. Hurricane and earthquake can do
the same thing.
Wildfires, flooding,
tornadoes, they can do the same thing. And so your goal as a deacon is to know
this. This is how you prepare your church, as you always know, who most likely,
because it's not a science project, Most likely, in the event of a disruption, a
disaster, are most vulnerable. Got some more wet going on here. Deacons know the
gifts and graces of sheep and prepare God's people for deeds of mercy. We've talked
a little bit about gifts and graces.
We went, now I want to let you know, I had already done all this before you heard
it from, But it was interesting how Dr. Troxell, I think,
is the one who took us through the confession. Is that right? I'm getting them
mixed up, okay? And he and I came to the same conclusion after studying the
Scriptures and looking at our standards. The Communion of Saints, Chapter 26,
is Deaconology.
That's you guys.
This is how you know your sheep. You know the people of the congregation, and you
know their gifts and graces, and you know their mutual good, and you know the
inward and outward man. I'm gonna take some liberty here. Let's talk about gifts.
I'm gonna break it out in gifts, outer man and grace's inner man, inward man.
There's some, I just, these are starters.
Gifts, Outer Men. Do you know anybody that can make a nuclear bomb? Don't tell me.
(laughing) All right? My Navy folks might. They walk around with that nuclear stuff
on ships. (man speaking off mic)
Yeah, there you go. Well, we know people that got some pretty cool things they can
do, right? That are in a congregation. Could be woodworking, it could be, you name
it. They got mental skills.
I got a master's in strategy from the United States Army War College. I can develop
a plan that will take down a continent. I ain't making that up. Okay?
A continent. Like, you want China to evaporate and disappear? I'll put a plan
together for you. Because the Army War College told me how to do that. I drive
people nuts, you can ask Chris, from a planning perspective, Steve knows this because
we're trying to put together a strategy for the Home Missions Committee at
Denomination. I write strategy, but I also was an Army Ranger under a poncho with a
red flashlight writing a five paragraph field order for troops, okay, so I can go
from zero to 60 real quick. That's a gift I have, but it is also a curse,
because the first time I briefed ecology and disaster response to David Nakla,
his eyeballs were about to pop out of his head. Because I went way too fast and
way too far. So I've had to learn to chill my jets, just to cool it down a
little bit. But we have people in our congregations that have mental, physical,
material resources. And you ought to know who they are. And you know how you do
that? There's several ways. We'll get into it later. But I read something in a
book. Let me go back. Let me, I failed to do something. I saw it this morning.
Listen to this. This book we got is awesome. All right?
And on page 173, listen to this. and think this when I'm reading.
Think that. In short, anyone within the community of saints who is not able to
experience the joy and freedom of God's children should be assisted.
After all, God had set his people free from bondage of Egypt and in the fullness
of time from the bondage and dominion of sin and Satan. All must enjoy the delight
of deliverance, peace. Anything taken away from that joy such as the burden of
poverty,
loneliness, sickness, or mental or physical disabilities warrants diagonal attention.
There's your shortlist. And now you have a shortlist and you're going to start
working.
Who in the church can help people that we just described? You're connecting dots.
It's almost like a dating service.
I've got somebody that looks like this and needs some help and I got somebody over
here that looks like this and might could help. And it's because you know them. And
in this book I read something that was cool. It said, "Deacons go into the homes
and visit the sheep." We've always thought that's the elders.
And I was like, "This guy gets it. He must be talking to Deacon Carlson, this Van
Dam Cat. He must be talking to him. He gets it. Go into the homes.
You go in my home when I was living in Belmont, you're going to find I got a
whole house generator. Okay? I'm serious. My wife, she's got to have that curling
iron working, man. All right? So I wound up buying a whole house generator. Don't
you tell her, Chris.
It's being recorded. I'm sorry. All right? So we bought a whole house generator
because we were on a septic symptom and a well pump all right and she didn't like
not having to be able to shower and you know whatever cook and right and so you
were deacon and you come in my house you say I have a whole house generator which
means when that widow's house power goes out and it's out for a week maybe use and
I got four bedroom house for my two children who never came to my house and I
could probably put them there and they could be cool. And I could feed them and I
could fellowship with them. I could love on them, they could love on me. See how
that works? It's that simple, okay? You're connecting dots. But you got to know
this. So you got to be engaged in their lives. You got to talk to them. You got
to get to know them. You got to be vulnerable
In the infantry when I talked to a lieutenant and I gave him a mission And he
stood there with that goofy look on his face. I Would simply tell him move out and
draw fire if you were not good for anything get up run towards the enemy So
they'll shoot at you and your men will know where they are. Okay? Go get dirty
Go get dirty. Move out and draw fire as a deacon. Just go do. Go do.
Don't sit there. Go do. Do something. Go get involved in the lives of somebody.
What about Grace's inner man?
We know people. I just started brainstorming when it comes to disaster response. We
got peacekeepers in our congregations. People who love to help. They have hospitality.
They understand what it means to live providentially. They can separate the world
from the Christ's kingdom. We know who they are, has experienced personally suffering.
Those are great deacon helpers. People that you can marry up with someone who's
hurting, they know how to persevere. They're not easily offended. Those are graces in
the inward person. The Lord has developed them and they're not to be idle. We can
help them serve the church, the body of Christ, in a disaster.
But if you don't know who they are and a disaster hits, we now in a happening.
Okay, things are happening, but I don't know what to do. If you do a little bit
of preparation, Know the gifts and grace of the sheep, to prepare God's people for
these immersing. You're there, does it make sense? All right, let's keep driving on.
So what do deacons do to prayer? They strengthen disaster response preparedness of
the sheep. We already went through knowing who's vulnerable. How many of us know
where the deacon disaster response OPC webpage is? Have we looked at that bad If
you look at it, you're going to get a bunch of information on how to do a survey,
how to sit down with a family, ask questions, what they may have as far as
resources, gifts, and so forth. And you'll be able to understand what their
weaknesses are, where they might need help. And there's all these resources on the
OPC webpage. There's even a cat that Well, in 13 minutes,
teach you how to do that. That good looking gentleman without a beard. That
Reformation OPC. We teach you how to do that on a 13 minute video and it's hung
on the OPC webpage for disaster response.
We actually do one for Presbyteries. How many Presbyteries did I know committee
members do I have in here? There you go. I knew you were wearing a man dress for
a reason. All right? Picking on your brother. You as well? Anybody else?
All right. We have one for Presbyterian Dicatal Committees. How to prepare for
disaster response. Go there.
How do you know the gifts and graces of the sheep? Now this is something I want.
I'm going to work with David on. How many of y 'all are signed up for the Disaster
Response Registry. Oh, help me. Get those hands up. 3, 4,
5. Okay.
We need to go to the Disaster Response webpage and click on the Disaster Response
Volunteer Registry. Now, if you don't have anything to do to help a network guard,
you can encourage people to do that in your church. But Here's one of the
weaknesses of that registry. Right now, I can call up and say how many people in
the Presbyterian of the Southeast, David, have signed up for the registry and he'll
look and give me the list and the names. And it'll be about like 60 some odd
people, it's pretty good. But what does that do for you as a deacon? Zip.
What if we had an option when they fill out the registry that they could send that
to their deacon? Would that help you because in the registry it asks you a whole
bunch of questions. What are your gifts? What resources do you have? Where might you
be able to help? Would that be information? You would like to know for your local
church in case maybe a disaster hits you You didn't you don't have to go to higher
headquarters to ask what your people have Give some graces in you have it right
there in front of you. So this is something I'm going to be working with David on
But get them to the registry ways of doing that how many y 'all have fellowship
meals put a computer there put two or three of them tell them about the registry
before they can eat they have to know right find a way find a way yeah open it
up and all those that are afraid of computers
Let's keep talking about what? Deacons protect the communal joy of the congregation.
Now, this may sound redundant, but it is not. We're going to 0 .2 of '26,
like Dr. Troxell did. And we're going to talk about abilities and necessities.
What I want to understand is this.
My house has a fire.
OK? Okay, the whole house generator my wife wanted in the house caused a fire,
no.
And so it's damaged, right? And I now need some help and the deacons show up and
say, "What can we help you with? Well, I've got insurance, looks like it's going to
cover there, but
How does that affect the body of Christ that I go to church with that my house
burned?
Hurts because we're supposed to suffer together, right? We're supposed to suffer
together. I still remember at Reformation OPC when it was a mission work We had a
gentleman who got brain cancer and we were a congregation probably about 20 people
and
Every one of us suffered is if we had brain cancer. 'Cause this man was dear to
us, he lived 23 more months and he passed away.
How did we heal? Trick question. Go back to the beginning of this thing. We went
to what? Worship.
Okay. But we suffered with him. So the communal, the collective impact of a disaster
on one person in your body can affect the entire congregation and their communal
joy. And that's what this is I want us to talk about now, is you can help protect
the communal joy by helping these what I call necessities,
it's necessary to restore peace. And how do you restore peace? You shift from
trusting creation to trusting in the resurrection power of God. We want the entire
congregation to help not only the one person, me with my house on fire, but we
want to help each other. So I might have a,
Andy, we're going to church and my house caught on fire and Andy feels as if he
was in the house, he lives down the road when it started burning. His heart hurt
so bad for me and my family that his peace for worship is disrupted.
And so now we're not only talking about shifting an individual, Mike Coy, his house,
and trusting the insurance agent to take care of everything in the world instead of
the resurrection power God and heal. We're also now dealing with Andy and Andy's
wife. Okay? Let's see the effects of a disaster. That's why when we have a
hurricane that blows on the East Coast, we got people in Alaska saying, "I want to
go," because they're believers who are hurting for their churches.
They have compassion and they want to go. So it is in your own congregations. You
should know what you do for me, and my house burning, and Andy, and anyone else
that is bleeding with me, needs to be taken care of by the decays. Does that make
sense? The collective impact of a disaster.
So, gifts out of man. This is an inner man. You're trying to make sure all of
what God has given the church is working together to help bring peace.
Now let's get into some how.
Anybody, I'll let you read this.
This is the title. How do you say that? We've got some people that know how to
speak this.
Silium? Is Is that Salom? Okay. So this is the count in Luke 1345.
Here it is, "repent or perish." We emphasize the dark here because you see here on
this tower of Salom that is fallen and there are 18 that were killed. Okay.
And then what we find is it's an opportunity for deacons to remind humanity of need
or redemption. How many of y 'all have, I'm not speaking worldly here when I say
this. How many of y 'all have cheated death?
Multiple times. Were you in service? - No, I wasn't. - Yeah, I won't get into it.
But when you have a near death experience,
it helps you examine your heart.
When you as a deacon are helping someone re -establish the peace, shift from the
world to Christ in their peace, the foundation of their peace, then what you're
doing is you're helping them examine themselves. It is a means of bringing the
gospel back to them in their minds and their hearts and if it's someone outside the
church it's even better. We've never heard the gospel to repent. None of us know
that we're going to get home tomorrow.
The Lord may bring us home where we really reside but home on the earth.
I'm not wishing that on anybody. What I'm just saying is a reality, just like it
was for those that were under that tower when it collapsed. It's referred to in
Scripture.
So think
of opportunities when you're administering mercy ministry in peacemaking,
the element of repentance
With who you're working with we're going to work through that here in a minute
Right now that's pretty close to a minute
All right, we got Russell Now there's a reason why I picked Russell That's the name
of my middle brother and he was always a pest so I love him dearly
So, Russell,
we had two members of our church. Russell's one of those that was injured due to
that tower going down. What happened is it fell on his business. It's repairable.
There's a hole in the roof. He's married Donna. They got five children ages two
through twelve. They have no extended family close by. We're stepping into real world
today and stepping into Jerusalem in the day gone by. And so Rome is like two
months away. (laughs) Not so today, but it's two months away. So what you're
learning here is that the immediate assistance, which should always be the family,
they're not available. They're not around, can't get there. And he's the church
treasure.
Okay, we got a mess on all hands.
So we assess his resilience is fairly good because what you don't know is he's got
some faithful employees that did not get hurt and harmed that are very loyal. And
he's got some awesome neighbors, but
the church might need to get involved. His preparedness was medium, very, the little
no savings, and he had no health insurance. He's self -employed and he was trying to
cut some corners. Okay? So what we've done is we've assessed how bad this disaster
has now impacted Russell and his family. We've got some facts there.
But then we've got Abigail. I just like to name Abigail.
Abigail's in the hospital possible, both broken legs. Now Russell's in the ICU with
brain injury, so he's really bad off, but he's going to live. Abigail's in the
hospital, two broken legs. That's pretty bad because she's old. She's a widow. She
has no children, no related family nearby. The tower fell on her house and it's
repairable as well. It's got a hole that needs to be fixed in the roof as well
and some debris removed. She has no extended family, nothing, nobody nearby.
She's on fixed income.
Didn't have a car or a chariot, whatever. Okay? Her assessment is her resilience was
probably pretty low. We got to make an assumption. Could be that she's pretty
resilient, independent. She only has her church family. That's it, nobody else.
And her preparedness could be fairly low low because she's on fixed income, only has
Social Security Medicare. Now this is real world, this could happen. And you're a
deacon and you now,
and there's just two people that live through it, you might have some folks in your
church passed away. And now you've got a disaster in your hand and how do you deal
with it?
So So first thing we do we're gonna start with Abigail and these are blank for
reason because this is meant for discussion What do we talk to Abigail about?
Examining herself when you talk to her. What are you gonna ask her?
What do you ask her? She just cheated death She got two broken legs She's been
blessed. She's still alive
Okay, so you're already jumping to how to restore peace. I want us to start with,
okay.
Go ahead. You got it. I'm going to minister the mercy of Christ to her. Amen. I'm
going to share the gospel with her. Very good. I'm going to assure her that we,
the church, are here for her. Amen. That's an excellent start. What do you want to
ask her?
How you doing? How you doing spiritually?
How about this question?
Abigail, what if you didn't survive this?
She's like, you know, where would you be?
Abigail, where would you be if you were not preserved by the Lord and to have two
broken legs. That's bad enough. Where would you be? What's your eternal state?
Can Deacons ask that question? Absolutely.
You won't start right there. What's most important? You can't get to peace until she
starts looking at her heart. Alright? So, oh, Mike, Mr. Deacon,
thank you for that question. It's only made me realize how much the Lord loves me.
He loves me. And you know what? He loves all my family in the church because now
I can minister to them in my suffering. Whoa, you're going whoa!
She gets it. Right? She gets it. It ain't But her, it's about the Lord's love for
her. It's about her family, her church family who loves her now. She's going to
minister to them, right? That's beautiful. So you're now giving a little confidence
to her. She's okay. She understands. Or it could be,
"I would have died in my sins,"
and you're like, "Oh, why is that?" And Maybe she tells you.
And then she tells you enough to where you go, 9 -1 -1, I need an elder, OK? I
need a pastor, right? But you know enough to minister to her to get her the
spiritual counseling she might need. She has her particular elder that she works
with. Now we go here. What is the critical-- what do you think is most important
to get her-- it could be anything. What is it? You know her a little bit. What
What is it that's gonna restore her peace? We have some insights over here, or what
else? Got a hole in the roof?
Long recovery.
Ah, so she might need what?
Needs someone to drive, okay? Get that chair in hooked up. What else? Sir?
- If I remember right, her scenario is two broken legs, so she may need people to
be at her house with her to help her do basic tasks. Cool beans, I like it.
What else? Basic tasks. Assisted daily living. Her medical needs.
Yes, look here, she's on Medicare. All right? She has no savings. You had another
one over here. Same thing. Whether Medicare is going to cover it. Good, good, good.
What else? She's probably going I think some of the upper animal is stressed to
deal with her, we have to keep it.
Is that a voice of experience, a gift that you have?
The other thing is very basically, before she broke her legs, she was able to walk
around and get outside and now she can't, so she's going to be lonely, she's going
to be isolated. You guys are on it, see? See how? Some of them walked it off.
Walked it off? Grocery needs. Grocery needs. Sir? She needs somebody to hold the
ladder while she's repairing her roof.
I like it. I like it.
Yeah. So now we ask, we start thinking who can help?
Are you supposed to be doing all this by yourself? No. Can you do it all by
yourself? No. Was it meant for you to do it by yourself? No. We have a body of
Christ and community of saints and there are people, gifts and graces in your
congregation that might be, you remember the question, we got a young widow and we
got an elderly widow.
All you got to ask is the elderly widow, put it in perspective of the vertical
again. Her life is disruptive. I mean, she can't pay her bills. She needs help for
a month. Can you help her be a better worshiper and at peace by a month's worth
of just ask the question. My brother's in sales. Anybody in sales? My brother's in
sales. He says one rule, you never know the answer until you ask the question.
Ask the question of the elderly widow. Just ask her. Don't be afraid. She can say
no. All right. To find somebody else. So now we can see how Now this is our
framework. We talk about her spiritual estate because she cheated death. The Lord
blessed her, preserved her life. We think about all those things she might need and
we start marrying that up. No. What about Russell?
Huh? We're ministering to him. The spirit state is in me asking you to pray,
Andrew. Who you might be administering to? Amen. Amen, you got it. Russell, he's got
tubes in his throat, eyes closed, monitors on him, he can't talk to anybody.
But, he's got family, he's got, how many kids? There you go, people are listening,
I love it. Alright, so, and a wife. Is she at peace? Well,
children at peace?
So, who So who you gonna minister to her and her children and you're gonna start
asking her some Questions now when he comes out after he comes out of his coma or
out of his ICU Estate and you might start asking Russell some questions. You've got
some others that you might be able here's another opportunity Who else might you ask
that's employees and neighbors? Isn't that awesome? Yes,
they're exactly, so you know he's got loyal employees. You got an opportunity to ask
them, what if this was you? What would your eternal state, where would you be right
now? In hell or Christ? Simple question.
People don't want to hear that question unless they're a believer.
And then, you move over here. What does Russell need? Got a business?
Got a hole in his roof? Got a ton of health care coming. Got a lot of... You
thought Abigail needed help. He's going to need lots of help.
And his family. Yes, sir? For Russell, you know, can I see you?
You may not come out of it. So this is where the pastor, he can pray,
that's the supernatural aspect. Yes sir. And sometime he goes in and that's it, they
can hear it, it must be spoken. Yes sir. So prayer and committing to God is the
ultimate thing. Amen. Very good. I have to correct whatever monotony is.
Amen.
Right,
and then now you're you're finding those gifts and graces. They're gonna help the
long haul Okay, and minister to the family so that we bring them back to a
peaceful state to worship sir Is that the order that you would go in would you
primarily go? question of spiritual or would you maybe start with material?
Because sometimes people that have been injured in a disaster need the immediate
before you can even ask the question. Right. Right. No, that's a great question. I
only did it for this reason. The emphasis is the spiritual nature of the office of
deacon. I want deacons to understand they need to ask that question. Okay?
When they ask that question is in the wisdom of the deacon and the situation in
the family and all that complexity of it, they'll know when. But don't avoid the
question. Yes? I think there's a temptation to use a jump to material right in
reality. That's a component. Even being a very small component to go,
"Okay, they are so distraught with material concerns. I've got to deal with that,
the only way you're actually going to honestly arrive at that conclusion is to start
with the scrutiny question. Alright, I mean I wouldn't disagree with you, I think
that's where I would go, but what I want you to do is be feel comfortable, don't
put so much emphasis on the material that they think you're a Santa Claus,
okay? Yes sir? I think that sometimes you can come across a way where they can
making a discussion between the deacons and elders which they're raised and so the
deacon is just for the material meaning of the person, but the scripture says that
you serve in the office of the deacon, you have purchased yourself a great boldness
in the faith, and you cannot remember how you brought the deacon, Stephen.
Yes.
He was at peace when he was being stoned. Amazing. Yes, very good words. What I
want us to leave here today is you are, you are serving in that supernatural,
right? You are a spiritual deacon. So that's why I want us to think about this
first. Do you ask that question right up? Great, great question. I think it's,
you know 'em, maybe you're comfortable enough, maybe they're new members, you don't
know them well enough, you're gonna pause a little bit before you get there, right?
Alright, so what happens when Russell, you ain't got enough gifts and graces to help
Russell or Abigail? You go out and sell lemonade and cookies and liquies and chewies
as we call them in the military. You're going to do that to make money? Make your
name known to the public. My personal example is then make it known to the
congregation, make it known to the local Presbyterian and that is still not enough
that he has to be oversized. Very good. So were you in David's class today?
No. Okay, who was in David's class today? Alright, so you know the answer. We go
to the Presbytery.
There are people in the Presbytery who have gifts and graces that might be able to
apply to help you out. To strengthen, or to connectional church will strengthen your
body. Okay? We were a mission work at Gastonia for a while.
We had a borrowed deacon, like we had borrowed elders. This guy was him.
He's as big as Tim. Tim Hopper. I mean, big old tall guy. He's in the shooting.
He's pretty cool cat, right? He's in the competitive shooting. He'd come to us 30,
40 minutes away and work it with us and walk around.
Got anything you need help with?
And then he'd find something. He'd say, "Somebody said, 'Well, you need to talk to
Chloe.' His house burned down." And he go, yeah, he'd say, you need to talk to
Chloe, somebody in the congregation, 'cause he's talking to him since in the
congregation, how they're doing. He finds a diagonal in me because he talked to
somebody and Mike's house burned down. You need to talk to him. He come over. Next
thing you know, he's putting a ton of diagonal love on us 'cause we didn't have
any deacons. It was awesome. I love this guy this day. He just oozed mercy.
I mean, every time you saw him, it was about loving people, loving God's sheep,
and that's that Connectional Church. We got the dart. I don't want to talk about
the dart. Disaster events response team in the Presbyterian Southeast will deploy that
dart to get that hole fixing your house. Tree off your house. Water out of your
basement because we got a bunch of tools and equipment and trained men to do it
quickly. But then if we can't handle the preps, we're going to kick it to
denomination. David Nakla makes it happen.
The CDM makes it happen. And they come up with people from Alaska. It's amazing.
They show up in North Carolina. I'm here to help.
Updone. See that house? That house was destroyed and her came Florence and I'm gonna
read you a diary entry of the lady who owned that house. She bought that house and
two days after she bought it, it was three feet underwater and
you see all that stuff that's sitting on the street. You see that trailer? The
disaster response team, advanced response team went in there and took up all the sub
flooring, got all the insulation out, cut the drywall to the flood levels above it,
got blowers in there, started working on it two days after the water receded.
This is what she wrote in her diary. Anybody
know Scott Cormier Deacon at Newburn Covenant.
It has been one month since we came home to find the house had been flooded.
Hurricane Florence had left the house I had owned for two weeks in a shambles.
God in His providence has provided disaster relief through the OPC that tore out the
wet flooring and sheet rock. A church member provided us a place to stay for the
first week.
And the company I work for, she's a nurse, has provided a furnished apartment until
my home is restored "To have lived through a natural disaster,
I have been greatly blessed. I have shed many tears,
but am overall very blessed." Do you think she was at peace?
Because people, huh? She was getting there. So she's a member of New Bern Covenant,
came Florence, New Bern, North Carolina. And I now know her as a member of the
church that I'm a member of. And she shared with this, and both of us cried.
At the anniversary of Florence, she breaks down, and we have to be with her.
'Cause it was so catastrophic to her. She is still healing, but she is at peace
because she's at worship every Sunday. She's in a deacon did that. Scott Cormier,
the deacon at Newport. One guy working his little tail off. Orthopedic physical
therapist I think is what he does for living.
Alright,
I developed a Catechism. Now, we're not going to recite this, but I want you to
read it. I want you to read it because if you want it, I'll send it to you, but
I want to hear from y 'all if you think it helps when it comes to disaster
response in the local church. Summarize what we talked today. We're about done.
I've got two minutes, I think.
You know those saying if it's worth doing it's worth overdoing so we can keep going
if you want so
So you guys find that helpful? All right, remember
My task and purpose for you today was that I hope I accomplished it.
If you want the slides,
just email me. Let's bow our head in prayer. Gracious Heavenly Father, you are
indeed just that. You are remarkably gracious. Gracious beyond our understanding.
And Father, you have given us the gift of grace to give to others because we know
how gracious you are. And Father, we ask that we would be able to imitate your
grace in our lives to those who are hurting and need mercy in their lives,
to be restored to the peace of worship. And we thank you for the love of the
saints that deacons have. And we ask that you would bless these men as they go now
to another activity and finish up tomorrow and take home what they've learned and
put it into practice so that they can glorify your name in Christ's name. We pray.
Amen. Thank you, man. Thanks for joining us. Go to our website, thereformdeacon .org.
There you will find all our episodes, program notes, and other helpful resources. And
please make plans to join us again for another episode of the Reform Deacon the
podcast.