SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let's trust the Lord that we can that we involve the people. We had three groups, so one type of crate for each group. They were responsible for one type of crate. And I thought, well, it might be good if there were about five or six people for each group. So maybe around eighteen would be ideal. We had eighteen people show up.

David Nakhla 0:22

Welcome to the Reform Deacon, a casual conversation with topics specifically designed to help local Reform Deacons. There are nearly a thousand deacons in the OPC alone. So let's take this opportunity to learn from and encourage one another. We're so glad you could join us. Let's jump into our next episode. My name is David Knockland, and today I'm joined by my friend and fellow Philadelphia Presbytery Diaconal Committee, Dave Asky. Dave has been a deacon at Trinity OPC in Happoro, Pennsylvania for is that 38 years. Wow. Uh Dave and I served together on the Diagonal Committee. And it was in that context that Dave was sharing about the joy of his high involvement with this effort. And I felt that this was a conversation that a broader audience ought to hear and be encouraged by. So, Dave, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Thank you, David.

David Nakhla 1:20

What piqued your interest in Crates for Ukraine? You heard about it in January. What piqued your interest in it in particular?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, so we did the uh December, I guess it was, month, uh Ukraine Awareness Month. And one of my responsibilities, I was asked to do this a Sunday school session, uh showing the video from Hero. And I typically like to give a bit of background and context. So I had done a little bit of research in terms of the country of Ukraine and the situation they were in. And also Hero, uh, you know, we know him, but sometimes there's always new members, and so we need to get information. And so one of the things I had looked at that came up was Praise for Ukraine uh program that they did uh the year before or earlier that year. And I was very interested in that as a deacon, and actually I told my other deacon uh friends at Trinity that keep tuned to that because that might be something we want to do. And then when it came back live again for the second iteration, uh in God's providence, we were actually looking for a bit of a church-wide project to be involved in at Trinity, uh, sponsored by the deacons. And so when I saw that, I jumped on that and said, proposed to the deacons that we take this as our project. It had some really appealing things. That one is MTW was very organized in terms of the material and the whole process, and I'm a logistics kind of guy, so it really resonated with me. And uh also it was a time-bound project. And so, in terms of a church project, there are some that have to go on for a long time or forever. But if you really, you know, if sometimes it's it's helpful to get a lot of momentum, but know that there's going to be a time ending. So it just fit into some of our desires for DIEC or project, service projects at Trinity. And also, you know, the members of Trinity are very responsive and they were interested in that.

David Nakhla 3:33

So let's jump to the conclusion. Um, and then we'll talk about a little bit how you got there. But why why don't you summarize some of the, you know, some of the final results of this effort by March 15th, which was kind of the deadline of everything, or maybe March 1st. Give us some of the stats and and of of what all was accomplished.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, so Trinity, we in the end ended up packing 45 crates from the church there. Now there was in involvement from uh other churches, I'll mention that. But our goal was 30 crates, and I had a number of comments from some of the other deacons like, you're you're crazy, you know. We're how are we ever gonna get there? But uh we ended up 45 crates, so uh it was awesome. I mean, that was about 47 to 48,000 worth of supplies. We ended up picking about we did about 10 wound crates, uh 10 of the 10 or 12 of the type two crates, and then 13 or so of the of the type three. Just in terms of we did we did sign up to be a um a local drop-off point, and so we had a number of churches. We ended up delivering 109 crates between two trips. We did two trips to Chattanooga, and uh so the first time was about 40 crates, and then uh the rest were um about 60 something crates were delivered on the 16th, March 16th, the last day. There's just some interesting uh numbers. It kind of gives an idea of how the project uh developed. We we had about $6,600 that was donated from Trinity members in cash. We had $3,255 from other individuals. The deacons at Trinity themselves contributed about $12,000 to the project. Uh, we had $2,650 from businesses that we had contacted. There was $11,340 from seven other churches. A number most of those were Presbytery churches, but there were um three others that were from outside of the Presbytery. And then there was about $11,000, $12,000 worth of donated supplies. Um, so in a sense, it was really quite balanced in terms of you know the different sources that we had uh contributions from.

David Nakhla 6:08

Did the numbers surprise you?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

I'm gonna say no, because when we started it, you know, when I was proposing it to the deacon board, gave them the I'd read through all the crates, Ukraine information, and they said, well, I said they want us to make an estimate and they recommend at least four crates. You know, we started talking about 10 or 12 and and in the discussion. And we've had other projects at Trinity, and I think you know, one of the perspectives is if we're really committed to this and we think that's the Lord's calling, then let's go for it. And the congregation and others have always uh been really behind us. So I wasn't surprised, I was very thankful and I was pleased.

David Nakhla 6:59

Is it the culture, the custom of Trinity Happoro deacons to engage the congregation in Ministry of Mercy efforts like this?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Well, yes and no. I mean, obviously, there's a certain amount of diaconal work that's confidential and individual. And, you know, we have typical type of circles of need, you know, within the congregation and and then going on out. But we have regularly made an effort to have some projects, not continually, but periodically. And one of the things that we don't always do a good job about, and we in the last number of years we've really been striving to increase is is the awareness of people in our community, especially of Trinity. And, you know, the word is preached there, and there's a lot of ministry happening, but also the need to expose others around us to the fact that things are happening there. And uh, so that's one of the big effort and emphasis, you know, it's not it's not a PR thing, but but really just to have people who become aware of Trinity realize, oh, something's happening there, and then be able to question, well, what is it? So, yeah, we do we do regularly try to involve the congregation. We're fully aware that a lot of the ministry of mercy happens outside of the deacon board, um, you know, individual families, uh, groups doing things. And so part of the role of the deacons is to um enable and you know support that grassroots as well. And so this is just a bit bigger effort along those lines.

David Nakhla 8:44

If if there's, you know, if someone was listening and was like, wow, I wish our church was more like that, how would you encourage a deacon to foster that kind of spirit within the congregation of of working together in on a big project like this? Is it is it does he need to be interacting with the session about those things, or is it more the pastor, or is it just the deacons as a as a whole cooperating? What what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Yes. So with this was kind of started by the deacons, but there were two of us deacons on the planning committee, or the the committee that actually threw this. So it wasn't uh limited to the deacons being involved, but it certainly did require uh or it was greatly uh benefited by the involvement of the pastor and the support of the session very quickly. I mean, it was it was quite short. I mean, it was really two months between uh I have the date of the announcement we made in the morning service about the project was January 15th. So almost two months to a day after that the project was over.

David Nakhla 9:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

So we had a lot of support from the pastor, you know, enabling us to make announcement during right after the morning service. At one point after our first packing party, we were doing it in the front of the auditorium. And I called him and I said, We have all these piles of crates. Can I leave them there for Sunday morning? And he and he said, Yes, you can. And uh so things like that, where we had some uh concrete demonstrations of the progress. So you're asking about encouraging, you know, other churches. For one thing, it just takes a commitment to do it. Um, you know, if you think through all the things that might go wrong, well, yeah, it might, you know, end up thinking, well, we can't really do that. Um, it did take a lot of planning, or at least during the project, it took a lot of work to organize. But we had made a commitment because of you know the certain size and and involvement we had, we said we're gonna be very flexible. We're gonna let people donate money, donate supplies, you know, whatever they do. And and when we signed up to be a local drop-off point, you know, we told churches, um, whatever you need to do to send them here, send one crate, 10 crates. You know, they said, Well, can you handle uh if we did 10 more? You said, Well, rent a bigger truck, you know, that's not none of those things were were uh deal breakers. Um, so yes, involve the session, uh the pastor, communicate with the congregation. You know, they want to know what's happening. We have a weekly news chain email that we uh advertised it in, and we had an update every week in there. We had an initial announcement, I think a period, uh maybe two other announcements during the service, one in the middle and one at the end. We had posters that were out at the front of the church, uh, lawn sign kind of things. And we we had, you know, involved things like um our online giving portal uh had a special fund for crates for Ukraine so that people could give to that. And we had talked to our treasurer, and he kept the funds in a a place that we actually were able to link like our Amazon account directly to that. So there was no time involved in submitting reimbursement requests and all that kind of thing. So, you know, because 30 35,000 of this were per were supplies that we purchased um from money that was given. So there was quite a bit of uh, you know, logistics there. So, you know, I think probably the the one of the biggest things is communication. We had a team of about six people who were had different roles, and we met at least weekly, but we had emails going on and in in between, you know, they were volunteers or somewhat handpicked, but you know, the one of the big uh emphasis that we decided from the beginning, at least um I was pushing, was that we have to involve the congregation. This isn't going to be a project that six people can do. And sometimes you have the pre, and I know I suffer from this, I have the perspective it's easier if I do it myself. And sometimes that is true, you can get the job done more efficiently, but the goal was to involve everybody, and so we packing parties, things like that. We waited until the packing party to actually pack any crates. We didn't do anything ahead of time, uh, because we wanted people involved. And it was uh it was very encouraging to everybody who did participate.

David Nakhla 13:43

Can you expand on that a little bit? The packing party. We got to wait till the packing party. You you told me a story about that. Maybe you can repeat that.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah. So again, I'm a logistics guy, and a couple of the other people on our committee, clearly from their interest in being involved, were very interested in the logistics and planning. And and uh we had scheduled these two packing parties, one right at the end and one in the middle. And we put out the word and for a couple of weeks before and said, you know, we're going to meet on, I think we did one on Saturday morning and one on Saturday evening, uh, just to kind of vary the times. And a couple of the committee were saying, uh, let's get started and you know, start packing these things ourselves, and then other people can help out. And and I said, No, we're going to, this is a a group packing party. And what if nobody shows up? I said, Well, I know of six people that can help from the committee, and we may have to scramble afterwards, but we'll deal with that if if needed. We're gonna trust that we're gonna have people come. And uh this this happened a probably two or three conversations before the first packing, well, before both of them. And uh, but we kind we held the line, or I did, and and we said, you know, let's let's trust the Lord that that we can that we involve the people. We had three groups, so one type of crate for each group, they were responsible for one type of crate. And I thought, well, it might be good if there were about five or six people for each group. So maybe around 18 would be ideal. If if three people show up, we're gonna be scrambling a little bit. If 50 people show up, we're also gonna be scrambling because I don't know what I'm gonna do with all of them. We had 18 people show up, and it was exactly, and they were excited to do it. There were others who said, I'm sorry, I can't come. I'll, you know, I've given money and this, and so um, that was it. But and that happened for both packing parties, and we, you know, we advertised them, we encouraged, but we waited until the packing party, we got everything done that we wanted in each party. And so, you know, the Lord was obviously blessing in that regard.

David Nakhla 16:01

That's so great, Dave. Can you give us a sense of Trinity Happaro? What size is the congregation, would you say? 200 and something members. Okay. What was the involvement you had from outside of the congregation, even with regards to giving and that type of thing?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, so we had we had communicated with all of the Presbytery churches. This happened right at the beginning of the project. I guess after we had decided, we knew that Calvary Glenside and Trinity had both committed to actually packing some crates. We decided that we were going to try to be open-ended and f really flexible about uh the whole project. But we communicated with the other Presbytery churches, inviting them to either have their own project for packing or to participate with us through money or supplies. And so we had five churches and five or six church presbytery churches that helped in that regard. So that was good. It became evident that there are businesses that might be willing to participate. The way MTW had it organized, it was a very specific project. It was a very easy project to communicate and to sell, in a sense, to others, even non-Christians, um, because it was so focused on the, you know, the wound care or the basic care, things like that. So it was very easy to do in that regard. You know, in God, uh, there's a couple of churches, there's a Ukrainian church just down the street from us, and I went and talked to their pastor, and uh uh they did help us a little bit. Um, they were involved in some big projects of their own, so they couldn't, you know, they didn't want to over tax their congregation, but we did get help from them. And uh so I think the big thing that we tried to communicate to different members of the congregation also was ask people that you work with. If you work for have a company or you work in a small company, especially, ask them. And uh, we got a number, you know, we got several thousand dollars from businesses. It was, you know, communication was a big thing. I think that would be one thing that if we were to do this again, we would like to be more organized, even going to organizations more quickly. For big for bigger organizations, you you need a bit more time to kind of get through some of the layers of decision making, which we didn't really have in this project.

David Nakhla 18:44

So, Dave, what there was something about the rental truck. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, so in terms of delivering the uh crates down to to Chattanooga, the first trip we had somebody uh volunteer to let us use their pickup truck, and we used the uh Presbytery trailer to take the crates. But the second trip, it was evident that we were going to have too many for uh the trailer, and so we decided we'd have to rent a truck. We actually rented initially reserved two sizes of trucks because we didn't know how many crates we were going to have exactly. Um, after it kind of started to focus on one particular size, I had registered. So after it became evident uh what size truck we needed, uh, we had reserved these two Penske trucks and I called Penske thinking, well, maybe they would be interested in being involved in this project. I got hold of a gentleman in in the uh administration side, explained what it was we were doing, and said, you know, it's a little expensive for the uh mileage charge to take the truck down to Chattanooga and back again, but can you could you help us at all with any of this costs? And he said, Yeah, this is really good. I think maybe we could uh give you a bit of a discount there. So we got talking more and more, and he said, you know what, we can just wave the the mileage charge. That's 80 cents a mile for the whole way down there and back. And then as we got talking a bit more, he said, Well, you know, the the rental amount, we can just wave that as well. He said, I'm very sorry, I can't take away the insurance cost because that's a different company. So the the cost for renting for the trip, other than gas, was about $200. You know, it was just exciting. You know, again, you have to ask, you have to be willing. But they were excited about it after the discussion. He said, Well, if you guys do this again, let me know because uh, you know, we'd be glad to help again. So it was just another confirmation that the Lord was at work, but also an encouragement.

David Nakhla 21:00

So, Dave, you you presented this to your deacons, but clearly a big part of why this was successful is because you were going to be involved, you were gonna see it to the end. Can you talk a little bit about that and just how important it is that with really making something like this move forward, the the importance of of leadership and you know, somebody really championing the effort?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

There's no question that I think with anything that goes on like this, you need uh somebody who is a champion for it or at least a small group of people doing that. You know, like I said, in God's providence, the the sequence of my involvement with Ukraine. I mean, I was raised on the mission field, so I resonate to some of the needs like this. Um, I've not been involved in a war situation ever. Uh, so I can't relate to that from a personal personal experience. But so, yes, I I became convinced that that and was willing to, and thankfully, and again in God's providence. I had the time to commit to it. So it was important. We had a team, as I said, that was very, very efficient and active. We had some, you know, one guy doing purchasing, a couple of people doing inventorying. And uh so we were able to um generate uh keep up to date online docs about what we had and how much money we had. We would get that, you know, we we had that updated every couple of days. And so we always knew what information we had and we could act on. But yes, it does, and it it takes a commitment to say, okay, we're going to follow this through to the end. Again, it wasn't a long time. Um, personally, I I don't have a problem dealing with a certain amount of uncertainty. And it did, you know, the project required being able to flex with that um because we didn't know exactly where it was going to end. Although part of the planning is some contingencies, you know, if we if this happens, then we can do this, or if we get this much, then we'll try to do this. And so thinking through some of those things does help, but uh, and then communicating, uh, you know, that word keeps coming up all the time, but it's important both to the team and to the congregation, and then it builds on itself because it it's encouraging to the team uh to see the response happening. You know, there are often others who they may be a little ambivalent about the project, uh, you know, of any type, and and when they see others and see what it's producing, and some of the reports or talks that I did to the congregation, you know, I tried to be very uh practical in terms of the the types of supplies we were packing, but also being a bit more explicit about how that might be used. I mean, I didn't go into too much detail about the tourniquets and and things like that, although, you know, mentioned that um there are medical needs that you know are to be addressed on the front line with these supplies. But then things like, you know, um toothbrushes for the children, you know, you're a mother, you're gonna go put the kids to bed, you know, and you have a toothbrush now, and you have toothpaste, and you have a warm, some warm socks and things like that. And so, you know, we're human beings and we need to connect in some way to to these projects in order to be to be really involved with them. And so I think, you know, the congregation did uh understand that and accept that. So that was helpful.

David Nakhla 24:49

Can you talk a little bit about the deacons agree we're gonna do this, get the blessing of the the session, the congregation, that type of thing. You pulled a team together. How frequently, again, this was a fast order. How frequently did the team meet? How did the team communicate? Was it clear the division of labor amongst the team members? Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah, you know, there's I talked about the f need to be flexible and accept a certain amount of ambiguity, but on the other hand, you have to have a team that's focused as well. It was uh a goal to involve the whole congregation, but it was clear that we needed specific people to help. So we had um, I think there were six of us on a team. Um, so there were two deacons, one myself and one other. And we had one, we one gentleman we assigned the task of doing the purchasing. Uh, we did most things through Amazon. Again, MTW or CFU were very organized in terms of the lists that were necessary. We did take those lists and massage them a little bit. Well, there were some things in there where they had like you could do this or this or this, and and so I maybe modified it and said, okay, you do this. You know, we don't want to give too many options. Um, but we also had some other columns about how many had been given and how many we expected to receive as part of our project. And so just to, you know, the people had access to these uh shared documents that if they wanted to, they could look on there. And you know, maybe they wanted to look and say, well, what what hasn't been given and what would have the most impact? And and also the prices, you know, there were prices on there, different people have different capabilities for for giving. So, I mean in terms of the logistics, getting back to the team, we inventoried frequently, once or twice a week, so that we would know, because we had to balance what was coming in in supplies versus what we needed to purchase. And so we had shared documents for the inventory that was coming in, the money that was uh had been donated, and we could regularly make decisions about, for instance, the packing party, the first one, we decided, okay, we need to purchase these amount of material because we didn't have the full amount of money at that point or know even what was going to be coming in. But we didn't we were we said we need to purchase enough extra things to fill in the holes for what hasn't been given to pack uh the first, well, it was uh 20 crates or something for the fur for the first packing party. So that was you know, sharing the information regularly was important, keeping it up to date. Uh, we also one thing I haven't mentioned was the we have a uh communication director who generates graphics and things like that. And we for the church for the church. Yep. Uh and uh he was very, very helpful and timely in terms of generating that. So we had some good graphics um to put up. We have some digital signage in the church and we had that updated weekly. So um that was that's a big thing as well to to be able to get some you know, some eye-catching or pleasing things. Just it it just all fills in little pieces.

David Nakhla 28:21

Thank you, Dave. Super helpful. Is there anything else you'd want to share that we haven't covered? Just as again, encouragement to deacons as they as future, not just craze for Ukraine, but future opportunities come up that in involving the congregation in the way in the way you guys have.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, there's always different levels of involvement in these projects, and there are times where a particular church may desire to do something on this scale, but they can't, you know. But but being involved and just doing it is important. Sometimes the only thing that they're capable of is donating money. However, it's not the best way to involve the congregation, and along with uh personal involvement, so I think uh trying to to involve other individuals is always good, even on a very small scale. And then just get started if there's an excitement and a commitment that's contagious, and people will jump on board with that. So, you know, just like uh just do it. Just do it, just do it.

David Nakhla 29:27

That's so great, Dave. Your fingers touched over a hundred of the 300 crates that the OPC provided, more than 40 of those coming from your church with almost worth $50,000. But a lot of that was just, you know, your willingness to to take the ball and run with it and involve your congregation. Obviously, that couldn't have been done all by yourself. And uh, but the Lord really used you, and hopefully reflecting on that is an encouragement to to other deacons as they think about that. So thanks, Dave.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

You're welcome, and it was a pleasure and a privilege to be able to share with you.

David Nakhla 30:02

And Deacon Brothers, I hope you'll find Dave's experience to be helpful to you, uh, even as you work with your congregations in Mercy Ministry. 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 next month for another episode of the Reform Deacon podcast.