In this webinar, we discussed really practical issues families are facing. We examined financial pressures and what families can do to protect themselves, how to deal with quarantine overload, and the impact on the culture of the family staying home. We spoke about pressures COVID can place on marriages and the use of time and education. This time, our focus was on the opportunities of the situation.

If you would like to learn more about other practical issues, see my articles on our COVID-19 landing page where we are collecting answers to matters of quarantine, visiting the sick, the doctrine of plague and much more.

Use their thing. Here you go. Hold on. OK. Well, hello.

Good evening. Here we are to have a roundtable discussion about all these things that are happening in our culture. You know, the first week of the restrictions. It was shocking, and each week, every it seems like almost every other day is more shocking than the last. And, you know, one shot gives way to a new shock.

And there are new considerations that we've had to process and you know people and in their churches people in their homes pastors are having to face off to a new and ever stranger normal. So that's what we're all dealing with. Tonight I'd like us to deal with practical family matters. And I've got some great brothers here with me to discuss all this. Kevin Swanson, pastor at Reformation Church in Elizabeth, Colorado, and the president of Generations, a program you should listen to.

I do all the time. Carlton McLeod. Hello, Carlton. Pastor at Calvary Revival Chesapeake, just down the road from me in Virginia, and Chris Baines, pastor at Community Bible Church in Wellsford, Auckland, New Zealand. So we're Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Zealand here tonight.

So, uh what I what I'd like to do uh first of all, before I give you all guys an opportunity to talk about what's happening in your region and how you're dealing with it. I just want to lay down something that might be the most important thing for all of us and that is we are the people who believe in two things which are so steadying and so helpful in navigating this crisis and the first thing is that we believe that Jesus Christ has conquered death and that Jesus people don't need to be afraid of death. God has appointed their time and while we're not encouraging people to be reckless but to protect themselves and protect one another in ways that are really appropriate. That really, you know, the Centers for Disease Control is encouraging us. We're on board with that.

But the other thing is that we believe that God controls everything. God controls all plagues. If a virus is going to move from one person to another, it was God who ordained it. So I think this is why, you know, brothers, when I've talked to the people in our church over the last three weeks, and I've been calling more people in our church than ever, what I'm finding is that people are upbeat, they're encouraged, they're thankful. So far, we haven't had anybody get sick in our church and North Carolina, I know some people who work in hospitals and they're telling me they're not getting flooded, at least now that may happen.

Now that may happen. So I'm finding our people in our church really encouraged. I'm really happy about that. I want them to be encouraged in God and in the reality that Jesus Christ already conquered death And so we can we can navigate with joy with confidence in the world. Okay, so let's let's go around here Chris, so you're way across the other side of the planet here in Auckland, New Zealand, tell us, Tell us what's happening in New Zealand and how it's affecting your local congregation and your people.

Sure, well, as you know, we're a small country of about four and a half million people. So we have about a total of 800 cases so far. There's been one death of an elderly woman, but we're now in the, we've just done one week of a four week full lockdown, so that's completely everyone in their homes apart from buying gas, groceries or going to the pharmacy. So we as everyone else are making things up as we go along. We've had a couple of live stream services.

No one in our church is sick. We have a fairly small church and praise God, no one is sick with this virus. So that's what it's like for us at the moment. It's quite unusual. It's not unusual for us as we're used to working from home and schooling from home, but the sense of what's going on out there is definitely unusual.

So that's kind of the situation at the moment. Okay, amen. So now tell us about sort of the particulars. When you use the word lockdown, how do you define it? Because this is being defined in different ways in different places.

Correct. Well, our government, I think they might have coined the phrase, maybe it's gone worldwide. They tell us about a bubble and everyone's supposed to be in their own bubble of the people that they're with. And that's their own family. When we have eight children, we can go for a walk and people look at us like we're breaking all of the government rules.

That happens. So lockdown means everyone must stay in their home and there is an essential reason for leaving the home but they're changing things each day because someone says, do I go for a walk or yes, but you can't speak to anybody unless you're two meters away. So, it's full lockdown, everyone in their homes apart from essential workers. Yeah. Okay, good deal.

So let's go to Carlton. Carlton, what's happening in Virginia? Oh, we lost. Hi, Scott, Can you have a few technical difficulties? Do you have me?

I do. You're here. Yeah. Great. Great.

For a second I couldn't see anyone. In Virginia our governor on Monday issued the stay at home order. And it was kind of already in place but he made it official with an executive order. And so we have the standard, you know, kind of stay at home unless you absolutely have to be out six feet away from people, no meetings larger than 10 kind of thing. And of course that is greatly impacting all the churches here.

Yeah. So it's an interesting environment. Tell us about your people. How are they responding to all this? Yeah, they're doing pretty good.

We've been doing services like a lot of churches online praying live and then pre recording messages and just trying to you know line up a slate of good things for them to to watch as a family and to encourage them in continuing their family discipleship and so forth. And overall, I think having missed three weeks of church, I think they're doing really well. And I'm very, very grateful for their perseverance to this point. Have, are Anybody losing their jobs? Not yet.

We have had one, two furloughs that I am aware of. But those folks had other sources of income. So we are okay so far. There may be some that I've not heard of just yet. Things are, as you know, are moving pretty rapidly.

Amen. Amen. Okay, so Kevin, Kevin, what's happening in Colorado? Well, Colorado is up there in terms of incidents. I think we're probably number 10, number 11 or 12 in terms of the the incidents of at least a percentage of afflictions.

So, we've got I think 80 to 90 deaths so far and we're still on the upswing. We haven't leveled out to this point so we had to stay at home order for at least a week. I'm gonna say a week at this point with other restrictions prior to that we have not gathered for 2 weeks in our church. We do stream our service and we've also upped our prayer services. So there's a lot of involvement in the prayer life of the church through zoom prayer meetings every night at 7 pm.

We've had up to 18 to 24 families joining in with that. So that's been positive. Just every day prayer meetings. And I think we're more in tune with the church with each other on a daily basis than we ever have been in the history of the church. So that's a positive.

And we're also adding, our governor allows for, in fact encourages multiple services with 10 or less attending. And so we are going to have four to five community services on Sunday afternoon to allow for anybody who wants to have community, sort of a shorter service where maintain some social distance. But our thought is as long as people are shopping for marijuana at the dispensaries in Colorado, as long as people are running down to the grocery store and getting groceries and people are 70-80% of our congregation still working. Seems to me that the church is just as important as the marijuana dispensaries. So we're going to go ahead and dispense the Lord's Supper on some days as part of what we want to do.

Well, we'll be as careful as the the restrictions of the CDC and others require for social distance but we do want to have multiple services for those who want to take communion. Amen, amen. Okay so there are so many things we could talk about here tonight. Uh you know II would love to talk about jurisdictional pressures. How how to process the restrictions which we've never experienced.

I'd like to leave that for a different time. I'd like to examine that in detail at another at another session. Not really here tonight to deal with the medical dangers. Frankly, I haven't known how to size that up. There's so much conflicting medical projecting going on and I'm just not sure how to deal with that.

I do see though however that nationally the press is painting a darker and darker picture. Our people are seeing it, they're feeling it. Uh, it's looking more ominous, at least the way the press reports it. The models of ramp up and that type of thing look pretty scary. There are more and more stories coming out about how hard this thing is on a lot of people.

So I don't understand the medical side of this except what we're doing in our church is we're we're doing our best to comply with the guidance of the government right now and we we're not gonna act like we know more than they do right now. So that's what we're doing. What I'd like for us to focus on tonight really has to do with mitigating the potential negative impacts on people in our church connecting with their spiritual condition, dealing with what they're dealing with and things like that because on the one hand, many of our people's lives haven't changed at all. They've been homeschooling forever and they're just everybody's just home more and they they they don't get to go everywhere they used to go but but but when you're actually bound to stay home, it has a little bit different emotional effect on you. You know, where you can like in our state, they don't want us leaving our house.

Right. So, it's it's it's it's incredibly restrictive. You know, seems like light years ago, you know, you could meet in groups of ten no more. Before that, it was fifty. Before that, it was a hundred.

So, this progressive tightening has an impact on people, whether or not there are massive changes in their daily family life. But I'd like to just have you all focus on family life, the strains on marriages, on the discipleship of children, and tell us how you're shepherding your flocks in those areas. We're just encouraging families to spend the time in the word in prayer. We've increased our family devotional time in our family and it's been a good time of prayer. And I think also encouraging our congregation to humiliation to humility.

God is calling us to be humbled and I think that's a message for the nation, but it's also a message for us. I think that his hand is is very strong upon us and I think we're all feeling it. And so now it's time to be humbled, to be crying out to God for his deliverance and to express our increased need for him. Americans tend to be rather self-sufficient. And so we want to be sure our congregants realize that we are dependent upon Him.

Every evening the elders give an exhortation concerning faith, concerning the fear of God, concerning looking to him in times of crisis. So yeah, every evening an exhortation, every evening a prayer service, but also encouraging the congregation to spend that time in the Word and prayer with their families. Amen. Amen. Are you finding people dealing with social media overload, you know, the effects of not being in fellowship, you know what one of one of the pastors in our network was telling us the other day that he's been he's been preaching to his people about about the whole matter of of of distancing and and distancing from social media.

Social media distancing. Yeah, that's an interesting thing because, you know, we're partakers in that too. You know, at our church, we have drastically ramped up our kind of e-communication with everybody by necessity. So whether that's a number of emails, I was just reviewing one before I came on that went out today with our church with catechism questions and helps for family discipleship and outreach stuff that we're doing and getting involved in this. So we're, on the one hand, we're kind of saying, let's not go overload.

The other hand, we're kind of saying, but make sure you read our email and make sure you look at that thing we put on Facebook. So yeah, it's quite the balancing act. We're hoping that our folks don't overload on the bad stuff, but certainly do some partaking of the good stuff, if you will. And we're kind of doing not as aggressive as Kevin, but I like what he's doing with prayer meetings. We are, I might have to steal that one, but we are, you know, we've obviously doing Zoom a lot.

I wish I had some Zoom stock, but anyway, we're doing Zoom a lot. You know, everyone's a Zoom expert now. And the, you know, what's governing our kind of outreach to the church right now, ministry and pastoral ministry to the church right now, it's just love. How much can we love on folks during this time of crisis, and how much can we encourage them in the things that we were already doing? That is meeting in prayer, that is spending time with family, that is discipling your children.

When the Lord shows us something in the word, as you well know, those things are applicable, whether it is raining outside or whether it's sunny outside. And so it's definitely raining, but those tried and true methods are certainly helping us and we're just emphasizing those. So what do you do with pastors who are in the midst of of news overload? That would be me II. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm in news overload right now.

I mean I've been looking at the news more in the last 3 weeks than ever and just to try to follow what's going on and it can be pretty discouraging. You know getting in the news. My view is I need to get out of the news a little bit. I want to keep abreast of what's happening, but boy, I'll tell you there are so many articles you're just led down, you know, a river of information and pretty soon, you know, an hour has passed and you didn't even know what happened to it. Scott, I tempted to do the same thing, but I think we need a word overload.

What we need to do is get back to God's word. Tie in history as well. I just read about the 1666 plague in London. Many of the Puritans had reacted to it. 30% of the population was killed during the plague.

But you might get copies of the sermons and some of the books that were written during the 1666 plague that hit London. Certainly was something of God's judgment upon the reinstatement of Charles II and things like that were happening. And so what I would suggest is that people don't rely so much on the news. The news is always putting a spin on things. And I tell my wife, I'm striving, I'm grasping for rationality in the midst of all this news overload.

I'm just trying to become a rational person again. It's very hard once you're sucked into the vortex of all this news. So, you know, may God deliver us from a spirit of fear and give us a spirit of love and power and a sound mind. Sound mind. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Go ahead, Chris. I was going to say, I think the challenge is initially we all feel very justified looking at the news, things are unfolding and all these extra things that come up on social media, internet. And it seems justifiable initially, but of course, the media want to create stories all day long.

And I was thinking about this just earlier today, how a few generations ago, we probably would have got one news report a day and we would have realized what was going on and would have acted accordingly. But now so many people feel like they have to check page open constantly for the breaking news. The other thing I'm doing is in Worldview in Five Minutes, which is a little program we put on to try to give a biblical spin to the news, we try to put together decent statistics, comparative statistics. We're always comparing the number of those who died from the coronavirus to those who died from diabetes and other diseases at the same time. So we're always trying to contrast between countries, between states, what are the incidences, what are the states where it's 60 times more prevalent than other states.

It's an important data point that New York has a prevalence of the disease at 60 times that what you find in Nebraska. So just to get an idea of some of the statistics, you don't get this from the major news sources. Instead, you have no comparative statistics. You have no sense of rationality or reality of what's going on when you read the headlines from Fox News and CNN. Right.

You know, I feel a little bit bad for my people. I mean, I've been writing to our people more than ever, but I've been trying to write, you know, short articles to help them understand some of the issues that they're having to face. So I'm writing short articles on things like quarantine. What does the Bible say about quarantine? What does the Bible say about washing your hands?

What does the Bible say about visiting the sick? Because the Bible speaks to all these things. And I'm trying to help our people to think in terms of a sufficient scripture. The word of God directs us for how to do this. Now, I've been sending things to our people daily, sometimes more than once a day, And they're probably being bombarded by the news.

And then I'm sending this stuff. So I really want to shepherd them in some of the critical matters and help them to think, the word of God is my guide and to stay there, but boy, it's a time when I think our people are pulled all over the place. And there's so many funny memes that everybody's sending around and crazy things. So Anyway, it's a time of media overload, I think. Scott, I was reading before Haggai, we're gonna be teaching it this Sunday, and it just astounded me, some of the comparisons where the work of building the temple was hindered by external factors.

They had no control over, yet Haggai's message was to them, was that the spiritual priorities in your lives must continue. They didn't have an excuse. And so I guess it's really important to be reminding our people that there's no holiday from being at the church, only from going to church. And so it is a time, I guess, to really focus on the spiritual priorities the Lord's work can continue. And I'm hopeful the church will come out stronger the other end from this for whatever's ahead, you know?

Amen. Amen. So let's talk about that coming out stronger because I mean, I think we're all concerned about the spiritual impact and condition, the financial impact and the vocational impact, the relational impact, the in-family impact, the impact on family worship and marriages. I mean, those are the things I'm finding myself concerned about. I almost wanna do a poll and get a mass poll.

How are you doing in spiritual, financial, vocational, relational, family areas? You know, how's it really going? Now we're calling people and asking them how they're doing. Right. But I'd like to talk about how best as shepherds to know the condition of your flocks.

Let's talk, I want to break this down into categories too first. First, I'd like for us just to talk about spiritual, spiritual health in the congregation. How do you assess that when you aren't seeing these people? We haven't been together as a whole church for three weeks and it looks like it's going to be longer. So let's talk about that.

Well I think in our prayer services we get a sense for where people are. The neat thing about prayer is that it seems to reveal something of the inner workings of their hearts. And so that's a positive. We find that after about 10 days of daily prayer, more and more people are participating. So we're getting more of an insight into what their concerns are and where their heart is at.

But that's really the main thing. We do have conversations via the phone with people who are confessing their struggle with fear and a lapse of faith and and so forth. So we we've had some of these conversations via phones as well. Now in our state we are allowed to meet with our constituents, our congregants, if it is a matter of crisis. So there's an exemption for pastors who need to meet with the congregants in crisis.

So we've done that several times as well. Hey, let me just read you some of the things that are coming off here on the discussion. Here's Brendan McMillan. He's right out near you, Kevin in Colorado. He says, I told my congregation that their faith is not quarantined.

I like that, that's pretty good. That's right, that's right. Jimmy Ferraby from North Carolina out here near the Charlotte area, he says, I told our folks to spend as much time in prayer as they do looking at the news. Jimmy, why did you have to convict me to the hearts like that? That was, that's what I need to do.

Absolutely. But you know, there's just, There's just so many really good things being said here. I really appreciate that. So let's keep talking about this. Monitoring and shepherding in spiritual matters.

I think what was very revealing as well for a lot of pastors initially in a passive way was how much people in the church pursued fellowship and connection when they didn't have to. And I think that was definitely a revealing thing because some people nevertheless may think, well, we've got a holiday from church and don't feel bad about not going. But you sense when your people are reaching out and when you're putting things out there and they're thanking you and they really wanted to participate in a passive way, you see the spiritual health. But other than that, I would say, calling, speaking to them, speaking to people who know them is maybe another way in an indirect way, just to sort of really see how they're doing and give them the space to, I think it's important to find out how they're doing to give them the space to not be doing okay. Because people can feel like the spiritual answer is, I'm a Christian, I'm fine.

Not all Christians are fine, but all Christians can be fine and all Christians will be fine. That's the difference. We want to be real and transparent too. Yeah, we've been doing the same. We've been doing a lot of calling, just kind of going through in categories, starting with our seniors and then working through our single folks and then just kind of trying to reach out to our marriage and just kind of going through it.

And what we're finding is that people are more talkative. Normally when it's like, okay, yeah, thanks a lot, pastor, appreciate it, bye. Now it's like, oh, well tell me more about that, right? And so there's a little bit, and we see that as a sign of health, as a little bit more willingness to share. And just a quick anecdote on that.

So we do live Zoom prayer on the Lord's day. And then we kind of ferret them off or send them off to some recorded messages and singing and giving and other things. But So the second Sunday we didn't have service in our building. We did the live Zoom prayer and typical pastor, I talked like the entire time and prayed with them. And then on the Zoom service, it kind of cuts off after a while if you have the free service.

So I got an email, a text from a brother saying, hey, you know, what would you think about letting us talk? Now, there are all these families on Zoom. If you know anything about Zoom, you know, you can see all the individual little boxes. And so, I said, no problem. So, this last Sunday, I intentionally cut my time, if you will, off at, you know, with about 15 minutes left over and said, hey, I'm done.

It's good to see everybody now. We're just going to, we're just going to fellowship. And for the next 10 or 15 minutes, It was just people talking back and forth on Zoom and the whole screens flashing where people are talking and they just stayed there. And they just stayed there. And they just stayed there.

And when the time was running out, they were still there. And So there's this longing, I think, amongst, you know, it's a healthy longing for the fellowship, the sweet fellowship of the saints. And any way that we can encourage that in this kind of environment I think is a good thing. I saw that as a sign of health. Amen.

Here's a question. How can the congregation manage without proper fellowship and for how long? How long? That's the big question. I think we're all thinking about that.

Well, it's hard to know. We have not been in these waters before. So, we're just, you know, moving ahead and trusting the Lord. And I think we're gingerly offering opportunities for connection of one sort or another. In the case of one of our singles, I allowed him to move into my home so that he would have some fellowship over the next month or two.

So we've allowed for some moving and that's within the balance of state law as well. But yeah, the singles I think really need to be looked after more so. We find a lot of loneliness setting in for our singles. Some of them have broken down and cried over my shoulder on the phone and we've had just opportunities to really pull them in more and more to the fellowship, especially through the Zoom fellowship opportunities. Right.

I think it's, I find a comfort in the fact that we know that God has not allowed this for the disadvantage of the church in the big picture. And we're not really even looking at a persecution and even a persecution we can we can rest in his hand upon that. So we have no control over this. And the same two areas I keep thinking of is the character of God and the sufficiency of Scripture. To me, that's the only way that any of us will continue for however long is if we continue to soak ourselves and embrace and fill our minds and hearts with the character of God, the sufficiency of Scripture.

For however long we need to, it may be a difficult long period of time. But this, like Kevin said, strangely, we're having more connection with some of our people than we would normally. And I'm hoping that some of the people that had maybe not such a desire for the local church, now it's been taken away, will realize what a blessing, what a benefit it is. Amen. Amen.

Let's talk for a minute about taking, how do you take advantage of the opportunities to minister to other people outside the church when you're under orders to stay home. How are you guys navigating that? Well here in my city in Chesapeake, once they closed the public schools, they decided to continue to feed the children who counted on meals. So they counted on breakfast and lunch, and so they're doing a lunch. And just so happens here in our city, our city government is encouraging churches to participate in that by bringing out other donated items and needed canned goods and toothbrushes and diapers and anything else we want to concurrently with the school lunch distribution.

And so our church is just getting involved in that here in our area, as long as you keep the volunteer numbers down and do some hand sanitizing and keep some physical distancing as families are coming up to those tables, we have an opportunity. And I had the privilege to share on some of that on Monday. We had the opportunity to to meet new people, encourage them to see how they're doing, to let them know about our church and working with other churches, the other churches that are serving and be out amongst the flock and all in a supervised, safe, kind of city sanctioned way. So that's one thing that has arisen for us that we're happy about. So look for city sanctioned opportunities.

Well, that's One thing, right now there's a great need. I mean, if my city is like a lot of you all cities, a lot of families count on the public schools and lunches and sometimes breakfast. And so if the cities are continuing that distribution, even with the school system being shut down. Sometimes, at least in our case, in our region, there seems to be an opportunity for the churches to come alongside from an outreach and just love perspective. And several churches in our city, also including ourselves, do a food pickup.

Ours every Wednesday and Harvest Chapel just down the street also does it on a weekly basis so so we have opportunities to interact somewhat with folks from the community and also, there's neighbors on neighbors and people over the back fence. There's a little bit of that at the six feet requirement and all that um but what we're seeing is that people are super soft. They're much more open to uh to witness of the gospel much more than we've seen in the state of Colorado for the 25 years we've been out here. Amen. We have a couple of the older people in our church who I really feel for.

They don't have the internet. They're not connected. So this week I've been rummaging around to try and find some CDs. Remember those things? And pop the message from Sunday on a CD and put it in the mail to them.

But one idea that I just had when you guys were talking that I hope I don't get in trouble for was, I'm wondering about whether we can set up some grocery store fellowship. It's the only place we can go, but if we speak to our church and say, hey, let's do our shopping at 5 p.m. And we're two meters apart, which is two meters is six feet for the Americans, hey, we can say hi, we can see them. So I don't know, They just came to me. We'll see if we can implement grocery store fellowship.

So, if you hear singing in the in the fruit section, Awesome. Oh my. No, that's great. Let's talk about money issues. Pressures stewardship.

Giving well, I'm gonna I'm gonna start out with one question. I just wanna throw it out to all of you. Do we take government subsidies from stimulus bills? That's been a complicated issue. We've got over that several times in our church, but you know my encouragement is that you just study the principles of God's word as it touches on these issues related to things like food offered to idols.

There's points at which we participate in these systems when when everything is down in the meat market. But if everything's in the temple and it's a test in terms of our commitment to certain principles, then we need to we need to forego it. So that's that's probably the the major principle. I did a program on it just today, talked about eight or nine different considerations before before taking the government handouts. But we are in a pretty serious crisis right now.

One point that's been made is the government created the unemployment crisis and they have some responsibility to fix it. I'm not sure I agree with that entirely, but there may be some truth to it. We're looking at unemployment that may rise up to 30, 40%, probably something a little more severe than the Great Depression between 1929-1933. So we may have a pretty severe world recession or world depression coming on us if this thing continues. And so therefore I think we're gonna have to dig in for the long haul, our diaconate is coming together.

We have a guy who's working part-time for our diaconate right now, and connecting with the community, connecting regularly with our members, and we're thinking it's time to pull the diaconate together and really prepare for a full-on recession or maybe even a depression over the next 6 months to several years. Yeah and by the way, I mean you don't just turn off an economy and turn it back on. I mean one illustration is you know I've had companies you know different seasons in my life, but you know it might take you 10 years to build up to 100 employees might take you 10 years to build up to 10 employees. And if you lay, lay most of them off, you don't reveal that overnight. It takes it takes time.

You just can't do it from a cash flow standpoint. So, I don't believe we'll see a quick bounce back. I think we'll see you know a dip and then have it come out slowly over time. Who knows how much time I hope it's not very much time right. But I think we're going to be in this for a while.

Yeah and it's doubtful that 2.2 trillion dollars out of the federal government is going to solve the problem anytime too soon. Driving the debt to GDP ratios up another 15 percent, I don't think it's going to help either. Back in the 1930s, we only had a 30, 40% debt to GDP ratio. We're looking at about 120% now, something like three to four times what it was back in the 1930s. So our situation is far different, and I think what we're gonna have to do is to get back to biblical principle.

I encourage people to read the book of Proverbs. Root and ground your families in biblical principles. Obviously our systems have almost totally ignored biblical principles in relation to debt and economics and all these other things. And so I think the best thing that families can do, the absolute best thing, go back to the Word of God bring out the book of Proverbs and and go over the book of Proverbs root and ground your children on these things because if we're gonna rebuild our our economies we're gonna build our civilizations again we'll have to do it on the book of Proverbs So let's you know that's God's wisdom. Let's use that.

Amen. Amen. I think we have just as well. I think there's maybe a difference between a subsidy for someone who is forbidden to work or find work and somebody who will not seek work and I think that's the situation some people are facing. They cannot get out of their homes to do their work and there's nothing coming in.

Let's talk about stewardship, giving. How are you shepherding your people at a time like this when the outlook looks dim where cash flows are going to be so constrained and it'll affect everybody in some way. Yeah. Now, how how are you talking to your people about stewardship and giving? Let's talk about giving first and then let's turn to stewardship.

Yeah, we've been teaching the same thing that we've always taught as it relates to giving. Uh this is this whole stewardship piece has been something we've been working on now for uh probably a decade and a half and um and as it relates to giving, you know, we are hoping we were hoping that if we ever ran into a situation like this, that we have our families in relatively decent position to continue to give as the Lord placed upon their hearts. And so we've not changed the response or the call to give, but we have certainly seasoned in a little bit more grace and certainly a lot of it now, even at our churches through online means because we're not meeting, but we've continued to encourage them in the same things. If you have this room available, give beyond that to those who are in need. But as far as the local church, we teach tithing as a principle.

And if you're able to do it, we certainly aren't going to beat you up if you can't, but we want you to continue to do that. But that's also connected to all the other pieces that we learned about in Proverbs. As Kevin said, we kind of built ours around Proverbs of as little debt as possible, none would be wonderful, having a surplus, running your family lean and mean so in bad times you keep right on serving and right on blessing people. And we've been saying that for a long, long time. And we're hoping now we'll see the families do OK through the midst of this.

A real key verse is Romans 13, oh, no man anything but to love one another. Yeah, and that's so key, you know. I mean, I think a lot of Americans have been living beyond their means. There's been a lot of self-orientation, especially with the millennial generation, but really all of the generations have been very much self-oriented. That's how you abort 80 million kids and then drive your great grandkids into $150 trillion of debt.

We gotta get out of the existentialistic mindset, the self-centered approach, and be willing to deny ourselves, give up our lives and take up the cross and follow Jesus. I mean, we gotta do just the opposite of what the greed fest out there is doing. And that certainly involves giving up of ourselves, of our lives for the needy. So I continue to press hard on things like the saints in Nepal who are being persecuted, saints down in Cuba who are being tortured in prisons in Cuba. Just, you know, I mean they're far far beyond where we are in terms of impoverishment in terms of persecution.

So I'm collecting monies and moving monies into the areas where these persecuted saints continue to have tremendous needs. So let's have a giving mindset. Now is the time to turn on the giving mindset, absolutely. Amen. Amen.

I think like most churches, we've had a combination of people who give in person and online, and so we've just, in the live stream, I'll just include a prayer for the offerings that have been given throughout the week and we've made the online version available to people who would normally give in person. But yeah, I think it's so important for people to recognize, I mean, the work of pastors and elders is increased for many of them. And strangely, for those who do have their normal income, like here in New Zealand, all we can actually spend our money on is gas, food and drink and pharmaceuticals. We can't buy anything else. For those who haven't lost their income, there's excess, you know, not that actually we're given to the church, but there's excess to use and steward wisely.

Yeah. And I found that people are very open to, we can separate subject to gospel, but also to what God's word has to say about giving, about stewardship, about saving, about investing, about doing a budget, about what it means to have something laid up for our children's children. And so those, as things have gotten worse, people have looked around and said, wait a minute, didn't you put something on such and such? Oh yeah. And I found that that also is a door into the church but also into the into the precious gospel as well Kevin you mentioned the deacon I've been on the phone with our deacons, you know almost daily was on a Phone call conference call, you know just before this call here tonight with y'all.

But let's talk about the activation of deacons in the midst of the possibility of a worldwide depression or a recession of some kind here. How do we help deacons help the church to be better prepared? Well, one of the ideas we came up with, and there are thousands of ideas we could work with, but one of the ideas we came up with, which I thought was pretty good, was to develop at this point, a Zoom meeting for young men and some of the fathers who may be lacking work or maybe unemployed and have a regular accountability group get going right away. So they are touching base three times a week and getting encouragement, getting prayer, getting some focus, being accountable of how many jobs they're applying for. One thing I try to remind people of is 30% Unemployment means 70% employment.

That means 70% are going to be employed. So you've got a 70% shot at it. And so don't be discouraged. You know, get out there. I can remember when I was a young man in 1982 at 18, 19 years of age.

It was the worst unemployment situation probably our generation. And I ran out and got five jobs while I was going full time to junior college. So, you know, I proved the point that you could still get out there and find work. It's a little more difficult, but to actually create some accountability structures for the guys and some prayer support for them as they get out. This really easy to get discouraged.

So let's surround our guys with encouragement and with accountability. Amen. Amen. Scott, we're working on dividing the entire church up with having a deacon and his family over certain sections of the church. So in essence, every member of the church would have an initial deacon that they go to.

We had it in place once and then it kind of fell off. And when this crisis hit, we were in the process of raising up new deacons, still are in the process of raising up new deacons. And so everyone in the church, the ultimate goal is for everyone in the church to have a deacon family, groups of five families, seven families, 10 families to have a deacon and his wife. And they are, in terms of accountability, they are right in folks' lives, seeing what's going on, seeing how you are. Just another layer of care essentially for the church.

And so that's kind of one of the things we're working on to get the Dioc and it activated and serving the body. You know in our church our deacons are are are busy super busy. They're setting up technology. You know, they're breaking the church into lists. They're organizing people to call.

Our deacons are working really hard right now. Boy, it really is a blessing. And you know what? It's allowing the pastors to really focus on the word of God and prayer. They're doing all this administrative work for us right now.

And of course they always have that. Right now it's so escalated. And having strong deacons that are looking out you there to find out it's just huge and one of the things that we are doing is we're connecting with the four to five other evangelical churches in our little town and our deacons are able to serve in other congregations that aren't as well equipped with the diaconate. So we're finding that opportunity to be the diaconal force for the community as well for the other churches. And then even for some of the broader community, we've called the Sheriff's Department in a local town and they're in contact with us regularly on deeds they have.

And so our deacons are out there with other members of the congregation helping with community needs. Amen. Amen. Okay, so let's just wrap it up here a bit. I'd like us to just go around and give a final exhortation or encouragement to the families or the pastors here that are listening about how they navigate these some of these really practical matters, you know, spiritual matters, marriage matters, matters of finances and vocation and some of those things.

What would you like to leave the listener with tonight? O'BRIEN I would leave the listener with the idea that we're in a place of tremendous opportunity right now. I mean, we can focus on doom and gloom and get kind of overcome by the news. But as Chris said, we serve a sovereign God, and as we all believe, He's given us a sufficient Bible. And so there's nothing going on here that has caught him by surprise.

And again, as has already been said, he's not out to hurt his church here. There may be some realignment and some call to repentance and getting back to some fundamentals, but there is an opportunity here for the gospel of Jesus Christ. There's an opportunity here. There are people who would have never come to your church, Pastor, into your building, but who might click on your online service. And as crazy as that sounds, the Lord might use it for his own glory.

And so there's an opportunity here to cause families to reorient them into what's important, to cause them to look deeply into the eyes of their children and assess their spiritual state because they have the time to do so. And so I would say take advantage of the time that we have here. Yes, there are stresses. Yes, there are anxieties, but we serve a great God. We serve a sovereign God.

Take advantage of this opportunity to reset refocus retool and and as the church if to be the will of the lord, the church rises out of this stronger than we've ever been. Amen. And II would say Preach on preacher. Amen. Preach on.

Pray on. What Paul said in 2 Timothy 4, one and two. Preach for your life. Preach as if it was your last sermon. Preach as if you're getting coronavirus tonight and you're done next week.

Amen. Preach on. Preacher. This is one of the greatest opportunities in the last century. Absolutely.

People's hearts are softened to the words and it's time to just bring the gospel out and encourage our congregants. God is doing the work of softening. The Holy Spirit is convicting the world of sin and judgment and righteousness and There's a humbling going on. 2019 was the proudest year in perhaps the history of the world. We had the largest pride marches in the largest cities.

Tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people were celebrating pride in 2019. But what comes after 2019? 2020 and the coronavirus and the humbling of the world big time. God is humbling the world. It's for us to preach.

Amen. I would say Amen to what the brothers have said. And also, I guess I'd like to say something to those who maybe are struggling. Somebody once said that stress doesn't tend to make us what we're not, but it reveals what we are. So when we find ourselves stressed, maybe in marital situations, when it used to be in a home together, then just be patient with one another, seek to deal with those things that get brought to the surface.

And this is a time where we could be very tempted to be very casual about the things of the Lord and very committed about our own personal pleasures and entertainment. Let's switch it around so that we are very committed about the things of the Lord, very casual about our own personal pleasures so that we can be like a tank as a family and do battle on the front lines of the battlefield. And as Kevin said, that we are equipped and that we're reaching out and that we are gonna be the ones who people come to and say, I wanna know a reason for the hope that you have. And we give them a reason with meekness and fear because we have hope. Amen.

Well, I'd like to I'd like to leave you with First Kings Chapter eight. And I would like to just encourage all of us to make this the most helpful times to our souls in the history of this year because God has brought something to us in order to drive us to him, to drive us to the word, to drive us to prayer. And now one of our deacons today sent me 1 Kings 8 and I was so taken by it. But in 1 Kings 8, Solomon is dedicating the temple and he's praying and he stands before the altar of the Lord and he spreads out his hands to heaven and he speaks of different kinds of scenarios that happen to the people. You know, if there's a drought, if anyone sends against his neighbor, if anyone is attacked by an enemy or or have sinned against someone or they have sinned against you and and then he says this in verse 37.

He says, when there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities, whatever plague or whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone or by all of the people Israel. Then he says, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, that's the key. Let this be a time of knowing the plague of your own heart. God gives plagues to constrain and chastise his people as a parable of their own hearts and Solomon continues in his prayer. He knows the plague of his own heart.

He spreads out his hands toward this temple and then he says, then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and give to everyone according to all his ways whose heart you know, that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land which you gave your fathers. Here Solomon is praying that the people of God would know the plague of their own hearts and to repent and call one another to repent. You know, this is a time when our frailties are being exposed, our physical frailties, our mental frailties, when we try to consider what to do, our spiritual frailties, and the people around us are in the same boat. The best thing we can do right now is to know the plague in our own hearts and repent and call one another to repentance. Peter said repent so that times of refreshing might come in.

This could be the greatest time of refreshment for the people of God. Amen. And I pray it's like that in your church and all of our churches and all the pastors that are listening in here. Amen. Brothers, thank you so much for joining me here.

Our prayer is for biblically ordered churches and families. Our prayer is to exalt a sufficient and inerrant Word of God that Scripture is sufficient for everything. You know, I'm trying to write about that. Go to our website. You'll see, you know, we have a landing page called COVID-19 and I'm really just trying to write articles that bear witness to the sufficiency of Scripture to the situation that we're in.

And so let's turn our hearts toward the lord and let it be all sanctifying helpful happy time we've ever had. Yes. Amen. Amen. Okay.

God bless you brothers. We'll bless you. We're going to keep doing this dealing with a lot of these critical issues, particularly some of the jurisdictional, political, law-oriented issues. Those are really critical and the church needs to think biblically about that. Amen.

Thank you. Grace and peace my brothers. Love you brothers in general