The sermon, titled 'Membership Class, Session 2: The Church Covenant,' given by various speakers, discusses the constitution of Hope Baptist Church and its importance in guiding the church's operations. The primary purpose of the church is to glorify God by obeying His word and spreading the gospel. The constitution provides practical directions on church operations, including appointing and removing elders, and defining membership. The sermon emphasizes the centrality of the Church of Jesus Christ in a Christian's life, noting that it is the only institution established by Jesus and promises His presence among His people. The church offers true freedom through the gospel and serves as an agent of sanctification. The importance of church meetings, fellowship, and the concept of the church as a family are highlighted. The church's principles include expository preaching, fervent prayer, authentic worship, loving community, church discipline, personal evangelism, and church planting. The governance structure involves a plurality of elders elected by the congregation, with deacons assisting in administrative tasks. The sermon also discusses the concept of head of household voting, based on biblical principles of male headship. The church supports multi-generational faithfulness, encouraging families to worship and grow together. Finally, the sermon covers the process of becoming a member, voting, and the roles and responsibilities of elders and deacons.

Okay, we're going to talk about the Constitution. We're just going to work through it right from the top all the way to the bottom. And let's start at the top. The purpose of the church. The first purpose of this church is to glorify God by obeying his word and spreading the gospel.

The means of fulfilling this purpose include an attention to the principles of this constitution of Hope Baptist Church. Now what is a constitution? Well of course the Constitution is not the Bible. The Constitution tells you how to operate in areas that the Bible doesn't particularly deal with. So it gives lots of practical direction about how you appoint elders, how you get rid of elders, How do you bring members into the church?

The Bible doesn't give explicit definitional information on that, but you have to decide how you're gonna do it. So a constitution defines all those kinds of things. But this matter, the first purpose of the church is to glorify God we we really believe that the Church of Jesus Christ ought to be the central matter in a Christian's life. And when I think about that, I think about how many reasons there are to love the Church of Jesus Christ and to dedicate yourself to her. And we're gonna encourage anybody who's a member here to make the church, the local church, a central part of their life.

It's the only... Why? The Church of Jesus Christ is the only institution that Jesus builds. It's the only institution that Jesus established. Jesus actually promises to walk among his people in the church, to walk among the lampstands.

Like when we gather, Jesus Christ is gathering with us. It's such a remarkable thing. And I believe it's true. When the church was gathering today, Jesus was there, ministering to people. The church has the message of the only freedom that's true freedom and that's the gospel.

The gospel is the only thing that sets the soul free. It's the only answer really for mankind And so it's a source of freedom. It's also the Christians greatest source of hope because it's God's agent of sanctification. The Bible promises that he who began a work in you will complete it till the day of Jesus Christ. By the way, the pastors of this church have a lot of hope for all the people in our church who believe.

We have so much hope. We have so much gratitude and thankfulness for the people in this church, because we know that Jesus Christ is sanctifying them. He's gonna take care of them, whatever problems they have, God's gonna take care of them. It's such a wonderful comfort to us about that. And the other thing about the church that's so helpful, the meetings of the church are pivotal because they take you out of your out of yourself and into God.

You think about all the things that were prayed, all the things that were sung today, the conversations. All of these things pull you out of your selfishness And they help you deal with the discouragements of your life, the pains in your life. And they just remind you that God is good, God is in control, God is gonna take care of you. We blast that every Sunday. And it's such a help to people.

Think about, you know, during COVID, people were in isolation and they got depressed and they were getting intoxicated and they were taking drugs and they were committing suicide. Why? They didn't have people. They didn't have the fellowship of the saints and they didn't have the interactions and hey sometimes the interactions are difficult But those are good for us too. So, you know, the church is the place where God takes you out of yourself and into his kingdom.

Also the church is the family that you need. You know, everybody has a different kind of family. Some people come from really wonderful families. Some people come from terribly broken families. But in the church, you always have a family.

You have brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers. You know I was so thankful today, you know, we whisked my mom out of the church today and then she's getting all these texts from people about how much they love her and they're praying for her. We were hearing the live stream on the way to the doctor, you know, and people were praying for my mom. Well, you know, the church is a family. And I know that, you know, some people look at my mom as kind of one of their grandmothers.

That's such a good thing. We know that human soul needs these interactions. We're built for this. And isolation is so bad. But having a family is so good.

The problem with the family is you always have rogue members of the family and you have all kinds of different people in the family, but that's good for you too. You know, you need somebody to offend you once in a while. Makes you stronger. Makes you learn what love is all about. Teaches you patience.

Teaches you forgiveness. God sends people to offend you to teach you to be forgiving. How about that? That's actually so good. You can't lose in the church of Jesus Christ if you function the way that God has designed it.

But why is the church so important? Ultimately, because Jesus Christ died for the church. He shed his blood for the church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Guess what?

The gates of hell are going to prevail against every other institution in the world, but not the church. God will protect His church. And the church also, let me just say this last thing. The church, the true church is beautiful to God, even with her warts, because the true church has been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. God sees the church as beautiful even in her imperfections and you know I do too.

Trent does too. We see our church as a beautiful thing. We are so thankful for our church. We don't have a dim view of this church. I was just thinking about this in the car when I was hearing the people pray.

You know, I just kept thinking, I so admire these people in our church. They're blessed people, but they're blessed to God. They're beautiful to God as well. That doesn't mean we don't have problems, weaknesses, shortfalls, you know, that doesn't mean that there aren't any issues to deal with. But God, through Jesus Christ, sees his church as clean.

He's put the robes of righteousness on his church. I think that's so wonderful. So anyway, but the purpose of the church is to glorify God. Now, let's keep moving through the Constitution. Does anybody else need a copy?

Do you guys have a copy? You got it back there, excellent. Did you make another copy, Deb? If somebody else needs a copy, we've got one. Cheryl would like one.

Here, Deb, just give it to Becca, because she gave it. Oh, oh you will, okay. So we're gonna try to fly through this. We can't cover everything. You have essential doctrines.

This is just a basic general doctrinal statement. If you don't believe this, you're not a Christian. You can't be a part of our church. You know, you can not understand or agree with everything in the Second Line of Baptist Confession of 1689, and you can be a Christian, right? But these here, if you don't believe this, you're not a Christian, and you can't be a member of our church, so that's sort of the litmus test.

At the same time, as we reviewed last time, we hold to the Baptist confession of 1689. Now you'll see here under this doctrinal statement, there are some principles and practices that we've committed ourselves to. First of all, the centrality of the gospel. Everything that we do is going to be centered around the gospel of Jesus Christ. We preach the gospel every time we gather together.

Second, expository preaching. We really believe that a steady diet of expositional preaching is the best way to equip the Saints for the work of the ministry. We don't jump over difficult passages. We try to go through books of the Bible. Our intention is to proclaim the whole counsel of God.

We want to deal with the words of scripture, word by word, phrase by phrase, and to really establish that as a critical principle. We believe scripture's sufficient. We believe that you need the words. The words are so important. Fervent prayer.

You know this already. A big, gigantic part of our church is gathering people together to pray on Wednesday night. And we pray on Sunday morning, we pray whenever we gather. But we want to prioritize prayer above all other kinds of activities. You can jam a church with 10 activities every week and not have prayer.

But we prioritize prayer. So you won't, you know, you might see this church create some other activities, but we're not gonna dispense with prayer. And other activities aren't gonna get in the way of prayer. Authentic worship, now, we wanna gather together for worship, loving community, we will cultivate Christian love, rejoicing in unity. Next week we're gonna talk about the Church Covenant, which is really a document that explains how we love one another.

You know, this is a church where I just pray that there's just an increasing love for one another. A delight in one another, an attraction toward one another, not an aversion. Church discipline, we'll exercise church discipline. And you know, we talk about church discipline later on in this document. Personal evangelism, we always want our people out there evangelizing.

Church planting, we want to plant churches. We planted one a few years ago in Youngsville, and that plant's going really good, sovereign Redeemer. It's a wonderful church. The sufficiency of Scripture. The regulative principle.

I just want to read the section of the regulative principle. It might help understand why we do what we do. We will regulate church life by Scripture alone, recognizing that God has instituted in the Scriptures everything He requires for worship in the church and that everything else is prohibited. Therefore, the only permissible elements of worship are those that are instituted by command, precept, example, or by good and necessary consequence and that whatever is not warranted in Scripture is forbidden. Now we're talking about the gathered meetings of the worship of God.

That's what we're talking about. We're not we're not allowed to invent anything in our worship. When you come back here 20 years, 30, 50 years later, we're gonna be doing the same thing. We're gonna be singing, we're gonna be praying, we're gonna be reading the Bible, we're gonna be evangelizing, we're to be preaching, and we're gonna be fellowshipping. That's what we're gonna do and we're just gonna keep doing it.

Because that's how God regulates His people. Here's the reality. If you say that the church can do other things beyond what are required in Scripture, then the church really becomes the servant of the most gifted, persuasive person in the room who can convince the church to do certain things. It makes the church subservient to personalities. It makes the church subservient to fads.

Lots of fads go through the church. Hey, I've been around long enough to see a lot of fads go through the church. And they're going through the church right now. But you see them coming, and they're so cool, you know? And then they pass away.

But usually the people that practice them also pass away. And it's tragic. So only God can regulate worship. Church government. The church will be governed by Jesus Christ and that is really by his word through the scriptures, through the elders elected by the congregation.

So the way that the Bible describes the government of the church, Jesus Christ is the head of the church and he establishes servants to administer his authority in the church. And we believe that the church is required to be governed by a plurality of elders that are called by God, that are approved by consenting church members, and you'll see it right here. How do you get elected to be an elder? By a minimum of two thirds majority of the voting members. This form of government could be called a covenantal or constitutional republic.

Authority for the establishment of doctrine and practices beyond those found in this constitution and for the daily operation of the church is vested in the local body of elders who shall strive to maintain the harmony and collaboration with the congregation as seen in the New Testament. So the church has elders who have authority in the church. We believe the elders have been given by Jesus Christ authority in the church. But elders, you know, elders are appointed by the congregation though. Elders don't appoint elders.

The congregation appoints elders. Also there's no other governing, we're Baptists right, so we we believe in independent churches. We're not part of a denomination, but No other governing bodies may exercise authority over or within this church. Now we are associated with churches that know us and they can come and help us and collaborate with us and counsel with us and correct us, things like that. But the church, you know, the church body and the elders really form the authority structure of the church.

Let's talk about church officers. We only have two officers, two kinds of officers in the church because there are only two kinds that are listed in the Bible, elders and deacons. And you can see how elders are described, they shepherd the church of God, they have to meet all the qualifications that are in the Bible, and they are affirmed by a minimum of two-thirds majority of voting members. So if a person is before the congregation to be an elder, two-thirds of the voting members have to affirm it. We would hope it would be 100%.

It's always disappointing if it's not 100%. But sometimes people have questions. So in our Constitution, it's a two-thirds majority. You see the duties of an elder, you can see what Trent and I are charged to do. We take these very seriously.

Number one, protecting the flock from false doctrine and practice. If we hear false doctrine, you'll find us going after it. That's our duty. It's not being mean, it's actually being faithful. Secondly, feeding the flock by preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God from the scriptures and the administration of the sacraments.

We think our job is not to beat the sheep but to feed the sheep. And we want to feed the sheep the word of God. Number three, leading the flock by overseeing the growth of the congregation's holiness in knowledge, doctrine, and practice. We really care about these things. We care about your knowledge, we care about your holiness, and we care about your doctrine and your practice.

We really care about those things. We don't turn a blind eye. We want to know how people are living. We know we can't know everything And we really can only know what God allows us to know. But we care.

We care that you're a holy church. We want you to be a holy church fully dedicated to God and continuing to remove worldliness from your life. That's what we want to do. And, but that's, we also have responsibility to look over the flock and say, are these people progressively becoming a holy people? You know, are they engaging in unholy practices?

Are they growing in the knowledge of God? We really care about those things. And then number four, equipping the saints for the work of the ministry and its various aspects including discipleship, evangelism, and prayer. You know, what's the work of the ministry? It's very personal.

Unless God has appointed you as a teacher or an elder in a church, the ministry that goes on in the church is very relational. We live in a time where everybody's, when people come to church, they say, "'What's my ministry? "'What's my title? "'I need a title. "'Give me my title, "'and then I'll know what my ministry is.

And you know, our perspective is that your ministry is very relational. I'll say it like this. What's your ministry? Your ministry is the next person you meet. Come and be a blessing to these people.

Now there are duties and activities that the church does need in terms of administration, in terms of organization. The deacons handle a lot of that, but there's food to prepare and serve. There are buildings to maintain. Our deacons want to go build a building now, so we're happy they want to do it. That's going to require a lot of time for different people in the congregation.

So there are various ways that people can serve the church. But we want to focus the church really on the relational functionality of the church and the way that people love one another. We don't have a highly programmed church with 10 titles and 10 slots, you can assume. That's frustrating for people, especially when they come out of environments that were not like that at all. But I would just say this.

Do you see that kind of thing in the New Testament? Do you see this kind of hyperstructure, various titles and things like that in the Bible? You don't see it. So we're not too, we're not excited about providing them because the Bible doesn't provide them. We think the church is a highly relational fellowship of love where the truth of God saturates the people.

So, you know, like when we have our fellowship meals, our greatest desire is, you know, people are connecting with each other, but they're also talking about the things that have been taught, even just like, you know, just a few minutes before, just to be saturated in the word of God. You know, we don't have really much for you except the word of God. We really don't. Which is all. Which is all you need, right?

Scripture is sufficient. Hey, I'm just, I had a note on that point. I was just really blessed today. I come and sit down at the table for a meal And there's one of our men exhorting the men and people that he's sitting with. And then I go over there to try to find my wife and she's in another room with a group of ladies praying for somebody.

And I see all of these, this is the ministry, This is the work of ministry of the saints. And like you said, it's just very relational. Just look for people to bless and to encourage and to absorb and to pray for. That's what we see in the scriptures. That's what we see people doing.

Yeah, I love it when at the fellowship time you got, you know, some people sitting around there and their Bibles are open They're talking about something. You know, I see it all the time So equipping the Saints for the work of the ministry next promoting multi-generational faithfulness in the body equipping fathers to lead their homes in worship. The church is a family, but there are families in the church, and we want to be a blessing to the families. That it's a place where there's a real a real vision of multi-generational faithfulness Where you have you know fathers and mothers teaching their children? Bringing them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord It's such a critical thing and of course This is a family integrated church right where it's a it's a church where the generations meet together.

Why do we do that? Well, we do that because that's what the Bible shows us. Okay? We don't believe the church should be fractured by, we don't believe the church should be fractured by, we don't believe the church should fracture the generations. But that's all part of creating a spiritual family where from the youngest to the oldest are being brought up together in this family.

Some years ago wrote this document, I'll pass it out, a declaration of the complementary roles of church and family. Trent, could you help me get out here? Each one of you can have one of these. And what this document describes is, as it says at the beginning, the complementary roles of church and family. And here you'll find an argument of really what is the church, but what does it mean for the church and the family to have complementary roles?

They're not, They are separate jurisdictions, but God designed them to work together. And so you'll find here an argument that we make for what has come to be called the family integrated church. We coined this term about 23 years ago. And that's the term that people use to describe a church like that's that's that's generational in its fellowship structure. So you have would jump down to deacons.

The deacons really they they do they do everything they can and they do to keep the elders focused on the ministry of the Word and Prayer. So you have this in among the officers of the church you have a division of labor and we're so fortunate to have deacons that actually they do this for the elders. The Elders don't have any administrative responsibilities. Everything is done for us so that we can focus on the ministry of the word and prayer. It's such a blessing to have that.

The deacon will oversee the special care of the poor and the needy and other duties assigned by the elders in support of the elders being devoted to the ministry of the word and prayer. In the Bible, deacons don't have authority. They are servants. They are ministers. In the New Testament you do though find deacons that can preach like Stephen and Philip.

So you might find a deacon preaching from time to time, but it's very clear in the New Testament that deacons don't have authority in the church. That's really vested in the elders. Deacons will be nominated by the elders or the congregation and elected by two-thirds majority of voting members. So that's how a person becomes a deacon in this church. And then you have a whole list of things that deacons do.

Let's talk about removal of elders and deacons. If anyone believes an elder may be morally or doctrinally unfit for his office, he is to approach that elder individually first, Matthew 18.15, and then with one or two others, Matthew 18.16. If the problem remains, then two or three witnesses should come to the other elders and present the charges. 1st Timothy 5 19 in the case of gross doctrinal or scandalous error scandalous immorality two or three witnesses can come directly to the other elders and present the charge. So you know the Bible, 1 Timothy 5.19 says, you know, it's unlawful to bring an accusation against an elder without two or three witnesses.

And that's really the proper methodology. But elders are not above censure, they're not above questioning, they're not above the congregation in that sense. The congregation has the freedom to come and deal with sin, known sin, in elders' lives. Same thing with the deacons. If a deacon is morally unfit for his office, it's the same process to go about.

Let's see, there's a section here on the regular principle. We really already covered that. Let's talk about church membership. Any individual professing faith in Christ, having been subsequently baptized, may be considered a candidate for communicant membership for membership purposes Hope Baptist Church defines baptism as immersing the subject in water in the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit After professing repentance toward God faith and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ. So you've seen this process taking place.

We announce it and then we bring somebody into membership after seven days. Sweetie, can you get me a drink of water? Let's talk about voting. Do you see where it says voting members? About voting here might be one of the most unusual aspects of this Constitution.

I'll read it. Voting members shall consist of all members who are male heads of households in good standing. For clarity, adult sons living in their father's household will not be considered heads of households. Since male headship is established in the church by God, it is not biblically proper for a woman, unmarried, divorced, or widowed to take leadership, teach men, or vote in the congregation. The church is the family of God and it must not be imagined that the order for this family would be in contradiction to the order for the family of God.

If a single woman does not have a male representation in the membership, a father, a grandfather, older brother, or son as approved by the elders, she and her household shall be represented by the elders who will vote on her behalf after consulting her. Members who are not regularly attending church meetings for any reason shall not be considered members in good standing for the purposes of voting. Any debatable instances of whether someone is regularly attending will be decided by the elders. And then let's just talk about voting here for a minute. Why do we have head of household voting in this church?

Why do we do that? Has anybody ever experienced that before? No. It's just incredibly uncommon. So we understand, we understand how unusual this is.

We have household voting because the Bible presents a representative model of government in the Old Testament and it runs through many places and in the New Testament. I'll give you an illustration. Our government is a representative republic. It is not a democracy. You don't live in a democracy.

People say we live in a democracy and we don't. We live in a representative government, a representative republic. And so, You're talking about our our American government. Why do we have a representative republic in America? And why do we have elections in America?

Why is there voting in America? Because in other forms of government there is no voting. And here's why we have voting and here's why we have representative government and here's why we don't have women voting. When the Pilgrims came to America they brought with them the idea that representatives, that elders should be elected by the congregation and And they believe this because the New Testament church voted on elders. The congregation voted on their representatives, on elders.

And this is based on Acts 1423 where elders were appointed. The word that is used is kairatineo. It meant to be elected by a show of hands. So elders were elected by a show of hands. Elders were elected by voting.

That's where we get the idea of voting in the Bible. I'll read the verse, Acts 14 23. So when they had appointed elders, it's that word appointed, chiro- chiro-teneo, which indicates a raising of the hands. When they had appointed elders in every church, they prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed so a representative is chosen by the congregation and And you find this pattern in different places. You find it in 2 Corinthians 8, 18.

You find it in Acts 1, 16 and 23. You find, you have men, men appointing men in the Bible. That's what happens in the Bible. Men appoint the men. Women don't appoint the men.

That's just the way it is in the Bible. It's so offensive to our culture, but that's the way the Bible presents it. And you have this idea of men voting for men, which is why in our government men were only allowed to vote until 1918. That's because our government had adopted the principle of voting from their Puritan forefathers. It was a biblical principle.

In 1 Timothy 2, 11, we learn this, that women are not to be in authority in churches. In 1st Corinthians 11 through 16, men are designed to serve the role of leadership, that the head of every man is Christ and the head of woman is man and the head of Christ is God so you have this this order and authority in the Bible and you have it in marriage too the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is also head of the church. So you have you do have this principle of male headship in the Bible. You don't have it in our feminized culture and it was overthrown in 1918 when it came to voting. The New Testament practice was simply a continuation of the Old Testament practice, 2 Samuel 16, 18, Deuteronomy 1, 13.

We, A few weeks ago I gave a message on voting in our church. If you are here, you know that the Bible says, appoint men, not women, appoint men, males. Authority is given to men. So you have this pattern in the Old Testament where the men of Israel are appointing leaders and heads and functionaries that way. The men of Israel choose their rulers in 2nd Samuel 16-18 and in other in other places.

So the New Testament follows the same pattern. You also have other places like in the prophets like in Isaiah chapter 3 when you have a state of apostasy women are ruling as for my people children are their oppressors and women rule over them oh my people those who lead you cause you to err and destroy the way of your peasants." Isaiah 3, 4, and verse 12. And so The apostle Paul and the apostles were men who were appointing men for leadership. So that's why we have head of household voting. And that doesn't mean that a woman, particularly a single woman doesn't have a voice.

She has a rep, she comes to her elders and submits her vote to the elders and the elders vote for her. So that's the idea of head of household, representative voting. So there you have it. That's the way we do it here. It's very interesting during the women's suffrage movement, two things I would just like to say.

96% of the women were against the women's vote in 1918, but it passed. The movement, the women's right to vote movement, while I'm glad my wife has a right to vote, was really a feminist movement. And they very, very explicitly communicated why they wanted to overthrow the male vote. These were second wave feminists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and a whole host of other of the early feminists.

But they very explicitly make it clear, particularly in their declaration of sentiments that was written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848 where there was a really historic meeting to try to move these things through the American political system. Here's what they were doing very clearly. You can just read the Declaration of Sentiments. They wanted to overthrow the headship of husbands. They wanted to throw off the authority structure in the home.

They wanted to lead an independent life. They wanted to allow women to teach theology and they did not want women to be excluded from the ministry because that was what was prevailing in our culture. They actually wanted to overthrow a biblical methodology and particularly focusing on the matter of voting. Okay, so on membership, how long can you be at Hope Baptist and not become a member? Well, we'd rather not be too short and not too long.

If somebody is gonna come and drink, you know, drink in the benefits and all the stuff of the church and all that, we want them to enter into a covenant with us if they're gonna stay around. We want them to come to a place where they decide, yeah, I wanna stay here. I'm willing to covenant with these people. I'm willing to enter in to this church. Any believer attending Hope, here's how we have it written, any believer regularly attending Hope Baptist is expected to become a member after a reasonable period of time.

We do not believe it's appropriate for people to attend a church for long periods of time without making a covenant with those people to fully join with them in unified ministry. So how long? We get this question. Well we don't know. This is not too long.

But we might be asking you about it. Like if you've been here for eight or 10 months, we're going to say, how come you keep coming? You must want to keep coming. But if you want to keep coming for a long time, we'd really like to become a member. You know, we're pretty flexible about it.

We don't want people to become a member, you know, after they've come for a couple months. We like them to really get to know us. Hear the preaching, get to know the doctrine and life of the elders, get a sense for what real life in this church is all about, and then say, yeah I think the Lord would have me here. And so I'm going to covenant with these people. And we'll talk about the covenant next week.

We take the covenant really seriously. So some of you have been around for a few weeks, others for a few months. You know, we're not going to be all over your case, but we're glad you're here at least to hear our spiel about, you know, about sort of the underlying substructure of our church. So it's member obligation. We require that every member must take an oath to uphold the membership covenant, which describes our duties to one another, and uphold the Constitution.

Let me just say one more word about the Constitution. Constitutions are not perfect. Hey, you know, I've operated under a number of Constitutions in my life, of the 55 years of my life in the church. And None of them are perfect. You can poke holes in every constitution.

I can poke holes in this constitution. There are things I don't like about this constitution. But if we write another one, well, there's just going to be a few more holes. So how perfect can a Constitution be? You know my view is they can be really helpful and sometimes there are some harmful things in it if somebody really wants to be bad But every constitution has its problems and we're willing to, your elders are willing to function under this constitution.

Even though we have some things that we wouldn't mind changing about this constitution. But we think it's good enough. The Bible is really good though. That's where we rest all of our hope. Oh, let's see, the Lord's Supper, we practice what's called open communion.

That means we allow non-members and visitors to participate in the Lord's Supper if they profess faith in Jesus Christ, have been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, either as a believer, which is in accordance with the doctrine of the church, or as an infant if it is in accordance with the belief of the baptizing church and are not banned from the Lord's Supper by their true and orthodox church, or in unrepentant sense. So if there's a Presbyterian that comes to our church and they were lawfully baptized in their church They're they're gonna be able to take the Lord's Supper So, let's see some more things here concerning the family we affirm that the family is to be a vital center of Christian discipleship and that as a church we will seek to support and strengthen this important institution for the advance of God's kingdom. We affirm that the husband is the head of the home and that under Christ he is to give godly leadership seeking to direct his family in the ways of the Lord. That parents are primarily responsible for the spiritual training of their children.

This includes discipline and biblical instruction. And that our goal as parents is to raise up godly seed for the Lord. And let's see, what else do we want to say? Meetings, oh, let's just, this is just, How do we do meetings? Whenever a member's vote is required, by the way, that's really rare in our church.

We don't put everything to vote in this church. You will not see the color of the carpet going on for a vote. But you will absolutely see a vote for elders and deacons. Our constitution requires that if we change the constitution, it has to be approved. First of all, 100% of the elders have to be in favor of the change, okay?

And it's two-thirds of the congregation must be in favor. So we don't mess with this constitution without bringing the church together. Your elders would have to be 100% unified, and then the church would have to be 2 thirds unified to make any kind of change in the Constitution. Termination of membership, here's how you can get out of here. Here's how you can get out of this church if you want to?

Well, first, you can die. And then you're. Second, by transfer. You want to go to a different church, you can transfer. Third, by resignation.

This is a voluntary, church membership is voluntary. And you can voluntarily get out of it if you want. And then by exclusion, if a member ceases to attend the stated meetings of the church without showing just cause, then, or if they move, then they'll be taken off the rolls or by excommunication. So those are the ways that you can get out of the church. You either die or get excommunicated or you want to leave.

Okay. Okay, let's see. I guess the very last statement, revisions and amendments, I already said this. A unanimous vote of the elders is required to make any changes in this constitution. These changes shall be ratified by a two thirds vote of voting members.

So, there it is. There's the constitution. Trent, you wanna pose us in prayer? Father, we do thank you again for this work, some of the clarification that we've seen for your people. I just pray for that there will be just such a great unity within the body here at Hoban.

As a member, I pray that you will just continue to pour out your blessing upon our church and upon these dear people who are some of our members and yet some who are considering this. I pray that you would make that very clear to them and Lord that if they do make that decision to join us, that it would just be a wholehearted desire to come and to serve this body through loving each other, a willingness to forgive each other, to be patient with each other, to overlook faults or personality differences. We just so desire that you bring just such unity among our body and may the definition of this church really be seen. That we love one another. And we ask that it be possible.