Well, there's a few men that cannot be with us this morning. Pastor Kirk Patrick is preaching in Surrey, and then Paul DeGear left last night. He's one of the men from Pinocchio, but all the other brothers are here. So first, I'm going to call up either Rod or Floyd from Regina to begin.

Report: Grace Reformed Baptist, Regina

Brothers and sisters, I bring you greetings from Regina, from Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Regina. Just as a report on who we are and what we have been involved in there, we are a church plant about two and a half years ago, officially began three and a half years ago, a work there out of a Gospel of Grace fellowship in Weyburn. They sent us, they called us as elders, and then sent us up there as a church plant. So we have been officially Grace Reformed Baptist Church since November 2022.

And praise God, we've preached through a number of the books of the Bible. I guess one thing that we would say is that it has been I use the analogy of an accordion. We have grown, and we have shrunk, and we have grown, and we've shrunk, and we've made the appropriate wheezing sounds each time. So we've had our low times and our high times.

What I would say is that it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is Lord of the church. He's head of the church. He's growing the church and he's working in the church. So we have seen people come and go and we've grieved when they leave and we've rejoiced when they rejoice.

And so a lot of that comes with enjoying the times that are good. So praise God for that. We have had a number of baptisms. We've had a number of new members. and we have learned to rejoice in those moments.

And so we pray for all the churches that we share with, we pray for you guys, usually every Monday, and then we rotate through in our congregational prayer, and that means a lot to us, that means a lot to me, to be able to point my people in a town, in a city that has basically three Reformed-ish churches, We are the weird people in Regina. Our worship is weird and our organization is weird. Everything is weird about us. And so when people Think that we can point to an association and say this is historic.

This is something that is not just our deal. This isn't just preference. This is something that is established and convictional. And so what we are finding now, and one of the things that we rejoice about, is that the members that we have, those who are in attendance, want what we are doing.

They want to be Reformed Baptists. They want to be confessional. And they see the value of that. So praise God for that.

And you help us just by being here, just by doing what you do, and joining with us in association. I just praise God for that. It's very dangerous having a number of pastors to come up and giving them five minutes. I was joking with the brothers, we should each come up and say, now open your Bibles to the book of Acts.

Report: Grace Family Reformed Baptist, Medicine Hat

Well, I'm from Grace Family Reformed Baptist Church in Medicine Hat, Alberta. I bring greetings and love from our congregation. Just as Rod has said, we've been praying for you. We pray for all of the churches we are associated with and those brothers who are not associated who are here today, like Lethbridge or Webern, we pray for you as well.

We love you, we appreciate you, and we're glad to be associated, if not, formally, informally, and it's good to be here. I want to thank you on behalf of our church for hosting this meeting, for having these wonderful men come up and to teach us, and for providing the links that my church has appreciated through a live stream, even last year's conference as well. I bring not only my greetings and love, but gratitude as well. Every city has its challenges.

In Madison Hat, our challenge is almost an apathy based upon a broad evangelical kind of religion that permeates our city, that it's a shallow religion that does not want to dig deep into the word. And when you start to press it, They want to run away because they don't want to hear that perhaps there's things they don't know or they have to change some things that they are doing. And that is the struggle we have in Medicine Hat. There has never really been a reformed church.

So a touchstone to point back to where we can say this is what we have believed we are we're new and like Rod said we are we're very weird everything from the way we practice communion to the songs we sing to the way we order our services and I'm sure you have felt that weirdness here as well so you can pray for that you can pray for our city we've done evangelism on the street we have we've encourage members to do personal evangelism. We have done street preaching at times and passing out of tracks, and we have been involved in the college. It's been wonderful. We have been there for seven years.

And again, the accordion analogy is very apt. We have grown and shrunk many times. And at this point in time, we have seen an influx of of migrant workers who are working at the local greenhouses, men from China, from India, and from the Philippines, which poses different challenges. We, none of us speak Mandarin or Indian.

So that's hard to talk with those brothers and we don't have the resources, the confessions and multiple languages to give. We've not normally been a multicultural or multilingual city. So that is a challenge we face. You can pray for that.

And also thank God that God is bringing them in and they are staying and hearing and seeking membership. And that is pretty much it. Again, we thank you as a church for partnering with us. And again, I share my love for my congregation.

We have been a church for seven years, and as Rod had said, it's a strange thing. And it's wonderful to know that there are many more churches. It's an encouraging thing to lift our hearts to know that not only are there churches that we know that are kind of on the right track in our area, but there are churches who believe what we believe, confess what we confess, and are joining with us in prayer and in ministry, even though we're so far away, and I thank you. Brian Malforce from Orange County.

Good morning, everyone. Most of you are probably a lot more familiar with me and my church because we are a church plant of this Free Grace Baptist Church here. So

Report: Trinity Reformed Baptist, Armstrong

greetings from Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Armstrong. We're coming up on three years now that we've been formally constituted as a church. Hard to believe just about three years ago that I was kneeling here. ordained by Pastor Butler and Mike from Surrey. And yeah, time really does fly.

The Lord has been very gracious to us as a church. We have a lot of, we're mainly a lot of younger families, lots of kids, lots of life. I'm thankful every day for the unity that we have and the love that we share as a church, as a church family, really truly do function as a family. It's a real blessing. that way.

It's a blessing as a pastor to shepherd this flock that is just to see faithful husbands, faithful wives, faithful fathers, faithful mothers teaching their children. The Lord is working among the children. It's truly a joy to witness that as well. I often use, you know, think of Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones proclaiming a message saying, saying, live you bones, live, hear this word of the Lord.

And, you know, just that proclamation alone was not, you know, the Lord didn't work then. It wasn't until, there was a rattling, we know, but it wasn't until the Spirit came and breathed life into those bones. And we really see that in our church among the young people, the youth growing in their sanctification, their knowledge of the things of God, the children. You know, learning the gospel, hearing the gospel, seeing God work, it's a real blessing that way.

God has been pleased to bless our church with with officers as well. About a year and a half ago, we installed Brahm, who's here today actually as a deacon. And then last October, we installed Hans Kroll. Most of you probably know him as well as an elder in the church to serve alongside me.

That's been a real blessing as well to have him. He's preaching this morning. For me, he preaches about once a month. So it's very nice to have that and have him there serving alongside me.

We're very thankful to be part of the association. Two, of course, you know, knowing, being more connected with Free Grace and with Surrey has been good, but now to just grow that connection with, you know, the brothers from the prairies and meeting some more here at the conference, you know, expressing interest in joining and those, you know, those coming together, it's been a real joy. Absolutely can say that. So, but yeah, praise the Lord with us. for his goodness to our church.

We're truly, it's truly a blessing to see his work there and to serve as a pastor there. So thank you. So those are the association guys, as I said. Patrick is at his church in Surrey.

Paul, Emil, and Herman in Minoka. The three men that are, I don't know what we call them, the grand mubas of the first line, I'm sorry. Are they the coordinating coordinators or moderators for the association? So those are the men that are doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

We do get an email update, usually is that once a week? Two weeks. Two weeks. So the association churches send their requests to Ryan, and then we make sure that all the association churches get those.

So it's a blessing. And as the men have expressed, I feel good that I'm not the only weird one in the world. And so now we're going to step outside the association proper and other men that are like-minded with us in terms of confessionalism. So first is Kevin Armstrong. from Weber.

I almost said Kevin Weber from Armstrong. Well, it is good to be here. And every time I hear Armstrong, my head pops up. So the confusion's all around, but, um, yeah,

Report: Gospel of Grace Fellowship, Weyburn

my name is Kevin Armstrong. I've been pastoring in Weyburn now in my current role for eight and a half years. Uh, gospel of grace fellowship is our, our church's name. And, uh, last year when I was here as kind of gave a history of how we came to adopt the confession, a brief history of our church.

Um, and, uh, In terms of updates, not everything that goes on makes for a real thrilling update, but it's a lot of ordinary ministry and life of the church, which is good. I can happily say that we are doing well. I think the Lord has blessed us through the life of our church with some calm and peace and unity. At the same time, we have had a lot of people come over the last couple of years and start attending and many join in membership who come from all kinds of different backgrounds.

And so it's a bit daunting at times. We have people coming out of cults to old colony Mennonites to you know, out there charismaticism to you name it all come within the span of a few weeks sometimes and so it can be a bit dizzying. Um, so just, just, uh, you know, we're working to try to bring everybody in, uh, together, build one another up into the, in the unity of the faith. And, uh, you know, the word weird has been thrown around a lot.

Um, And, you know, that's something we have certainly experienced as well. It's not just, you know, we laugh at that, but it comes with a certain amount of, you know, it can be hard, too, suffering, feeling like you're on an island, and people can be dismissive just because you do things odd, you know. It seems weird to me, so I'm out and dismissive and even worse than that, of course. So we are grateful to be here.

I'm grateful to be here. We're grateful to hear these reports of different churches and to meet brothers and sisters from different churches and here. Thank you to Free Grace for your hospitality again this year to us. And yeah, we just appreciate your prayers as we just continue in the ordinary ministry of the church.

On Wednesday nights, we've been working through the Baptist Catechism, which has been a great tool for trying to bring us together, not only for the doctrine it contains, but also some of the hermeneutical questions that arise when people are saying, how do they get there from some of those texts, maybe, which has been great to go through that. And yet this summer we're going to press pause there and take some time to teach on, again, return to missions and evangelism and church planting. these kinds of things to just, again, try to stir that in our people. We've had the privilege of being part of helping with two church plants in our region, kind of an hour each side of us. And that's been a great help to us.

Again, even as Rod was saying, this is not just us in our own unique weirdness. This goes back a long ways. And there are others that are weird with us. So it's not just that.

Kevin has unique ideas or whatever. Someone the other day said they've been praying for our church, and I'm very thankful for that. And if the Lord puts us on your heart, please do pray for us. Just pray for faithfulness, pray for unity in the church, pray that more would come to be saved. through the ministry of the church and the people there.

And we are grateful. We have seen that since I was here last year. We baptized this couple that came out of a cult and are very sound already, just eating up everything that's taught and reading everything they can. and they're trying to bring everybody with them from that group, and we have more coming to our church from there, and they seem to be tracking, and we would hope they too will come to faith in Christ. And so, yeah, we just do want to see the Lord build his church and save souls and plant and establish churches.

It's a wasteland where we are. And so we just really desire to see more churches established and to see the healthy churches established and done well. So we just appreciate your prayers for these things. And pretty well, anything else you can think of that we probably need prayer for that.

So just, yeah. So thank you. And then medicine hat, 70,000 Armstrong. 5,000 in the town, but we serve it. the broader area. And my burn? 10,000.

Okay. All right, so for the next brothers that come up, let us know that. Not everybody's a native Canadian, so it's good to get kind of an idea of the size, population basis.

Report: Reformed Baptist Church, Lethbridge

Ryan Case from Lethbridge, Alberta. Good morning, greetings from Lethbridge. Population about 105,000. We're about an hour north of the Montana border.

And Brother Dozal, Dr. Dozal, was actually my predecessor. I've been there since 2007, with many ups and downs. I think we could say the church is in a good season, and that's all by God's grace.

I brought my fellow elder, Pastor Matt, we brought him on last September, Pastor Nathan, Coppert is still at home. We've lost two elders, one stepped down, one was disqualified, but by God's grace there's two other men we're investing into working through the 1689 with them. And so hoping if it would be the Lord's kind will that soon we'd be able to add to our eldership. We were able, again by God's grace, to plant Reform Baptist Church.

They're actually a 1689 church 40 minutes east of us in a small town of Tabor, about 7,500 people. HeartCry actually helped us with that. And now we're hoping to plant a church half an hour west of us in a town called Fort McLeod, population probably about 7,500 as well. We are weird, but in the trajectory we're a little less weird than some of the other brothers.

In our progressive weirdification, we're hoping to catch up, and that's mostly due to my own theological reorientation. You know, came out of seminary as a progressive covenantalist, and then it was about three years ago, Peter Van Wurthuysen, he gave me a wonderful book by Dr. Barcelos, Getting the Garden Right, and it kind of made sense to me. You know, I'd read a lot of progressive stuff, covenantalism, not progressive, other stuff.

And so the church is sort of like a ship that's turning. And so we're not able to just, you know, drop the 1689 hammer. But the elders are all on board. The new guys that are coming on, we're working through that.

And by God's grace, we're going to slowly try to introduce those things, you know, things like regulative principle. I was a little bit awkward. When you're talking about accordions, I'm like, does that fit in the regulative? The hand-waving makes a Baptist awkward, so I was like, you know, but do pray for us.

I don't think there's opposition to it, but it could be new to a lot of people, you know, sort of people coming in because they love the Calvinism. They think Reformed equals Calvinistic, but now we're sort of referring more to Covenantal. We're starting to refer to confessions and stuff, and some people are a little uncomfortable, but we want to show that these things are healthy, as Dr. Ren has said, safeguards.

And we want to show them that these are good. And we're not new and novel, but we have a rich, historical, biblical tradition that we're trying to tie into. So just pray. You know, I wish I could say this is exactly where we are, but this is our aspirations, our hope.

I think we're on the right trajectory. And so lastly, I just want to give thanks to the hospitality last year and then this year. out of this world. And so, just real grateful. This has been a real blessing to my soul, even just getting to talk to the various men.

So, thank you. You looked at me when you mentioned hospitality, but it is important in our church to really step up in all those ways, and they are to be very much appreciated and very thankful for that service. The next is Peter from Moose Mountain. I heard Ryan pronounce your last name, but I'll let him do it.

Yeah, so

Report: Moose Mountain Reformed Baptist Church

my name is Peter Van Worthuizen. So first of all, just a huge thank you for everyone who organized and hosted this conference. What a blessing it's been, and just such a joy to be here with you all. But yeah, so I'm a pastor for Moose Mountain Reformed Baptist Church.

A huge thanks, of course, to Pastor Ryan. I was part of his church for, I forget how many years, about eight years, where I was discipled by Pastor Ryan. We always had a few, we weren't quite on the same page always, but I was kinda dirty and I snuck him Richard Purcell's book just before I moved to Saskatchewan to start the church there. And then I was very happy to hear that he actually read it.

It started, yeah, Richard Barcella started the trend in Lethbridge here, which is just amazing. And of course, Pastor Kevin Armstrong, they planted us in Kisbe Arcoa. We're a very small region. It's the Moose Mountain region, which is why we call our church Moose Mountain Reformed Baptist Church.

Of course, our mountains are nothing like your mountains here. But because Saskatchewan is mostly flat, even when there's a few hills in the ground, they're called mountains. But yeah, our church has, yeah, God has really been blessing us. Just this winter, our church actually started supporting me full-time.

When we started out, both myself and my fellow elder, Kevin St. John, we were both working full-time while we started this church plant, and now this winter, we've been able to support me full-time, which has been a huge blessing for our church and for myself, of course, as well. It's allowed us to do some more outreach opportunities, too. Actually, Dr.

Sam's book, The Mystery of Christ, I organized a study from it where we took people just from the Bible through the covenants, from Genesis to the New Covenant, of course, to the end. And it was a huge blessing in our church. And we recently had some people coming from a town about an hour further from us called Wabota. And we had some people coming from there, the church there is falling apart like so many are, especially in our region.

Most of them have completely gone the way of the world, they're gone woke, you know, they don't even have pastors anymore or anybody, but there just seems to be a solid remnant in those churches. So he organized a study, I went there, so this whole winter we've gone through the mystery of Christ, we've traced the mystery of Christ, going from Genesis right to the New. And we've had like 12 to 15 people come out, and they stuck with it the whole time, actually to the point where they're asking for readings for the next study. We did it on Monday nights and they wanted texts to read so they could prepare for the next study.

So that was a huge blessing. So we're seeing even, we might start like a preaching station where we start an evening service over there. That's all up in the air. We've actually just recently had a couple come from another place about an hour away called Kipling, exactly the same story.

It was just an amazing thing where he actually found us, because he was looking for a Reformed Baptist church of all things. He just got saved two years ago and found some things online, which is so cool. There's just so much more of an online presence now for Reformed Baptists. And he was looking up a 1689 church, and he was in utter shock to find one only an hour away from him.

So they started coming. But the same thing, he wants to see a new work. done there too, so we've been looking at that. But yeah, God has been really blessing us. We've had some, we're having some baptism at the end of May here.

We're brand new Christians, and my fellow elder Kevin, he got the opportunity to share the gospel with a couple just three weeks ago now, who were actually drug dealers of all things in our town. They actually came to church a couple weeks ago, and they're wanting to change their lives, and it seems like God might be at work in them, so they said they're coming back, so hopefully they're there again this morning. So there's been lots of exciting little things happening in our region, and we appreciate all your prayers. We're definitely more and more interested in joining an association as well.

We've been talking about that as a church, so we're, yeah, just excited to see all that's going on here, We're thankful for all God's blessings for us as well. Our church is trying to help a group of people in Brighton, northern Ontario. Many of the people in our church know that our oldest son moved there several years ago. We refer to him as the traitor.

So he met a fellow named Dan Morley right about the time of COVID at a church that he'd been at. And so for the last while, Dan and Josh had been meeting with some other people that had come along. And as I said, we're trying to give them some support, some aid, and some assistance. So I've asked Dan to come up and share.

Good morning. So, yeah, my family and I have come from Dryden, Ontario, and we came on a Boeing 747. And I'm quite relieved to announce that all the parts remained as a whole during our flight, and so we got here safely. But I'll give you the Boeing 747 high-level overview update of who we are and where we're at.

So where we are is if you jump on the Trans-Canada Highway and drive across Canada, when you get into Ontario, about two hours past the Manitoba border, you'll know you're in Dryden because your senses will tell you we're a mill town with a pulp or a fiber mill. And it's about, I think about 8,000 as a population. And our nearest centers would be Thunder Bay, four hours to the east, and Winnipeg, four hours to the west. These aren't Wikipedia official stats, but approximate thereabouts.

And the whole area, but Dryden as well as the whole area, is predominantly influenced by a Mennonite background or Anabaptist, so very Arminian and an aversion towards, well, really Calvinistic soteriology. There wouldn't be a Reformed presence. So it's not like there's been a lot who love the doctrines of the sovereignty of God or election, that we're just waiting for the church to come together. We were able to lasso enough people who were willing to tolerate Calvinistic soteriology in preaching and teaching.

We're small in numbers, but we have quite a few things which are in place that are very encouraging to have in place. So for example, Josh Butler and I are very like minded. And of course, we're in the same direction of where we would like to see things go. So that in itself is is very encouraging.

We We have a small gathering. We're not constituted yet, but we have formally agreed upon the Second Lenten Baptist Confession as our standard of doctrine and practice. We have formal affiliation with Free Grace as our sending or supporting church. And we have a name, Trinity Reform Baptist Church in Dryden, Ontario.

And we have now a website and a Facebook presence to hopefully get more attention and people know that we are here. And if Reform people do move to Dryden, which despite the smell, I do recommend it if anybody's looking to move and join a church plant. So we're trying to get more known. Our location, which worked quite well to our advantage previously, is actually quite out of town, which now is working to our disadvantage because people just don't really see that we're there.

So a brief update is, to be brief about it, I can fill you in on more details afterwards. But from the Boeing 747 perspective, there's a high likelihood that we have a location in town that we'll be relocating to shortly, which will make a scene known. People can walk there. It's right on the main road as you come into Dryden, and likelihood of having a sign up and become more known.

So if you haven't checked out our website or our Facebook page, I invite you to do so. by the grace of God, just pressing on and trying to remain faithful and hopefully have an influence of a high view of God and high view of scripture within our community and see God's kingdom advanced. I should mention Dan and Brian are students at IRBS as well. They're taking courses. And both of these men are their professors. shape or another.

Any other Canadian men that are pastors that I just overlooked? Because if not, yeah. Jim and Bob. We'll have to come down to Jim and give a report.

But I wanted to ask an American friend, John Tobler. As far as I know, he's driven the Ferguson from Iowa to get here. $28. $28, yes. My car may well, it's a rental car. So I got I got a 2025 Buick.

Oh, I can't even think of the name, not infinity, but something like that. So it's pretty fancy. So yeah,

Report: Reformed Baptist Church, Tama, Iowa

greetings from the Reformed Baptist Church of Tama, Iowa. I'm a pastoral intern there and elder candidate as of the last year. And the goal is for me to move into full-time ministry over the course of the next three or four years. So yeah, we moved there in September.

Been in the role since June, and we're really enjoying it. It's a small town, about 6,000 to 7,000. And membership is about, I would say, 20,000 to 30,000. So small church, regular Sunday probably looks like about 40,000 to 50,000 in attendance.

That's where we're at and You know praise Praises going on in the church. There would be that we're a unified body And we're growing we just added a family Within the last I would say two to three weeks and it's looking like there's another young family. That's wanting to join as well so before we had come we had I think four children in the church, and with us and this new family and potentially the other family, we jumped from four to about 22 kids. So that's an encouragement.

And we're dealing with that problem right now of what to do with all this, what to do with our children's Sunday school class, all that. So those are good problems to have. As for prayer requests. maintain unity with all this. You know, we've got one of the families that's joining is coming from another church.

They've sort of outgrown it. So obviously that's exciting, but you know the challenges that can come with that. Maintaining unity, growth in our love and use of the confession would be another request. Just similar along the lines of what we heard from Dr.

Renahan in his first session there. That's what I want to communicate to our people. I start in two weeks teaching in our adult Sunday school, chapter one, paragraph one of the confession. And I've done two intros, and really my goal is to get them to love it, to use it, to begin to more speak the language of the confession, the language of the creeds.

That would be my goal there as a young intern. So pray the Lord's blessing upon that. Pray His blessing upon the ministry of the Word. We've got an abundance of it, which is good.

I'm preaching from John in the morning, Philippians in the evening. Pastor Paul Rendall is preaching from the Psalms in the evening and from Ephesians. in the morning, and then we have a midweek study where we also do teaching there, too, similar to what you guys do. Ministry in the community, we have a nursing home ministry once a month that we go to. And then we have a children's Bible club on Tuesday nights that we do.

And those have been going on for a while. And if you remember, pray for fruit to come from those interaction in the community. We're weird, like all you guys are too in our community. So pray that that strangeness would be an attractive strangeness to those that are in the community.

And that we get new converts, but also maybe more Christians that are coming and looking for some more meat. We're trying to pull people away from churches. That would be it. Thank you guys for having me.

And I've been blessed not only by the wonderful teaching throughout my time here, but seeing what the Lord is doing in bringing you all together in unity, individually, and collectively as these bodies here in Western Canada. So, thank you. I was going to say the same. Well, I just like to say it's been

Report: Free Grace Baptist Church (Host)

it's been great to to be part of an association that you know just started but prior to that to also have the Like-mindedness the the community the fellowship in the gospel. It's really encouraging to you know to have sort of a The the formalized signing ceremony that we had that we had yesterday. What an encouragement encouragement it is to to to look back to, you know, Jim's been here since 96, 97, I came in 2005, and there was really a dearth, at least what we thought, of Reformed Baptist churches at that time. So to be here now, where we've planted churches, and where we've entered into communion with other churches who have also planted churches, what an encouragement it is, and we praise God for that.

You know, for those not, maybe not from our church, just to, you know, some things in the way of updates, you know, looking back to perhaps the year 2008-ish when the pews, the pews also had, you know, some of the pews had tumbleweeds blowing through them. There weren't as many people as there are now. And I'll just, I'll flip that around. What a joy it is to have such a great congregation that we have now.

The pews are filled. Praise God for that. Our morning services, we'll probably see it today, we might have to pull some chairs from up in the fellowship hall to put on the sides because we have just a wonderful congregation of believers that come each and every Lord's Day. coming for the truth, coming for the preaching of the word, coming for the simplicity and the glory of biblical worship, and it's just very encouraging, Lord's day in and Lord's day out. Pastor Butler's been preaching through the Gospel of John in the mornings and Philippians in the evenings, and that's been rich with biblical theology, with biblical Christology, It's just been a delight to sit under that preaching.

Pastor Butler does a Wednesday night Bible study, working now through the book of Deuteronomy. We do, each and every Lord's Day, we either do a prayer meeting before the morning service or a confession study. So we work progressively through the confession of faith. Jim and I trade off on that, depending on who's available and ready to go.

And I think, I mean, we'd have to do the count, maybe Wim can look that up or investigate it or somebody, but we gotta be going through, is it our seventh time or? eighth-ish time through the confession of faith. And it's just an encouragement to see people coming, wanting to learn what we hold, just those sound words that we grip onto as Christians. And so it's just a delight to be a part of this church. We have presently two elders and two deacons.

And we're in a season where we have enjoyed, by God's grace, peace, we've enjoyed unity, we've enjoyed just a warm fellowship in the gospel from each and every member and those who attend. Very recently we had a ministerial aspirant meeting where a number of young men looking to get into the ministry which is so encouraging. I mean, for a while, we had been praying that God would raise up men from our midst who would seek the ministry and be faithful in seeking that. And we have that now, and it's such an encouragement.

What a delight it is to have the prayers of fellow churches. We thank you for your prayers. We thank you for coming to this conference to engage in a like-minded celebration of the truth that we hold together. It's been great to have both Drs.

Renahan and Dulzell here with us. to bring to us that truth, and we're praying for growth in the association, growth in our churches and churches to be planted, and ultimately just that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would prevail. in this country, that by God's grace, through the faithful proclamation of the word of God, we would see many come from darkness to light to name the name of Christ as their Lord and Savior. So yeah, for all of us, let's just continue in prayer, continue in faithfulness, and God will bless his churches.

Acknowledgement and Closing

I want to mention as well, with reference to the association, Sheldon Andres is here. Where's Sheldon? Yes, just want to say thank you, brother. I think you and I kind of found each other.

I think we knew each other before that, but through various iterations of chat groups. you and I kind of linked on who was really confessional and who wasn't. And initially, Sheldon did a lot of the legwork. And I say this in the best possible way. I know this word does not connote the good intention that I'm gonna spin it with, but politically, just the way that you dealt with the various men involved in all of that, you had a gift that I didn't have.

So I just wanna recognize Sheldon and thankful that you're here with us, brother. I'm very, very thankful.

Closing Prayer

Well, let's close. Well, how about a couple of men pray? Cam, can you pray? And then Ryan, can you pray?

And then we'll sing a song. What's that? I'm looking at you, Ryan. Sorry.

Yeah. The Ryan. So Cam and then Ryan Maljars, and then I'll pray and then we'll sing a hymn to close.

Scripture References

• Ezekiel 37:1-14