Joel McGarvey - Sunday School

[0:00] I was expecting the pastor to get up here and give me a long, read the introduction that I gave him. I lost track of time. It's right there.

[0:11] You should give an introduction. No. All right. Here he is. Here he is. Here he is. That's what I wrote. Joe McGarvey, Susan, and they're, you guys are coming from Michigan, right?

[0:27] Yeah, Grand Rapids. We live in Michigan, yeah. And how long have you been doing Bible doctrines to live by? Because it was Leah Mokey and then you took over. Yes.

[0:38] Leah Mokey started. Well, I'll explain all that. But I've been, yeah. So, yeah. But we'll be here for this morning's service, Sunday school, and our regular service. That's it.

[0:51] That's it? I said today we'll let you go. Thanks, everyone. I don't know. It's a holiday weekend, so that's all we need to do. Maybe people are trapped. Yeah.

[1:03] Or maybe they heard we were coming. That was it. They said, I'm not getting it. Well, we always go for quality at times.

[1:13] Do you? Yeah. Well, you do. Well, you make mistakes once in a while, too. Well, it is good. Susan and I are with Bible doctrines to live by.

[1:24] Let me just tell you, how long have we been with Bible doctrines to live by? That's hard to pinpoint. On a full-time, on-staff basis, I joined Bible doctrines in 2005.

[1:40] So, we've been here. This is our 19th year traveling on the road. However, I traveled the year before with Lee for the year, and so that makes Susan 19 years and my 20th year.

[1:56] But even to go back farther, we were pastoring a church north of Grand Rapids when Lee started Bible doctrines and moved to Grand Rapids.

[2:07] And we, our church, got involved with Bible doctrines on a volunteer basis, and so we spent a lot of time at Bible doctrines in those days when the truth, you know what Truth of Flame is, the magazine?

[2:22] We'll have to get some of those in here for later. I wanted to bring them along. In those days, when you put together the little booklet, Truth of Flame, you walked around a table collating the sheets, and then someone would fold it, and someone would staple it by hand.

[2:37] Well, that's what we did. And we did a lot of that. In addition to that, my brother and I would travel with him all across the country and do weeks of meetings at a time.

[2:48] We would sing and preach, and he would try to preach. And so, you're the only one that laughed. So, actually, we've been associated with Bible doctrines almost from the very beginning.

[3:03] And so, it was an easy fit when we actually went on board, because we'd already been there and knew what the ropes were and all of that.

[3:13] But I want to just share with you what we're doing today. And I said yesterday that if Lee were with us today, he would be excited about what we're doing, because what we're doing today, some of this is what Lee had envisioned many years ago and attempted, and at that time, it didn't fly.

[3:35] And so, it was dropped. And a few years ago, we brought it back. But just as a little bit of an introduction here, as soon as I turn this on, who we are, we are missionaries.

[3:52] We're missionaries primarily to the U.S., but as you'll see, we consider ourselves also missionaries now to the world. The world, through Internet, it has shrunk down the world somewhat.

[4:09] So, I'm just going to... Susan said... If you stand back there... Oh. If you stand back there... Maybe I'll stand back here.

[4:21] Further back. Further back. Further back. On back. So, is that all right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[4:32] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As missionaries, a missionary is defined as a person sent to carry on evangelism, activities, educational, or hospital work, a person who crosses cultural boundaries.

[4:48] A lot of times, because we're in the U.S., people don't think of us as missionaries. But if you know anything about the U.S., of course, we're carrying on evangelism and educational activities, plus who crosses cultural boundaries.

[5:04] Well, there are several cultural boundaries in the U.S., but primarily, we have the same one here that we have around the world. And that's between good and evil and being in Christ and not being in Christ.

[5:18] And that's a huge cultural boundary for that. But we do some work in inner cities and mixed. And so, I think we pretty much do.

[5:30] The only thing we have is a language issue. But when I preach, I've been, or Susan and I have been able to be around the world, and I can preach in English in a lot of places, and the people understand it.

[5:42] So, language isn't even an issue any longer. But let me just get through here. And 40% of Americans say that they seldom or never attend church.

[5:56] In fact, 100 million Americans never attend church at all. And when I make this next statement, a lot of people don't understand.

[6:07] I've even told them they don't believe me. But we get into churches with our family Bible schools, our vacation Bible schools, dealing with kids who will say they have no idea who Jesus Christ is.

[6:21] No idea who Jesus Christ is. To them, Jesus Christ is just something their dad yells when he's upset or hits his thumb with a hammer.

[6:32] You know, that's it. They don't know he's a real person. They have no concept at all about him. More and more children who have never been in a church. Yes. More and more children who have never even been in a church.

[6:44] Right here in Christian America. I say that with tongue in cheek. So, but America, we're missionaries to America.

[6:56] And I'm going to skip over this for time's sake. But America really, in reality, America is the third largest unreached nation in the world. The third largest unreached nation in the world.

[7:10] Of a population of 320 or 300, whatever it is, statistics show that anywhere between 7 and 10 percent of Americans truly know the Lord.

[7:23] I didn't say they aren't religious. And I didn't say they don't go to church on Sunday. But there's a difference between going to church and being religious and actually knowing Jesus Christ as one Savior.

[7:36] There's a big difference there. And like I said, polls, depending on how the poll is written, you know how that works and everything. It varies between 7 and 10 percent.

[7:46] And even 10 percent, as an easy one to do math with, still leaves you, you know, 300 and, let's see, leaves you about 35 million, 36 million people who truly know Christ.

[8:01] Where are the rest of them? Where are the rest of them? And we live in a dark nation. We live in a godless nation. And America needs Christ just as much as anybody else does.

[8:13] Just as much as anybody else does. So who are we and what we do? And I'm going to go this quickly because I'm going to talk some of this in church this morning.

[8:24] But when I took over in Bible doctrines in 2008, I adopted this as our theme verse, our purpose verse. And I did that because it covers Bible doctrines perfectly.

[8:38] Number one is who will have all men to be saved? Well, that's evangelism. And Bible doctrines carries on evangelism and taking, personally taking the gospel out and then encouraging others to share the gospel with others.

[8:53] And so that covers the area of evangelism. And it's God's desire that mankind out there would come to Christ and put their faith and trust in Christ.

[9:05] That's God's desire. In fact, and God has done everything necessary that that could be. He's done all the work necessary for that to be. And so that's our message is to proclaim that and encourage that.

[9:19] But then also the message is to come unto the knowledge of the truth. And the knowledge means, talks about an accurate knowledge, an accurate understanding of the truth.

[9:32] Not just truth, but the truth. And of course, we believe that's the word of God rightly divided. And so most of our printing ministry, most of our educational ministry, all of it is geared to this right here.

[9:47] It's geared to that. So this verse best fit who we are at Bible doctrines to live by. Evangelistic and educational. All right.

[9:59] Now I'm going to skip these because we're not going to. So Bible doctrines is reaching lost souls for Christ, encouraging believers to evangelism, and then training believers in the word of God rightly divided.

[10:13] So that Susan said I was supposed to skip all of these in the beginning. That's our office there in Comstock Park, Michigan.

[10:26] That's the Esleomoke Ministry Center. The best thing that happens when you die is you get a gold watch or a building named after you. So he's got a building because we couldn't afford the gold watch.

[10:40] The little plaque was much cheaper. He didn't need it. Yeah, he couldn't use it. So that's our headquarters. And of course, you know our staff. You know Liam Mokey. And he went home to be with the Lord back in 2020.

[10:53] Darlene is still around. And she is living north of Grand Rapids right now with her son Steve. But you need to be in prayer for her.

[11:04] She has macular degeneration. And so she doesn't drive anymore. But her mind is good. I think Darlene's 84.

[11:16] Yeah. So that's that. And that's me. And that's my wife. That's Susan.

[11:28] And so we are right now. That's our. That's what we do. I guess it doesn't work on the TV. Conference speaker. We travel and do speaking family Bible schools.

[11:41] We call them family Bible schools. They used to be called vacation Bible schools. But we call them family Bible schools because we want the parents to stay. And we have a time with them as well.

[11:53] We have an adult time with them. And so we want them to stay. So it's we call them family Bible schools. And I'll tell you. When I joined Bible doctrines. When I first talked to Lee about.

[12:04] And he talked to me about coming to Bible doctrines. What I wanted to do was travel and speak. That's what I wanted to do. Travel and speak. I didn't want to do vacation Bible schools.

[12:14] Lee was doing vacation Bible schools. I didn't want to do that anymore. After 26 years of doing vacation Bible schools. I was sick of it. And I hate kids. Just you know. I didn't want to do them anymore.

[12:28] And so for the last 20 years we've been doing vacation Bible schools. And I'll tell you. We have seen. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids.

[12:40] Make decisions for Christ. And it's been a very. Blessed time. To do that. But not only that. If I'd had my wish. I'd have gone into a church for a couple nights.

[12:52] And each night they'd have given me. Graciously given me. 30 to 45 minutes to preach. At the family Bible schools. I have an hour. Or sometimes more.

[13:03] To do my thing with the adults. So actually. It was a win-win. For me. So I do the opening. At Bible school. I do the opening. I get the kids all wound up.

[13:14] All wound up. Ready to go. Into her class. And then. I let them go. And I got the adults. So. But that's us. And then.

[13:26] And at the end of. In October 1st. Or by the end of September. I will be. We're getting out of the Bible school. Susan and I. We're. Turning that over to somebody else.

[13:38] And we'll let you know in a minute. And I'll be just. The director of broadcasting. And actually. This is all going to go his way too. I'll be the. The associate director.

[13:48] So. I'm getting demoted. By myself. I'm demoting myself. Okay. This is our. Associate director right now.

[14:00] Matt Ritchie. Matt joined us about eight years ago. And. And. His wife Jennifer. And he's our executive director. He's also the director of youth ministries.

[14:11] And. And. That would include the Bible schools. And things like that. But. Some other stuff. He's a writer. He's been writing a lot. And we'll get to that in a minute. And a conference speaker. Jennifer.

[14:22] Is taking over the office manager's position. And. She's also our chief printer. She pushes the button on the printing machine.

[14:33] And does that. And. She is. Our daughter. And Matt is my son-in-law. Okay. So. But he's with us.

[14:44] And. And then we have Paul and Rebecca Turner. Pastor Turner. They are traveling with us this year. They are going to take over the family Bible schools next summer. This year.

[14:55] They're traveling with us. Helping us. And. And next summer. They will do that. Today. They are. Except this week. They are down in. Wayne.

[15:06] Wayne. New Jersey. Speaking at a church down there. And. So. They'll. We'll meet up with them. At the end of this week. Up in Ashtabula. And we'll do another vacation Bible school.

[15:18] Or family Bible school up there. But right now. They're down there. They've joined us. They. They became part of Bible doctrines. March the first. And so. Right now. As missionaries.

[15:29] They're out trying to raise their support. For that. And. So. They will take over the family Bible schools next summer. And. Rebecca. Is my daughter.

[15:43] And he's my son-in-law. Okay. And we're building a dynasty. So. But anyway.

[15:54] They are there. We have been looking for someone to take this over for about three years. Without anybody saying anything. And last August. We. Went back to their house at the end of the summer.

[16:07] The family Bible schools. To drop their daughter back off. Who had traveled with us for the summer. And they said. Let's. We want to take you for dinner. And so we went to dinner. And they said.

[16:17] They've been praying for someone to take this job for three years. And then one day. They looked at each other and said. Why can't we do it? And. What about us? And so. They're on board now.

[16:29] And on staff. With Bible doctrines to live by. Cindy. Lippincott. Was our. Was our office manager and bookkeeper. And.

[16:40] She was from. She had moved to Grand Rapids from Alabama. And was. Has been with us about five years. Six years. And Cindy is returning to Alabama.

[16:51] So she's leaving the office. And going back to Alabama. But. With today's technology. She will continue to be our bookkeeper. So she can do that.

[17:04] Long distance. So. So Jennifer's taking over the office. Her. Office manager position. And. But Cindy is going to continue to be the bookkeeper. For that.

[17:14] She's the only one that. Can. None of us know what she's doing anyway. So. But we are. An educational ministry.

[17:26] A publishing ministry. And. And we print the truth of flame. How many of you get truth of flame? A few of you do. We'll have a sign up sheet. There's a sign up sheet. On the coffee table.

[17:37] A little notebook there. If you'd like to get it. That's fine. This is one of our latest editions right here. And I have some. I'll bring in for church. But it's just a quarter. It's published four times a year. Sent out free of charge.

[17:49] And it'll have a couple Bible studies in it. And along with. What we're doing. What's going on. The center. Of pages. Are always pages for kids.

[18:00] So if you have kids. Or grandkids. It's directed to them. So that's always in there. And then. We have a large supply. Of Bible teaching material.

[18:12] Liam Oakey. Who did the Bible briefs. Several years ago. Matt. Took those Bible briefs. And put them into five books. Of 52 weeks.

[18:23] Down by 52 weeks. 52 lessons. And so. An adult Sunday school teacher. Whatever. Could take one of these. And have a lesson a week. Or. If they're a really good teacher.

[18:34] You could take some of those. And do them two weeks. Or whatever. So. But those are all available. In fact. Matt's working on book number six. Right now. From some other literature. And then a lot of J.C. O'Hare material.

[18:46] Is there. Some of the other writers. From the Grace Movement. Matt wrote this. That are there. This book was written by a school teacher. In Michigan.

[18:58] And when he passed away. He gave it to Bible doctrines. And it's. It's a very excellent book. On understanding the word. Rightly divided. The mystery. It's no mystery to me.

[19:09] These are some books. That I've written. They're there. So. We have a catalog. And that's free. And just call and ask for that.

[19:21] Our tracks. We have some. We have salvation tracks. Doctrinal tracks. Seasonal tracks.

[19:31] Christmas. Easter. Thanksgiving. Things like that. That we can. We encourage. We encourage people to give out tracks. It's the easiest way to share the gospel. You know.

[19:43] And. And. And I had a lady years ago. We were going to have a bake sale. In a community. Where I had a church in Michigan. We were. We were going to be involved in this fair.

[19:53] This carnival thing. And we were going to have a booth. And. And we were going to have a bake sale there. And stuff. And I said to the people on Sunday about that. Coming up next. On Saturday. You have to be there for that. And at the bake sale.

[20:05] We have to make sure all the things are there. And then as we put. What they buy. Into the bag. We're going to put a gospel track. In every bag. Everybody's going to get the gospel. That comes to our booth.

[20:15] And. I had a lady come to the door after church. I'm shaking hands. And she said. Pastor. I'd love to be there. But I couldn't do that. And I said to her. What couldn't you do? She said. I couldn't put a track in a bag.

[20:27] And I'm thinking. Are you handicapped? I mean. You can't put a track in a bag. You know how the ladies. Sometimes they still do. I guess. They would carry their Bibles.

[20:39] Like this. And I said to her. I said. Would you hand me your Bible? And she went like this. I said. You can do it. You can do it.

[20:52] Because you see. That's all you need. That's. Put the track in the bag. Put the track in the bag. And she was there on Saturday. And she did it. I healed her. These are two tracks that we have.

[21:08] This. This one has really. No one ever thought. These are just a business card. That's all they are. With the gospel on the back. My life was saved by a blood donor. We have a lot of churches buy these.

[21:20] When they have blood drives at the church. And everyone gets one of these. And we carry them all with us. And lead them places. Ella's track was a little girl. That I had the pleasure.

[21:30] Actually of leading to the Lord. In Quincy, Illinois. But she didn't live in Quincy, Illinois. She lived outside of St. Louis. And a couple months later. We were at that St. Louis church.

[21:42] And she and her mother came up to us. And her mother handed us this piece of paper. That her daughter, Ella, had written a track. And she had written this little track for kids.

[21:54] And we took it back. And we put it into a little track. It's just one-sided thing. But kids can hand it. Well, it's two-sided. That's right. It has a back side. And I'd read it to you.

[22:07] But the gospel on the back are her words. They're her words on the back of that track. So... And then we have these multi-language things.

[22:19] Now, this is my booklet on the mystery. That's in... Here it's in... You have no idea. I think it's...

[22:29] I think it's Tagalog. That's a Philippine dialect. It's being translated into Russian and Spanish and Portuguese.

[22:40] It's in Portuguese already there. We have that. We have some gospel tracks here. Yesterday morning, we were over on the other side coming across to here.

[22:52] And we had a flat tire. And we're sitting at Walmart parking lot. In lawn chairs waiting for the people to come. And this lady came over. And we were able to talk to her. And before she left, we were able to give her each one of these.

[23:05] How to know for sure you're going to heaven. And am I going to heaven? And so those are both in Spanish as well. The blood donor track is in Spanish as well. But I want to talk about these books right here.

[23:18] These books, Saved by the Grace of God, How to Study the Word of Truth, The Good of Cain, and God for Christ's Sake has forgiven you. They have been translated, or in Russian, two of them are being translated now, into Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Creole, Tagalog.

[23:36] That's the Philippine and French. And I think there's some others as well. Creoles. Creoles here. But they are here. There's a fellow in Chicago who wrote these.

[23:48] And they're not tracts. They're little books, little booklets. And about the size of your bulletin, but thicker. And he wrote those.

[23:59] And he has had them translated in all these languages. And the thing about them is they're all free. And you can have as many as you want.

[24:10] And he pays for it. He pays for it. And not only does he pay for us to print them for you, he pays for us to ship them to you.

[24:22] And we ship them by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, to the Philippines. And he pays for all of it. Pays for all of it.

[24:33] How many know Les Feldeck? Know of or knew Les Feldeck? You know his wife just passed away? Okay. So he was a personal friend of ours and a friend of Bible doctrines.

[24:48] But we print how to study the word of truth and saved. We shipped him about 2,000 of them twice a year each.

[25:00] And they put them in their orders. And so we do that. And Gary pays for that. He pays for that. And like I said, if you'd like some of these, you want to order some of these, they're all free.

[25:16] As long as you're going to use them, Gary will pay to ship them to you. We actually ship those in boxes to the Philippines. And sometimes we'll ship 6,000 at a time.

[25:30] And it goes by boat. But no matter how full you fill the box, the box is about that way, that high, and about that deep.

[25:42] Or wide. So it's not deep and wide. It would. It's a heavy box. Heavy, heavy box. It costs $100.

[25:52] It takes three months to get there. Yeah. But he does that. But I was going to say something else. Oh, I know what I was going to say.

[26:03] This book, this book, How to Study the Word of Truth. We sent them in Creole. We sent, I think, 10,000. I forget what it was. We sent them to Haiti.

[26:14] Now, it was really interesting because the group that took them was a Baptist group out of St. Louis. And they took those books, How to Study the Word of Truth, down to Haiti.

[26:26] And today, there's a grace Bible study started in Haiti because the Baptist group took this book to Haiti. Only God.

[26:37] Only God could do that. So that's that. Our adult ministries, that's our thing now. The adult ministries primarily are there.

[26:50] Some of the things that we do along the course of the year. Our seminars, we've done this. We did this.

[27:00] This was now available on DVD. But we did this 10 years or so ago. It grew out of the church we were going to, asking me if I would do a thing on Islam for four weeks in Sunday school because he didn't want to.

[27:16] And he had people asking him, the pastor, about that. And I said, well, I have some things. I could throw it together. So I threw it together. And before we finished at that church, I got an email.

[27:28] Would you come and do your Islam seminar at our church? I said, well, I really don't have an Islam. But it kept growing. And that was like January, I think we started.

[27:40] By May, we had been in every church in Grand Rapids, in the Grace churches in Grand Rapids, doing this Islam seminar. And we did it for almost two years.

[27:51] And eventually had it videotaped. But we do that. And then we have another one, the drama of God's unfolding word. That's about six sessions where you go from Genesis to Revelation and put it all together.

[28:09] The mystery. In fact, this is what we're doing with our VBSs this summer. The mystery, the Apostle Paul's special revelation, talking about its uniqueness. And then we do one on evangelism, come into a church and train people what they need to say, things like that.

[28:26] We have people all the time, I'd like to do it, but I wouldn't know what to say. And the basic is, are you saved? Yes. What did someone say to you? That's pretty good.

[28:38] Pretty good start right there. But we come in and we do that. And that's usually just a one-day thing. Or Sunday school teacher training. We offer that as well. And then we have a conference in Middlebury, Indiana each year.

[28:56] So it's usually the first weekend, or the last, the first weekend of November there at the Das Essenhaus, if anybody's ever been across to that beautiful place.

[29:07] But we have a Grace Bible conference there, the Heartland Conference, every Middlebury. And then, I want to go back. I don't know if Casey was ever here. Casey Grunewald was a member of our board, a Grace Believer, and he did these teaching DVDs.

[29:26] And he'd go around churches and present them. And when Casey went home to be with the Lord, we've kept them all going and have them all available. They're self-taught.

[29:37] You can watch them as he talks. But Casey did that. And then we have this RV tour and Bible conference. And Roger went with us last summer. And we have a great time.

[29:48] Didn't we have a great time? We pick a destination, and we get our RVs, and we all come together, and we do some touring during the day. And at night, we have a Bible conference and Bible discussion.

[29:59] And that thing can last a couple hours, can't it, Roger? Especially when some people ask dumb questions, you know. Not Roger.

[30:10] But anyway, we have a great time. And this year, it's September 10th through the 16th. We're going out east to Lancaster County area. So if you'd like to come, the only cost is the camping and any entrance fees we go.

[30:25] I mean, there's no cost on top of that. Our youth ministries. And this is rooted. This is Matt's concentration right here. The rooted ministries. And we chose that ministry title because we want the kids to be rooted and grounded in the Word of God.

[30:42] And so that is the purpose of that. And I'm going to click here, but Susan's going to come and talk about it because I'm going to give my voice a rest.

[30:55] Okay? You want this? No, you don't need it. We prayed for many, many years to provide churches, grace churches, with curriculum that they could safely use.

[31:13] Many of you older people will remember that back in the 80s, 70s or 80s, when Grace Line Lessons stopped producing Mrs. Baker's material, a lot of the churches went to gospel light.

[31:29] Well, gospel light is kingdom oriented. And so we were sad to see several generations of kids who actually were taught the gospel light material.

[31:41] You know, gospel light would allow Grace publication to put a little disclaimer in the front of the book. Well, it was loose leaf. It was lost. And also you had maybe teachers that didn't really understand the word rightly divided themselves.

[31:56] So you can see what happened. That's one of the tiny reasons why Grace Churches have lost a generation or two of children.

[32:07] So that was the impetus for this. And when Matt came on board, let me get to the curriculum. We have a six-year rotation of Bible schools that we do, trying to teach the kids that we get the word rightly divided.

[32:26] Yes, we do get into churches that are not Grace Churches. Sometimes they let us come back another year. Sometimes they don't. But we don't compromise what we teach just because we're getting kids for Bible school.

[32:41] So those are the six-year rotation that we do. This year we're doing the Heroes of the Bible. And here's the exciting thing to us.

[32:53] You know, Joel and I are not retiring, but you sure wish and pray that what you've done, your labor of love, can go on. And so today, the Heroes of the Bible, that one and the one we have on the whistle stops of the Apostle Paul, those two VBS curriculum have been put into a form that a church could purchase and do themselves.

[33:17] So today, Heroes of the Faith is being taught in the Philippines in one of the provinces quite extensively for this summer.

[33:29] It has also been requested by the missionaries, Grace missionaries in Uganda. The whistle stops of the Apostle Paul, last year, a woman by the name of Rhoda Akaba contacted us, and she took the whistle stops.

[33:46] This year, it's being taught in 23 churches in the Philippines as a Bible school. And, you know, sometimes people feel sorry for us because we travel in a motor home or in a trailer.

[33:59] Rhoda climbs mountains, literally. And she sends me pictures of having to traverse huge rivers just to get up into the mountains to teach children. So last year, Rhoda taught whistle stops of the Apostle Paul.

[34:13] This year, she's doing Heroes of the Bible. Now, we don't have a third one ready yet, but Rhoda said, get on the ball. I need it for next year. And all that curriculum is given any missionary that inquires about any of our, not just curriculum, but any of our adult stuff.

[34:32] We give that to them free as a digital download. So today, our curriculum, whether it be VBS or whether it be the Sunday School curriculum, is taught in, we've given it to India.

[34:48] We now have a contact that requested in Bangladesh. It's taught in the Philippines. It's taught South Africa began their gig program. Were the Padayhogs here at all as missionaries?

[35:01] Missionaries from South Africa who are Filipino. But in South Africa, they began their Growing in Grace Kids Sunday School with our curriculum.

[35:13] And I don't say that with any ownership. We are beyond excited about that. And other countries, we always include a missionary story. You know, our children, your children, your grandchildren have really a huge gap of understanding people who have gone before and paved the way in so many countries.

[35:34] And one of our mission stories we actually do on a rotation basis is the one of Vernon and Darlene Anderson, if that name sounds familiar to you. These are the tracks that we use in our children's meetings.

[35:51] This one is written at a teenage level. Living in Christ, what's next? All right. For a teenager or adult that comes to know Christ. The first steps.

[36:02] That is a track that Joel wrote many, many years ago. We use that to walk a child through salvation. So we use that in every Bible school to introduce a child to Jesus Christ.

[36:16] A number of years ago, we had a pastor in West Virginia that was using that in his prison ministry. Well, it has kids' pictures in it. So Joel said, oh, we got to fix that.

[36:27] So we also have a first steps track for adults that has adult pictures in it. God's message to you, growing in grace. Those are for children who have made a decision for Christ.

[36:40] Now what? And so that is for them. And then there's Ella's track. Follow-up lessons. I don't know about your church if you've ever done kids' things, but we find we go into a church to do Bible school.

[36:55] We take all the information or whoever's doing the one-on-one, give it to the church so that they can do follow-up. And follow-up is one deep, dark hole that kids fall into.

[37:08] We'll do seven VBSs this summer. We've done up to ten. But we probably only have one, two, maybe three churches that actually take that information and follow-up.

[37:19] And what these are are five lessons. A child makes a decision for Christ on Monday. They're given lesson one. That's salvation. That repeats to them in a worksheet the decision that they've made.

[37:32] And then there's one on security, identity. What is truth? So in a very elementary way, you're introducing to that child, to the difference in Paul's message as opposed to the kingdom message.

[37:50] So we provide that, again, free of charge. We give those to churches to use and print at their will. That being free doesn't help, let me tell you.

[38:01] But it's exciting. We have a couple of churches. We have a lady in the second church we did this summer. She will take all that information, name, age, address.

[38:12] She makes a personal contact with each child's family. The second church that we did this summer, or the first one, I guess, that pastor takes that upon himself.

[38:22] And he puts a letter out to each family of children who've made a decision and asks for a home visit. So, you know what? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

[38:35] So that, and we actually take those, and we've put those into booklets, age appropriate. And those are, those five lessons plus either 10 or 13 more.

[38:49] And so what a wonderful opportunity in home devotions. We have them being used in homeschools, some Sunday schools.

[39:00] But they're very well done, age appropriate lessons. Of course, the younger one has a lot of hands on things that they can do. So rooted lessons.

[39:11] And you know what? Bible doctrines is not about the money. We would rather give something to somebody if it's going to be used. But these we sell for $7, you know.

[39:23] That's part of the reason why it's not colorful. It costs money to put color. But a lot of kids take them, and then they color them themselves. The curriculum. Again, age appropriate.

[39:34] To date, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 quarters. If you've ever taught Sunday school, Sunday school curriculum is in 13 lessons.

[39:45] 13 lessons is in a quarter, all right? So these are the 5 to 8-year-olds. And just, we always encourage people to start with Genesis. And I was sharing with the pastor in our Bible schools.

[39:57] No matter what the topic is we do, Genesis is going to be in that information to these kids. But you look at Bible beliefs and Bible words. We don't think children are too young to begin to understand the word rightly divided.

[40:13] My thing is don't ever teach a child something you have to unteach them later. So teach them right from the beginning. So Bible words. We go through words like kingdom, law, Jew, Bible, salvation, work, sin, propitiation.

[40:31] Kids are not stupid. And don't treat them like they're stupid. And then Bible beliefs, we will go through what is the Trinity. What is a dispensation?

[40:43] Those kind of, why is it different? So those are the ones that are available at this time in that age group. Then we have grades 4 to 6. And, you know, the dispensations.

[40:57] What can I say? It's just so important to teach them right from the beginning. We have two quarters on the Apostle Paul, and we don't skirt issues. There is one whole quarter on Paul, the kingdom apostle.

[41:12] Or Peter, Peter, Peter, the kingdom apostle. Let these kids know the difference. We have a great God, and he has given us a great thing for this dispensation.

[41:23] Let's give it to them. The last one is the teens and up, and there's a newer one that's just about ready to come out. 13 lessons, one quarter on evangelism.

[41:35] So, but if you look at these, books of the Bible, 1, 2, 3, and 4. Matt has taken every book of the Bible, one lesson on every book. All right, just an overview.

[41:47] But then what he did was, when he came to, I thought, I think this is interesting. Sunday school curriculum's 13 lessons in a quarter. Oh, there are 13 books of the Apostle Paul.

[41:59] So that is put into a separate book for, taken out of the, you know, the chronological view of the Bible. And Matt actually taught through this in our church, in our Sunday school.

[42:14] So enjoy it. But one thing I'll tell you about it is, we have found out we made a huge mistake. We put teen on this. We've taken teen off of it.

[42:28] Because we have so many people teaching it in the adult area. Men's Bible studies, adult Sunday school. So, now, if you're going to buy it for teens, we can put the teen on it.

[42:40] But by and large, we have taken that teen off so that the adults don't feel strange. It's the same thing. But it's being used quite extensively in the churches.

[42:53] And that's another thing is that I wish I could tell you that the Grace Churches are like, yay, something rightly divided. They're not. But over in other countries, they are.

[43:08] And so, like I told you, Padai Hogs in South Africa began their whole Sunday school curriculum program with this curriculum. So, when Padai Hogs were here for their furlough, they went back to the Philippines because they're Filipino.

[43:23] And they were not able to get their visas to get back into South Africa right away. So, Sheba contacted us and said, the people, the Grace Churches in the Philippines have been praying, praying, praying for rightly divided Sunday school curriculum.

[43:41] Hmm. So, she asked permission to reprint all of that. And she called a really quickie teacher's training program.

[43:52] She had 75 people that answered the call for a one-day teacher's training. And she produced 50 packets.

[44:04] So, 50 Grace Churches in the Philippines were going to get all of our curriculum to date. And they are so excited.

[44:15] So, then when Sheba's sister-in-law, she and her husband are Grace missionaries in Uganda, we want that. And so, our only help to that was we purchased, Bible Doctrines purchased a printer for Sheba, who is in South Africa, to begin to print all of that now for Uganda.

[44:42] And I understand in August, there is a Grace conference that's going to meet in Kenya, just north. And she is going to deliver that to her sister-in-law and brother-in-law.

[44:54] So, we're excited about that. All right. Okay. Okay. Let me just quickly run through this. I think that this is one of those areas with the Sunday school, with Lee, they had started doing some curriculum.

[45:12] And it just, it didn't go anywhere. And it was discontinued. It wasn't the right time. And today, it's now being done on a much larger scale than they were trying to do it then.

[45:26] And we were thankful for that. This is another area where, of course, Lee didn't get into this. He didn't, but what we were able to do, and all of it began because of COVID.

[45:40] You know, I don't know what Satan meant COVID for, but God used it for good. And so, what we have now, I just want to go through some of the things that we're doing. Online Bible conferences.

[45:51] We have a live online Bible conference on the Bible Doctrines Facebook and YouTube page the first week of January. And it goes from Sunday to Saturday. It's live every night at 7 o'clock.

[46:04] And there's a speaker there. And we have a Bible conference that week. It will always have a theme, but we do that. We're doing some seminars and live streaming programs.

[46:16] Every morning at 9.30, Monday through Thursday, we have morning coffee with a bite of Scripture. And people tune in. It's only on the Bible Doctrines Facebook page, but people tune in from all across the country and actually over the world to watch morning coffee with a bite of Scripture.

[46:35] They can type in prayer requests, type in comments, whatever they want to do. And it's live each morning. And then we have, this is the one we started with, the Bible study hour.

[46:49] I do that Sunday nights at 5. In fact, tonight, I'll be doing it here at 5 o'clock. But we do that at 5 o'clock. It's a one-hour broadcast.

[47:00] It's live. And that's that. And then we have our Tuesday Bible time. We have some, I do that on Tuesdays at 7 o'clock.

[47:12] Of course, I can't do that in the summer as we travel. We're doing family Bible schools there at 7 o'clock. So in the summertime, people come into the office and they do them. But we do that.

[47:23] And then in January, Susan started, launched her own program. She didn't, it wasn't enough for her to live in that same house with an Internet sensation.

[47:34] She had to become one. Okay. But she started Susan's Bible Buddies. And it's just a little half-hour program. It's not live. But a half-hour program teaching through the Bible, beginning at Genesis.

[47:50] But going through the Bible with the kids. And they have a memory verse. Sometimes she'll have a little craft that the kids will do with her on that. And songs and things.

[48:03] So it's, and what's next, we don't know. But Matt and Paul and I have been talking about a couple more programs to come up soon. This just shows you some of the studio.

[48:14] Now, this is Susan's studio. And Matt running the board as we're recording one of her programs. And everything is a prop, including that door.

[48:28] It goes nowhere. Okay. You open the door and you're just still in the building. But everything's there. And God has provided everything.

[48:41] Everything here. And we're thankful for that. So that's that. And then this is where we do our morning broadcast and our Sunday broadcast.

[48:52] When COVID was out there and you couldn't go to the office and we had started these broadcasts. Susan and I went to the office because we figured, hey, we sleep together. We can be in the office together.

[49:04] And so we were there. And I tore out the back and built this, started building this stuff and putting this together. And we moved the broadcast from the phone at my dining room table over to here.

[49:15] And we started doing this over here. And so there's Matt in the morning during the prayer time. And then, again, you can see the second table, producer's area and stuff.

[49:28] And then Matt's over there. Tuesday night's broadcast is in the same studio. But we just turned the cameras around. And we faced this wall. And we have a TV that was given to us back here.

[49:40] And you can see the cameras and stuff as we do our Tuesday night broadcast. But we are reaching. Like I said, we're reaching people regularly.

[49:52] We have regular viewers. In the morning broadcast, it's 930 in the morning for us. In the Philippines, it's 930 at night. And they want to go to bed. But they watch.

[50:04] And so we have people all over the world watching our broadcast live and go back and see there later. So what's our future?

[50:16] Our future of Bible doctrines, who knows? Like I said, we'll be stepping across. And Matt will be taking over on the 1st of October. And we're looking for excitement there.

[50:30] Paul and Rebecca being on board. The ministry taking off. Susan and I on the road traveling. Introducing Bible doctrines to a lot of people. What's there? New ministries.

[50:40] Who knows? Paul and Rebecca are both talking about. Paul's talking about a program where men can mentor boys in the Word of God. And work together with boys. Rebecca has done some online women's Bible studies and things.

[50:55] And they're talking about that. So whatever. Bible doctrines is ready to go. All we need is people like you to pray for us and to support us. And so we appreciate that.

[51:08] I don't know what time I'm supposed to have been done. Yeah. Well, you should have done that a while ago. Just hit the mute button. Any questions about what we're doing or what we're doing?

[51:21] Susan and I, last February, we live in Michigan. And last February, we felt led of the Lord to go to Florida.

[51:31] But we did. We were there four weeks and spoke in seven churches. Presenting Bible doctrines and talking about things that we're doing.

[51:42] And we realized at that time, we need to be out in the churches. And so we're going to do more travel than we've ever done, really. But a different type of travel.

[51:53] And we'll be ministering at churches, speaking, speaking at conferences, getting out there, getting Bible doctrines back out there that Lee did. And now we need to pick up that and run with it.

[52:05] So be in prayer for us as we continue to travel. Pray for this thing. That will get over it. And we'll be able to move on. All right, brother.