This past Sunday we gathered for lunch after worship to hear an encouraging report on how the Lord is working in the life of our church and the vision for the future of Providence.

Pastor Jake’s State of Providence Address is below for those who weren’t able to attend and for those who have been supporting Providence from afar.

God has been extremely kind and gracious to our church and we have a lot to be thankful for. I think this is going to be a very important year in the life of the church.

Transparency is important to the session of Providence and by the end of this meeting, you’ll know as much as I do about this church. You’ll get a chance to see the good, the bad, and the ugly (thankfully, by God’s grace, there is a lot more good than bad and ugly).

We anticipate particularizing by the end of this year. “Particularize” is the Presbyterian Church in America’s fancy word for a church plant ordaining their own elders and deacons. According to the PCA, once you’ve ordained your own elders and deacons, you are no longer a “mission church,” although you may maintain the church plant aesthetic.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s first take a moment to reflect upon the spiritual growth and health of Providence.

Spiritual growth and health of the church

Attendance

We currently average around 70 people on Sunday mornings and we regularly have new visitors, which is a great sign. By God’s grace the trend line is going in the right direction.

Of course Sunday morning attendance isn’t everything and it doesn’t necessarily mean that things are going well. But on the other hand, decreasing attendance each month isn’t a good sign. While you shouldn’t put all of your stock into the number of people who show up on Sunday mornings, attendance can be used to gauge the health of the church.

Membership

We currently have 82 members: 69 communing and 13 non-communing. Over the last 12 months we’ve had four Inquirer’s Classes, and we had two prior to that at the end of 2021.

It’s worth noting that in order to vote on elders and deacons, you have to be a member of Providence. We plan to host another Inquirer’s Class in April to provide an opportunity for people to join Providence prior to starting the particularization process. So for those of you who have been long-time attenders, prayerfully consider joining in April so that you can participate in the officer nomination process.

We had 43 people join in 2022, 30 join in 2023, and 6 join so far in 2024. Everyone who has participated in the Inquirer’s Class has joined the church or is in the process of joining Providence, which is very encouraging.

Great Fellowship

Every Sunday we have phenomenal fellowship before and after the worship service. People arrive early before worship and stay after just to talk and catch up with one another, which has been a bright spot in the life of our church.

I hope everyone knows that there’s no need to rush out after the worship service. Please hang out, get to know people, and pray for one another before or after the service.

We’ve also had other great fellowship opportunities through men’s and women’s gatherings, Saturday Mornings at the Park, Mornings with Moms, Evening worship potlucks, seasonal gatherings like Christmas Caroling and our Night at the Ballpark, and new upcoming events like the monthly Men’s Hymn Sing.

Well-Attended Men’s and Women’s Bible Studies

There are many benefits to meeting at the American Legion, but one of the challenges is that we don’t have great Sunday School space. However, it has worked to our advantage because it forced us to get creative in how we conduct Bible studies and book studies. All of the Bible studies and book studies last year were conducted in people’s homes.

In the spring of 2022, the men studied the book of Judges and the ladies studied Ruth. In the fall, both the men and women read and discussed Jon Payne’s book, In the Splendor of Holiness.

Last year men studied Colossians in the spring and read Reformed Theology by Jonathan Master in the fall. The ladies studied Joshua in the spring and then Reformed Theology by Jonathan Master in the fall, as well. The ladies also studied Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther at Mayhoward Johnston’s home on Thursday mornings.

By God’s grace, I think we’ve been able to scratch the Sunday School itch with these wonderful, well-attended Bible and book studies.

Communicants Class

Another exciting event in the life of our church is the upcoming Growth in Christ Communicants’ Class. We have 10-12 middle school and high school students participating.

Our denomination’s Book of Church Order is very helpful here:

57-1. Believers’ children within the Visible Church, and especially those dedicated to God in Baptism, are non-communing members under the care of the Church. They are to be taught to love God, and to obey and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. When they are able to understand the Gospel, they should be earnestly reminded that they are members of the Church by birthright, and that it is their duty and privilege personally to accept Christ, to confess Him before men, and to seek admission to the Lord’s Supper.

57-2. The time when young persons come to understand the Gospel cannot be precisely fixed. This must be left to the prudence of the Session, whose office it is to judge, after careful examination, the qualifications of those who apply for admission to sealing ordinances.

It is a monumental occasion to come to the Lord’s Table. Once a young person has made a credible profession of faith in Jesus Christ before our session of elders and takes public vows before the church, they can participate in the Lord’s Supper.

Once a year and hopefully, eventually twice a year, we will have our Growth in Christ class. It’s important for young people to participate in the class because once you’re participating in the Lord’s Supper, you’re a communing member. As a communing member of the church you’re able to have voting privileges, which is significant (especially with particularization around the corner).

Rev. Doug Hart and his wife, Ginnie, will be teaching the class, and they’re going to cover the foundations of the faith as well as what it means to be a church member. You might think of the Communicants’ Class as an Inquirer’s Class for our covenant children.

To have children make a public profession of faith and join us at the Lord’s Table is exciting! It is what we all pray for, that our children will put their faith in Christ.

So to summarize the spiritual growth and health of the church, the good certainly outweighs the bad.

But we would be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge some hardships we have faced over the past two years. People in our congregation have lost loved ones, there were serious health scares, marriages have struggled, folks have walked away from the church, and we’ve had theological conflicts as well. It hasn’t been easy, but God has been faithful.

Last year we had our first adult baptism. My prayer is that this year we’ll see more people come to know the Lord. We want that for our body. We all want to see lives changed by Christ. So I encourage you all to pray to that end.

Serving

It’s important to acknowledge the various ways that people are serving here at Providence. We are grateful for the people God has brought into our congregation and the gifts He has given us to serve one another in the church.

Elders - Jake Hooker, Doug Hart, Charlie Nave, and Don Craighead
Doug, Charlie, and Don have volunteered their time to be our temporary elders and they have gone above and beyond the call of duty. We meet once a month, typically on the second Monday of the month, to pray for Providence, discuss important issues with the church, and shepherd our congregation.

Admin - Lauren Hooker
Lauren officially came on staff last fall. For those of you who don’t know, Lauren built our church’s website and updates it almost daily, creates, prints and folds our weekly Worship Guide, coordinates a tremendous number of things along with keeping the church calendar in check, and updates our Facebook page. She’s the only person who actually knows all the things happening in the life of our church. (That’s why everyone gets nervous whenever I do the announcements!)

Treasurer - Kevin Bishop
Kevin has helped us build our budget and has been active in sorting out our payroll for the church. He also sends out giving statements and categorizes expenses. He has been a tremendous help.

Finance Team - Kevin Bishop, Mike Crockett, and Hugh Maness
Kevin, Mike, and Hugh have been incredibly helpful in keeping up with giving. If you ever have any financial questions, please contact these men.

Serving Schedule - Mike Crockett
Every quarter, Mike puts together a schedule that coordinates all of the serving roles and responsibilities on Sunday mornings, including nursery, logistics (setting up/tearing down), and greeting. He also runs background checks on new folks that will be serving and finds people to fill in if there are ever any scheduling conflicts.

Prayer Chain - Carolyn Coordes
Carolyn is in charge of our prayer chain and sends out urgent prayer requests within our congregation. If you are a part of Providence but are not on our prayer chain, please contact Carolyn.

Lord’s Supper - Doug and Carolyn Coordes
Both Doug and Carolyn set up the Lord’s Supper each and every Sunday morning. They are meticulous about all of the details and keep up with the supplies for us.

Hymn Selections - Ben Wisdom
Ben and I get together once each month to make hymn selections for Sunday worship. Ben is passionate about making the hymns reflect the sermon passage, and I share his passion. Ben spends a lot of time and energy thinking about the hymns each week and we’re grateful for his help.

Hospitality Team - Becky McConnell, Lauren Hooker, Allyson Bishop, Wendy Nave, Chandler Craighead, Nancy Dillard, Mayhoward Johnston
Becky McConnell leads our Hospitality Team, which plans, coordinates, prays for, and carries out all of the events for our church. If you are ever interested in hosting or helping with a church event, please contact these ladies.

Youth Prayer & Donuts - Sean and Becky Walters
Sean and Becky have offered to start a youth prayer time before worship, beginning in March. Middle schoolers and high schoolers are invited to come to church early, hang out together over donuts and snacks, and spend some time in prayer prior to the worship service.

Serving needs for members
We have several serving needs. We always need help with logistics (setting up/tearing down) and nursery on Sunday mornings. The more people we have serving in these roles, the less everyone has to spend serving in these roles. Many hands make light work.

We are also praying that someone passionate about children’s ministry would serve by coming alongside parents, putting together occasional events for the kids, helping put together the Worship Binders, etc. That would be a blessing to our families, both for kids and for parents. So if that is something you are passionate about, please let me know.

Finances

At this time, I would like to invite Kevin Bishop forward to walk through our 2023 profit/loss and 2024 budget (this was shared with our members but is not posted to the website).

Before he comes forward to talk about those things, let me say something very quickly about giving statements. If you gave in a worship service in 2023, you will be receiving a giving statement in the mail from us. Kevin recently sent those out.

However, if you have given online through our Mission to North America (MNA) portal, you will receive a giving statement from MNA via email. So if you gave online, be on the lookout for an email with your giving statement from Mission to North America.

In a few weeks we will be migrating away from Mission to North America as our online giving platform to a different platform called Tith.ly. Tith.ly does take a small percentage of every transaction, whereas MNA does not. However, the MNA platform was set up by our denomination in order to help church plants get started; it is not intended for indefinite usage. We will announce that change as soon as it is live.

In summation, we are bringing in more in tithes and offerings than we are spending, which means we are self-sustaining! We are also about to receive another significant, generous donation toward our future building fund. Praise God!

Particularization

The difference between a “mission church” (church plant) and a “particular church,” as far as the PCA is concerned, is a permanent governing body, i.e. its own ruling elders and deacons. Chapter 5 of the PCA’s Book of Church order outlines “particularization:”

“A mission church may be properly described in the same manner as the particular church is described in BCO 4-1. [A mission church] is distinguished from a particular church in that it has no permanent governing body, and thus must be governed or supervised by others. However, its goal is to mature and be organized as a particular church as soon as this can be done decently and in good order.”

So once a church has ordained and installed its own ruling elders and deacons, it has become a particular church. It may still be renting a meeting space and maintain all the church plant aesthetics and vibes, but if it has its own ruling elders and deacons, it is a stand-alone church.

Before that process begins a few things have to happen.

First, we’ll need to petition the Blue Ridge Presbytery and let them know that our church body wants to move toward nominating, ordaining, and installing our own elders and deacons. The presbytery is going to want to see a few things:

They want to know our membership numbers. They want to verify that I’m not just preaching to Lauren, Eli, and Claire each week.
They’re going to want to see our church finances. Are we financially stable and self-sufficient?
They’re going to ask me, along with the temporary session, if there are enough qualified men who could potentially serve as elders and deacons.

We had a presbytery meeting yesterday and we are all systems go as far as all three of these are concerned.

Particularization Timeline

We will formally petition the presbytery at our next meeting in April.

Then we will have nominations for elders and deacons in late May/early June. That is something every member will be able to participate in.

We’ll announce to the congregation all the men who have been nominated and accept the nomination, and from there we will have a season of Officer Training. It will be three to three and a half months, from July through September. This is in accordance with BCO chapter 24 which says, “Nominees for the office of ruling elder and/or deacon shall receive instruction in the qualifications and work of the office.”

Over the course of Officer Training, men will be asked about their personal holiness and walk with the Lord. There will be significant reading assignments and in-depth theological discussions.

However, keep in mind as we go through the nomination process that the man who is the most “reformed” may not necessarily be the best fit for an elder or deacon. The primary qualification is character, according to 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. You can teach men the reformed faith and presbyterianism, but you cannot teach character and integrity. Please remember that as you nominate men in the months ahead. Be on the lookout for men of high Christian character who already serve in those ways.

After the season of training, in accordance with BCO chapter 24, nominees will be examined in:

his Christian experience, especially his personal character and family management (based on the qualifications set out in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:6-9),
his knowledge of Bible content,
his knowledge of the system of doctrine, government, discipline contained in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America (BCO Preface III, The Constitution Defined),
the duties of the office to which he has been nominated, and
his willingness to give assent to the questions required for ordination (BCO 24-6).

This will be a formal examination on the material we will cover in officer training.

We will have another congregational meeting at some point in the fall (potentially in October) to vote on the men who have gone through the nomination and training process. Men will be elected as either elder or deacon by a simple majority vote.

Additionally, the congregation will have to vote to call me as the pastor of Providence.

Once officers have been elected, we will have a special service where we will ordain our ruling elders and deacons. Men from the presbytery will attend this Particularization Service, the elders and deacons will make vows to the congregation, and the men from the presbytery will lay hands on them and pray for them. I think we will be in a position to have our Particularization Service for the ordination of elders and deacons in November of this year.

Challenges and Prayer Needs

There are several things that we need to be in prayer over.

Pray for our temporary session as they continue to lead and shepherd our congregation.
Pray for those within our congregation to grow in Christ, and for new people to come and join our church.
Pray over this year and everything we have coming down the pike. This whole particularization process has the potential to be divisive, so please pray that it will be unifying and God-glorifying.
Additionally, pray that more and more folks would find ways to get involved and serve. As a church plant, we’re in an all-hands-on-deck situation. We need everyone. We still need help. So if you’re not super involved, pray about ways that you could be involved.
Keep praying for a permanent location. I know many of you think about this and periodically ask me about it. The American Legion is meeting our needs right now but Lord willing, we will someday outgrow it and need a bigger space.
Pray for our outreach as well. We want to invite more people into our church family and we want to see more people come to know the Lord this year.

“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:19