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All right, good evening, everybody. Let's get situated into our tables. We'll gather for a word of prayer and start our Bible study. Let's go ahead and take our seats. (audience chattering) All right, let's, please join with me in a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we are grateful to you, God, for your mercy and grace to us every single day.
And God, you grant to us far above and beyond what we deserve. We pray, God, that we would have such grateful hearts to you and Lord, we pray that that would allow our faith to grow in such a way where everything we have, we're acknowledging you. And God, that as we look upon your greatness, look upon your love, we continue to grow in appreciation and particularly, God, we grow in worship and praise.
Lord, now as we join our voices, we do pray that we would lift up to you not just simply words and thoughts, but truly our affection. And in seeing your church gathered with love for you, with dedication and commitment to you and your way, we pray that you would be honored and glorified.
It's in Christ's name, amen. - Amen. (gentle piano music) - Sing "As the Dear." ♪ As the dear panteth for the water ♪ ♪ So my soul longeth after thee ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ ♪ You alone are my strength, my shield ♪ ♪ To you alone may my spirit yield ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ - Sing "You're My Friend." ♪ You're my friend and you are my brother ♪ ♪ Even though you are a king ♪ ♪ I love you more than any other ♪ ♪ So much more than anything ♪ ♪ You alone are my strength, my shield ♪ ♪ To you alone may my spirit yield ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ (gentle piano music) ♪ I want you more than gold or silver ♪ ♪ Only you can satisfy ♪ ♪ You alone are the real joy giver ♪ ♪ And the apple of my eye ♪ ♪ You alone are my strength, my shield ♪ ♪ To you alone may my spirit yield ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ - "You Alone." ♪ You alone are my strength, my shield ♪ ♪ To you alone may my spirit yield ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ ♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship thee ♪ (gentle guitar music) - "Teach Me Your Way." ♪ O Lord, and I will walk in your truth ♪ ♪ Show me your paths, O Lord ♪ ♪ For I am devoted to you ♪ ♪ Purify my heart's desire ♪ ♪ And I long to be your servant ♪ - "Teach Me Your Way." ♪ Teach me your way, O Lord ♪ ♪ And I will walk in your truth ♪ ♪ Show me your paths, O Lord ♪ ♪ For I am devoted to you ♪ ♪ Purify my heart's desire ♪ ♪ I long to be your servant ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ That I may fear your name ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ No other God's ♪ ♪ No other love ♪ ♪ No other God's before you ♪ ♪ Teach me your way, O Lord ♪ ♪ And I will walk in your truth ♪ ♪ Show me your paths, O Lord ♪ ♪ For I am devoted to you ♪ ♪ Purify my heart's desire ♪ ♪ I long to be your servant ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ That I may fear your name ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ No other God's ♪ ♪ No other love ♪ ♪ No other God's before you ♪ No other God's.
♪ No other God's ♪ ♪ No other love ♪ ♪ No other God's before you ♪ Father, we thank you for this opportunity to worship you. We thank you that we're able to gather so freely to study your word, to learn more about you, to have fellowship with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
We pray you be with us tonight. We thank you so much, again, for Christ. We thank you for your faithfulness and for what you've done for us. We pray that you are with us tonight. We thank you so much, again, for Christ and what Christ has done for us.
Die on the cross so that we may know you and have eternal life, Lord. So we pray that our conversation would be surrounded amongst you, Lord, amongst the gospel, that in all things we strive to honor and glorify you. So we thank you, Lord, we love you. We pray all this in your name.
Amen. Okay, good evening again. I've got some important announcements for you guys. So one thing is that we are nearing the end of our Bible study series. I had a great time learning about what a healthy church is, thinking through what a healthy member is based on our tenfold commitments.
Next week, Pastor Peter is going to be coming back to teach and also fielding some questions. So there are some pens, index cards at your table. Please take a moment to think about things related to, again, the commitments of the church, church ministry philosophy, and you can write down questions for next week's Q&A and additional teaching.
After you're done writing your questions, you can give them to your small group leaders, and then small group leaders, please make sure you turn it over to Justin at the end of the night. So with that said, our next Bible study series is going to be on the topic of hermeneutics, and that'll start taking place on February 5th.
It will be the first day of our series there. So please make sure that you sign up for that. We want to make sure that we have early sign-up and registration so we can get everybody into a group. Let's see. The next announcement that I have is going to be for our BBA and WBBA sign-up.
So this is a great opportunity just to connect with people, build some relationships, et cetera. So please make sure you sign up. Again, there is the men's league and the women's league. You do have to be a member to participate in that, and the sign-ups are closing next week.
Another announcement is we have ping-pong tournament for the end of the year on Tuesday evening, December 31st. It'll be in the main sanctuary. It's just $5 to participate. And this year, the tournament is going to be doubles only, and for the rest of you guys who don't play ping-pong, you are allowed to come, join in the festivities kind of thing, like spectate and watch, et cetera, cheer on.
So please sign up for that. Sign-ups will close December 22nd. And the final announcement is for all of our BAM members and non-members, we have the retreat coming up in January 31st through February 2nd, and it'll be at Pali Retreat. The theme is "Run to Win," and we have Pastor Ian Kwok who will be coming to speak for us.
Please sign up early. There is going to be, unfortunately, a cap. There is a limited number of spaces. So for all of you BAM members, please go ahead and sign up for that ASAP. Okay, please go ahead and go into your time of discussion, and we'll be back at 8 o'clock.
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gathering of your children. We pray, Father God, that as we take some time to review over our Tenfold Covenant, you would give us a greater understanding, and not just understanding, but how we can apply these things to build a church that honors and glorifies you.
We pray for your spirit's guidance, Lord God, over this time. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Ah, ah, okay. Alright. As you guys know, some of the people who are somewhat newer to the church, or maybe have been here, I've heard people saying, "Hey, how come we're not doing Bible study?" Maybe you were asleep when we mentioned it in the beginning, right?
So, we took a short break because we're trying to bring people on the same page. As our church grows, we have people being added to the church, and some of you guys who took membership more recently, and then there's some people who've taken membership, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
And so, we want to make sure that what we're building in our church is very deliberate and purposeful. So, especially if you've come from another church, and you come back and, "How come we don't do this?" And our church before, you know, that church that I went to used to do this, and how come we don't do that?
We're doing everything that we're doing. You may or may not understand it, but it's very purposeful, right? Not that we're doing everything perfectly, but there's a reason behind what we're doing. So, these are the things that we've kind of learned through scripture study, and realized that this is what the Bible outlines of what a healthy church should be trying to pursue.
So, we took a temporary break in our study, or not expository, inductive Bible study, okay? So that we can bring everybody on the same page. The next session of Bible study, before we, we're hoping to jump into the Old Testament, but before we jump into the Old Testament, Pastor Mark is going to lead us in an extensive, more extended course on how to study the Bible.
So, he mentioned it earlier on, but what he's going to do is, he's going to take texts from different genres of the Bible, right? Like, we've been doing the epistles, but how do you do it from the poetic, from the narrative, from the prophetic? And so, how do you do inductive study in that kind of context?
Because the way you would study the epistle is going to be very different than the way you would study the narrative. And, same thing, right now we're in the Gospel of Luke, which is taught to us in narrative. And so, we don't approach the narrative the same way we would approach an epistle.
An epistle is a letter that says, "This is my main point, these are the three sub-points, and this is the conclusion." That's how an epistle is written. You can study it like a document, but when you're studying stories of events, you can't study it that way. Because there's a main point in each of the narrative, right?
And so, you can't study it like, "Here's the point, and here's the three sub-points, and here's the conclusion." The narrative isn't presented that way. And so, same thing, when we go to the Old Testament, it's more given to us in a narrative. And the Old Testament narrative is very different than the New Testament narrative, because New Testament narratives are usually within half a chapter or a chapter.
But, if you've read through Genesis, sometimes you have one story, and it goes up to four or five chapters. So, how do you do an inductive study when a narrative is that long? Do you break it up? How do you approach each verse? And so, those are the type of things that Pastor Mark is going to address for our next study.
And so, we're going to have specific text that he's going to give an example of how to study. So, hopefully, by the end of next session's study, that you'll be able to come out and say, "Oh, that's how you study," and then before we jump back in. Okay? So, that's the reason why we're doing what we're doing.
And then, another thing that we wanted to make clear, next session's Bible study is 10 weeks, not 13 weeks. And the reason why we're doing that, starting in February, beginning of February, it's going to be ending at the end of April. And we're going to have a longer break in between.
It doesn't mean that we're not going to be doing anything. During those three-month break, we're going to be doing Bible study a different way, meaning that there are specific topics that need to be covered in the church, whether it is marriage, or whether it is child rearing, or finance, whatever it is that we feel specifically that our church needs to be discipled in, we're going to be approaching a different way.
So, we're not going to be having Bible study this way, but we're going to be giving various topics, asking people to sign up during that time. But because we've been having this inductive Bible study, it's kind of hard for us to address specific things because it doesn't happen on Sunday.
And if we can't address it during the weekday, we don't have a lot of avenues where we can do that. So, we're going to take the break time to address those specific issues. So, hopefully you understand why we're doing that. So, next session's Bible study is going to be a little bit shorter.
From now on, it's going to be 10 weeks, 10 weeks, and then there's going to be longer breaks in between. Alright, so today, I'm going to be just basically reviewing over, but I want to just briefly go over our church history. And I know some of you guys who've been at our church for a long time, like this is all reviewed to you, but even though you took membership recently, I just, hopefully that you'll have a better understanding of how we got here, so to better understand where we're headed.
First of all, our church was inaugurated, not established, but inaugurated on April 12, 1997. It just happens to be the day that my oldest son, Jeremiah, was born. So, I wasn't in the church yet. I was invited to participate in the inauguration. I couldn't come because Jeremy was born on that day.
The church was actually established months before that, about two, three months prior to that. So, the only person that was there when that happened was Elder Joe. So, I was the EM pastor of Korean Irvine Baptist Church. I left that church for about a year to serve at another church, and then that church ended up splitting and falling apart.
I wasn't the problem. It just--that happened, and then I was the EM pastor of that church. I ended up coming back out, and then I was in between a church, and then I got a phone call from--I forget if it was Elder Joe or somebody else called and said, "You know, our church--the person who got permission to become an independent church, he ended up leaving only after about two, three months." So, he got it incorporated, got the name, got permission, became independent, and then he left.
So, the only reason why I came is because I was in between church, and they asked me to come basically to help out because they didn't have a leader there. I had no intention of planting a church. I was burnt out. I was kind of like debating back and forth if I was going to continue in ministry or not.
Only reason why I came back is because I was attached to--at that time, they're all grown-ups now, but at that time, they were a bunch of kids, and I felt like they were going to fall apart, and they're going to leave church, and so I came just to help out.
That's how the church got started. So, when I came back, I came to church in August of that year, 1997. And so, if you look at the original documents of the church, my name's not on it. Some strange lady's name is on it that you wouldn't know, okay? And so, the only person that is here today that was there at that time is Elder Joe, okay?
And so, anything prior to that, you're going to have to ask him, even though I was a EM pastor prior to that. That's how the church got started, and then once we got to Irvine, the senior pastor who came in as an interim didn't have a vision for us in the church.
He wanted us to be more charismatic. He wanted us to be more Korean. He asked me to teach Korean in the English service, and I said, "We can't do that. We're here to spread the gospel. We already had non-Koreans in the church." And so, eventually, we couldn't stay. We were there for about two years.
We left, and then Tustin Baptist heard that we were leaving, and so they allowed us to use their facility for a couple of years. So, we were there for a couple of years, and then after two years of being there, I think it was in 2001, we ended up leaving that, and then that's when we became independent.
And all this time, I had no intention of planting a church. I just did it because we had a small group of young adults, and at that time, Elder Joe was probably, what, third year in college or something? And he's an old guy at our church now, but at that time, he was just a college student.
So, imagine how young the other people were, right? They were, like, barely--like, high school, graduating high school, or first or second year in college, and so that's the group that we had when we-- nobody in their right mind would plant the church with that group, right? So, 15 people means $15 a month, basically, to support the church, basically, right?
So, it wasn't a church plant. We just met together because I was concerned that the kids at that time were going to fall out if we didn't continue. And so I had Jeremy, we had Zachary, and then eventually, obviously, faith came, but that's how the church got started. We changed our name.
The original name of the church was Harvest Community Church because, again, I didn't name that church. It was a previous pastor who was here. He liked the name Harvest. I never liked it. As soon as we got an opportunity to change it, I think we were about three years into the church or four years into the church, we changed it to Berean Community Church.
So, that's the name I chose because it captures what we wanted to do with the church. And so, up to this point, I had no intent of planting a church. All I knew, and even our doctrinal statements, what were we going to be, how we're going to run the church, in my mind was not clear yet because, again, we didn't start out with a church saying, "This is the vision that we have and we're going to have this kind of church.
We're going to have membership." All of that we kind of figured out as we went. But when we changed the church, the only thing that I knew for sure is we're going to stick to the Bible. We're going to study the Bible. We're going to read the Bible, and we're going to apply what we read in the Bible.
And then so that's why the name was chosen. And then every year since then, we're studying it, and if we find out, "Hey, maybe this is not the right way to do it. Maybe this is not the right way to run the church." And so, certain things about the church started getting changed and solidified because of that, right?
So, we didn't have a clear vision, mission statement, membership process of what our vision is going to be five years. None of that was established at that time. Are we going to have elders? Are we going to have deacons? We were just kind of winging it, right? And because our church was so young, nobody was against it.
So, we just kind of went and did it, and then after, you know, now we're in almost our 28th years. Even to this day, our vision is still the same. We're going to keep reading the Bible, and if we notice, even now, there are certain things that maybe, "Hey, maybe that's not the right biblical way that the Bible teaches." Then, you know, the only authority we have in this church is Scripture.
Not tradition, not our denomination, not works. What works doesn't work, but what does the Bible say, okay? So, that's our background. After we left, we were nomads for a while. We were at Lakeside Middle School for a few years, and then we went to Harvard Community Park for, I think, a year.
Deerfield Community Park, maybe for about nine months. Went to Turtle Rock Community Center for about a year. And then from there, we thought we were going to be homeless because we couldn't find a place. We didn't have enough money. So, we were actually even planning on having a picnic every Sunday because we didn't have a location.
And by that time, when we were at Turtle Rock, I think we were maybe about 60 people, 50 people. And then, we finally ended up at Northwood Community Park. And then, at Northwood Community Park, we grew from about 50, 60 to maybe about 70, 80. And then, from there, we went to Up Middle School.
And then, that one Sunday, we went from 80, 90 to about 110. And so, we added maybe about 20, 30 people on one Sunday, and we never dip under 100. So, we don't know why 20, 30 people came one Sunday and never left. But literally, that's what happened. Like, we grew 20, 30% one Sunday, and then with that, oh, they're just visiting, and then they just never left.
Okay. And then, the church grew from there to about 100 to about 250. We were there for about three years, and then we moved to Costa Mesa Airway Building. We moved there with about 250 people. I think we left with about 400. And then, we came into this building with about 450, and now we're like somewhere around 1100 to 1200 people.
So, that's kind of like our history. But the core values of our church has never changed, right? And so, in the process, the Fourfold Vision basically put together early on in the church. This is when we were at Irvine Baptist, and then while we were at Tustin, we put the Fourfold Vision together.
And Fourfold Vision, you know, I'm not going to go through all of it, but basically, the first one is God-centeredness, right? Our church got established right when the seeker-friendly movement was just taking off. So, every time we turn around, we say, you know, new song was 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000.
And so, every time I turned around, somebody was saying like, "Hey, stop being stubborn. You need to go get trained. You need to do this, and they're doing that, and why aren't you doing this?" And obviously, our church being so small, you know, like clearly you're doing something wrong, and they're doing something right.
But by this time, my commitment to the scriptures were already solidified. So, I'm not going to run a church where we're going to be constantly changing because people are coming in and saying, "I want this type of a church. I want that type of a church," right? Whatever we're going to do, we're going to do because the Bible teaches that.
And the central thing that I see in the scripture is God is at the center, not man, right? Where the church is gathering for the purpose of God's glory, not our needs. Our needs are met when He's glorified. So, that's the central belief and the backbone of our church.
And so, from that flows everything else. So, if God's going to be glorified, the Word of God has to be centered, right? Not surveying you, not what works, not what makes you happy, not what causes people to come, but if God's going to be glorified, He spelled out how He's going to be glorified in the Word of God.
So, that's why the second vision, and then third vision is in what avenue does this happen is in the church. And so, the building up of a healthy church, not just a church that meets your needs, but ultimately the church is where we carry out what the scripture tells us to glorify God.
And then, obviously, the fourth vision is to take this and multiply this, right? We can't have number four if you don't have number one. You cannot be a witness if you're not witnessing God at church, right? If God is not glorified in the church, He will not be glorified in the world.
The church needs to be healthy in order for it to be multiplied in the world. So, evangelism cannot be effective until the church is healthy, right? So, how do we carry that specifically? The tenfold vision came in as a result of that. One, membership begins with believers, not just anybody who raises their hands, but genuine Christians.
So, that's why when you take membership, we want to make sure that your testimony is genuine. Like, "I grew up in a church," or, "I wanted to be more moral." Obviously, that's not what makes you a Christian, right? So, membership is the first step. Confess that the Bible is inerrant.
Our authority over your life, my life, the church comes from the Bible, right? You can say that all you want and not practice it. You can say the Bible is authoritative, and then the Bible is open, and then it says, "This is what it says." It's like, "Yeah, I know what it says," but then you don't practice it, then the Word of God is not authoritative.
It's only authoritative if you actually apply it. Saying it's authoritative doesn't make it authoritative. Authoritative means you apply it, right? And so, Christians who believe the Word of God has authority over your life, and it dictates what kind of mom you're going to be, what kind of father you're going to be, what kind of son you're going to be, what kind of Christian you're going to be, the Word of God dictates that, not me, not the world.
Third, life of devotion to pray regularly. As important as the Word of God is, so is prayer. Prayer is, again, Scripture tells us it's right up there, right? Because spiritual work is not simply done by the mind. It's done spiritually, and so you have to engage spiritually. Commit to attending Sunday worship.
You cannot be a member of the church if you're not here participating in the most important part of the church, which is Sunday worship. That's why when we're going through that, Pastor Mark went through that and emphasized to the best of your ability not to miss Sunday worship, right?
And I know we live in a culture where graduations and soccer games and everything is happening on Sunday morning, but we're asking you to the best of your ability to put that as the highest priority, right? Even if you're traveling and you can't physically be here, try to find a physical church to go to and attend, right?
To participate in the gathering of believers. Commit to attending and preparing for weekday Bible studies every week to the best of my, again, to the best of my ability, right? I know some of you guys came from eight, nine, ten hours of work today, and so the fact that you are here is a good first step, right?
But we're asking you because, remember, we talked about Sunday philosophy is to get the Word into you. Weekday Bible study philosophy is to get you into the Bible, right? So we don't want to just do the study and then spoon feed you. The philosophy of the Bible study is for you to get into the Word of God.
So if your intake of the Word of God is just simply listening, only a small portion is coming into you. And so that's why we're asking you to participate in getting the Word of God into you, into the Word of God, okay? Six, I commit to attending PCC functions and the activities to the best of my ability.
I know our church is bigger, right? And you're not going to get to know 1,000 people in the church. But because it's big and you say, "Well, what's the point," right? Well, in order to be a part of a community, you have to know the people who are around you, even if it's not all 1,000 people, right?
But if you make no effort to do that, then your idea of community is you just kind of put your name on the list and that's it, right? There might be people who are sitting right next to you right now who is in need of your prayer, encouragement, or maybe a kick in the butt, right?
But participating in community means that we are going to do our best to get to know as many people as possible, right? And that's why we have functions. We're asking you to the best of your ability to participate as much as you can. I commit to building up and strengthening the body of Christ at PCC by developing and using my spiritual.
We ask every member to find some capacity to serve, right? Sometimes people think serving means leading, right? We take leadership very seriously, as you guys were reading the books that you're reading, because leadership is not something that you just put in. The Bible says not to lay hands hastily on especially new believers because they fall into the temptation of the devil.
Once pride gets in, you're ruined, right? You're completely ruined. No matter what you're doing, as soon as you have pride come in, you're no longer learning. You're analyzing. You're critiquing. But you're not learning, right? And so we don't put leadership hastily because it not only ruins you, it ruins the church.
It ruins everybody beneath you, right? But we're asking everybody to find some way to serve, even if it's not leadership. Like, you know, we have parking duties. We have cleanup. We have all kinds of stuff, you know, whether it's praise team or maybe someday you'll be leading small group, whatever it is, to find some way, if you're a member of the church, to function in some way to serve the church.
And then I commit to tithing and giving financially in accordance with Christ's lordship over my life. And I talked about that before, why finance is so emphasized in the Scripture, because it says wherever your money is, there your heart is. If you're stingy with your money, you end up being stingy with your heart.
And so if you're generous with your money, you're generous with your heart, right? And so that's why that's number nine. I commit to the best of my ability to advance the kingdom of God through sharing the gospel locally and globally. So locally and globally, we want to be a witness here, but we also know that we have more resources than most other countries, right?
Especially as our church grows, we have more and more opportunities because we have more resources together. And so we want to use that not only here, but also abroad, okay? And then finally, Pastor Mark covered, I desire to be kept accountable by leadership and other members of BCC and to keep others accountable above covenants and teachings of Scripture.
And this is something that is very important. Accountability in the church is very important, but at what point does it become judging, right? Will you figure that out? Because that line is very hard for us to determine, right? The line that I use when I feel like, am I criticizing out of love, right?
And I'm pointing things out in your life out of love. I genuinely care for your well-being, right? Or am I just peeved at people because they're not behaving a certain way, right? And so if I find that my heart is not in the right place, then I need to pray more.
Or maybe I'm not the best person to talk to that person, right? If I'm irritated, I got to speak the truth, but you don't have love. Or sometimes if you say, you know, I have love, but because you have love, somehow that squashes the truth. That's never the case.
God never will compromise truth and love. It would be together. But sometimes you can do truth, very little love. And it does more damage than good when you do that, right? And sometimes you do love, but you're not actually love. It's more -- it serves you because you don't want that person to think bad of you, right?
So true love is always expressed in love, right? Both things always need to be present. So even if they don't recognize it, at least you need to do your best. First and foremost, you prayed for them, right? And you desire what's best for them, right? So that's also important.
Part of being a community, there is accountability. We don't like just -- you go off and do something, and if somebody you really love is starting to do drugs, you're not going to look at that and say, I don't want to judge them because I love them. That's not love.
If you really love them, you do everything in your power to try to talk to them, right? But it's because you love them that you're going to talk to them, not simply because you don't like it. All right, so all ten of these covenants are, I would say, the backbone of the church.
This is not unique to Berean Community Church. If you study the scripture, this is what's taught for every Christian. The only difference is we've decided to jot it down, and we're trying to practice it and keep each other accountable to make sure that this is actually what we're pursuing.
So every year, at the end of the year, we try to look at where we are at the church, and we evaluate what is our weakness, what is something that we need to be strengthened, and then we make that a goal, and we try to pursue that, at least go that direction.
So if you've noticed, the last five years, what was our goal? Unless you joined us brand new, you should know, hopefully, prayer has been our primary focus because every year we evaluate this is an area that we need to grow in. I think we've made some progress. We're not there yet.
And so next year's theme is going to be the same, be devoted to prayer. This time it's going to work, all right? Before it was just, "Ah, let's pray," but no, we're going to be devoted to prayer this time, okay? All right? And so, you know, every year we evaluate this is what we want to do.
We want to be intentional about where we're headed. Even if we're only taking a few steps, those few steps are leading us to the right direction. So we're going to keep emphasizing what we feel like is our weakness, and I think this is still our weakness, okay? All right, so this was an overview of what happened.
The fourfold question--who put that there? Nice, okay. How has the review of the Tenfold Covenant helped you to better understand the beliefs and practices of BCC? Self-explanatory, why do you think the commitments to these covenants from every member is important to the health of the church, not just the leadership, not just the people who've been here for a while, but every member of the church?
Which one of the Tenfold Covenants do you have the hardest time applying, and why? And then the fourth question is--Pastor Mark already mentioned it, but the fourth question is, next week we have one more session, and you're going to be reading Chapter 13 of the book, and then during our time I'm going to be taking Q&A, right?
So there might be some things that you may have discussed and still kind of like-- maybe the small group leaders are thinking it may be better if I addressed it or clarified it, and so what I'm asking is, after today's discussion, I will not be taking 450 questions, right?
And so I'm asking that the priority is going to be, if you need some sort of clarification on why we are doing certain things, or maybe something's required more, maybe something was said and I don't fully understand. So if it's related to the church, we ask that--put it on a 2x5, 5x5, whatever.
Did everybody get a card? Did everybody get a card? Okay. There's no way I'm going to go through everybody's card, so I'm going to ask that you would jot it down within the table. Somebody jot down that these are the questions that we have. So if you put two or three that kind of like--it would be helpful if you address this issue that I'm going to try to address it, and I would need it today from you guys.
I'm not saying that I won't. If there's time and you ask something else that's not maybe directly related to what we studied, I may be able to get to it. I'm assuming that I probably won't. But if you ask questions of, you know, how do you get, you know, like dating questions or something a lot more personal, right, how do you do this?
I'm not saying that I won't answer these questions, but probably we're not going to get time to do it. So try to limit the questions that's pertaining to the church. Like, help me to better understand why our church does this or why our church doesn't do this, okay? And according to the tenfold vision, but it doesn't have to be limited to the tenfold vision.
Anything in the church you feel like this will help me to understand what's going on in church, then I'll try to address that next Sunday--next Wednesday, okay? All right. Let me pray for us, and then shuttle is shut down from 9:30 to 10. We'll run from 9:30 to 10.
All right. Let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for this evening and the time that we've had to study the tenfold covenant and why these things are important to us, and we pray that even our last session of discussion would lead us, Lord God, into a greater understanding so that the church may be built in a way that honors and glorifies you.
I pray that you would bless the discussion and that things that we've learned would be applied in such a way, Father God, that we would be a greater light according to the purpose and what you've given us in your word. We thank you, Father, in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. Okay, so at the end of it, if somebody can write down whatever discussion questions or the questions that you have, and please write it large so I can read it, right? If you're a doctor, have somebody else write it for you, okay? I cannot read your writing.