Don't just learn from church history - look to the global church too

In all the discussion about how to navigate the consequences and implications of COVID-19 for churches and believers meeting together, historical events have often been alluded to. From the efforts of Christians to care for the sick in Roman times, Martin Luther's refusal to leave Wittenburg when bubonic plague came, to the Great Ejection of the Puritans in 1662, people have drawn analogies with what Christians have done in past centuries.

This is right and good. The Bible is of course our authority but we have a lot to learn from those who have gone before us in how they interpreted and applied Biblical principles to real life. We sometimes talk about being in uncharted waters now, but there are those who have navigated similar waters in the past and we do well to carefully consider their examples and decisions.

But wouldn't it be better if instead of reading their words and about their situations, we could talk to them? Wouldn't you like to hear the voices of those early Church believers who lived through such difficult times and yet still rejoice in Christ? Wouldn't it be good to have a conversation with the brothers and sisters in Christ who have had to weigh up the hard decisions about whether or not to meet in person and the dangers of hymn singing? Wouldn't it be great to be able to talk with the Puritans about when and how civil disobedience is required?

Those believers are in heaven now and we'll have to wait until we get there for the in-person conversations. But the global church is full of people who have either wrestled with analogous issues in the last fifty years or are still experiencing them today. Christians in the West would do well to remember that they can draw on the breadth and depth of experience within the global church - and then actually do so.

Limits on attendance? In many countries, for either legal or practical reasons, believers often need to meet in homes. That's an attendance cap.

Unable to sing? There are countries today where either it is within living memory that Christians were unable to sing aloud or they are currently still unable to do so.

Submission to civil government in a Biblically appropriate way? Take your pick of countries where believers have been working through these issues for many years. 

In our city in Turkey, we've been thinking through the implications of COVID-19 for public worship and the meeting of believers. Our Turkish pastor has been leading that - but he does so from the perspective of someone who may not have lived through a pandemic before but has certainly dealt with some similar issues. Our church may meet in a building now, but it started off as a house church. Our pastor has thought through when and how to submit to civil government for years. For example, the law here prohibits under-18s from attending church without parental permission and we fairly frequently have teenagers who want to come to our meetings. He hasn't personal experience of believers being afraid to come to church for fear of catching a virus - but, after three Christians were martyred in a city not too far away from us 13 years ago, he does have experience of believers being afraid to come to church for fear of being killed or persecuted. 

Practically, if a church already has links with cross-cultural workers in countries where there is likely to be experience to learn from, it may be as simple as asking them to help facilitate some links and information sharing from their local leaders and believers. Books, articles and videos also give insight into how churches across the world have adapted in the face of difficulties, but a bit more digging might be necessary to find helpful analogous situations.

Clearly a course of action should not be automatically approved solely because it originates from an African, Asian or Middle Eastern church. Suffering and difficulty does not always result in practices in line with an orthodox understanding of Scripture. There are issues of right Biblical interpretation and appropriate cultural application too. And these are not clear cut issues - two different people from the same cultural background, never mind different cultures, can take the same Biblical principles and after prayer and deliberation come to different conclusions. There is a good chance you might disagree with the approach that a pastor from a persecuted church (as well as the pastor from the church down the road) has taken.

But if you're going to look to history for examples of how Christians have dealt with similar issues, you might also remember that there is wisdom and value in looking to the current global church as well.

Sharing the Gospel with Muslims

I met up with a friend the other morning. Our children played in the park together and we chatted between rocking pushchairs and doling out snacks. She'd forgotten her mask so borrowed her daughter's Frozen-themed mask.

She has a Masters degree and worked in finance before having children. She speaks four languages and even while speaking in English - her third language - she made me laugh out loud with some of her stories.

My family have just returned from holiday with another British family and as we were chatting about that, my friend asked if my family had had opportunity for worship times together with the other family while away together. We talked a bit about how God reveals himself in nature too.

As we walked back, our conversation veered towards parenting and discipline. We were both agreed on the importance of children learning to obey authority while they were young and the need for consequences when they disobey. I mentioned my belief that learning to obey authority is particularly important because we want them to know that God is the ultimate authority. She wasn't quite convinced because, in her words, "I want my children to first know that God loves them and as they get a bit bigger to introduce the idea of God's authority, I don't want them to be scared of or dislike God."

My friend is a committed Muslim. She covers her hair and prays five times a day.

I don't know how many Muslim friends you have. But if you don't have the opportunity for many interactions with Muslims, here's a few things I'd love for you to know.

Muslims are individuals

Like everyone else, Muslims are individuals. Forget any assumptions or stereotypes and get to know the person in front of you. They are not an evangelism project, they are individuals with their own life story, hopes, dreams and fears. They may also have their own understanding and interpretation of Islam. I was surprised that my friend sees Allah as a God of love as that's not typically an emphasis in Islam. Circumstances (also known as corralling small children while walking down a street) prevented me from asking more about that, but I'm intrigued to know more of her thoughts on God's love and I've made a mental note that it's something to follow up on when I get chance.

God-talk isn't sharing the Gospel

Talking about God usually comes up fairly naturally in conversation when you're talking with Muslims. But just talking about God isn't sharing the Gospel. When our conversation has a smattering of God-talk sprinkled through it, it it sometimes difficult to know if you're talking to a Christian or a Muslim. My friend has been at my house before and picked up a toddler book called 'God made me'. She agreed with every word in it. If we haven't mentioned our sin and need of a Saviour, Jesus and his death on the cross and resurrection, and that it is only the free gift of grace that gets us right with God again, then we haven't shared the Gospel. 

Relationships need time

I didn't talk about Jesus that morning. Nor did I share the Gospel. But as God comes up in conversation and my friend sees that my faith is real and active, I'm earning credibility. And because my friend and I see each other fairly regularly, it's an ongoing conversation. I've talked a little about Jesus before. I'm asking her questions and listening to her. I'm praying that I'll have an opportunity to share the Gospel and that her ears and heart would be open to it.

The Gospel is powerful

The good news that we have to share is the best news there is. It is "the power of God that brings salvation" (Rom 1:16). It makes spiritually dead people alive again. And we have the privilege of proclaiming it. That means we do actually have to proclaim it! When you're talking to someone who has been taught their entire life that the Bible has been changed and Jesus didn't actually claim to be God and he didn't really die on the cross, it's tempting to think that nothing will change their mind. But the Gospel comes with the power to transform people and we should be bold and confident in speaking it.

Prayer changes things

We won't accomplish anything without prayer. Prayer changes things. My friend gets up in the early hours to complete her prayers despite already being up in the night to nurse a baby. But as Christians, we are invited into the throne room of the one true and living God to talk to him as our Father and he is always ready to listen to us. We must pray.

And will you pray for my friend and I? I'm almost certainly the only Christian she knows and possibly has ever met. Pray that she will be thirsty for living water and searching for truth. Pray that she'd be dissatisfied with any idea of being able to earn her way to God. Pray that I'd have the opportunity to share the Gospel clearly with her. Pray that the Gospel would powerfully impact her and bring her to Christ. Pray that God's Spirit will be at work.

Brought not called

The concept of 'being called' comes up, either implicitly or explicitly, rather frequently when you're in cross-cultural work. It's a reflection of the hearts of people who want to serve God well but it's also a phrase that can be easily misused or misunderstood.

While there can be a lot of confusion over what 'being called' and the idea of 'calling' means, Kevin DeYoung hit the nail on the head a couple of years ago in this blog post:

We have an upward call in Christ to be with Jesus and to be like Jesus (Phil. 3:14). We have been called to freedom, not bondage (Gal. 5:13). God has saved us and called us to a holy calling (2 Tim. 1:9). He has called us to his own glory and excellence (2 Peter 1:3). Not many of us were called to noble things (in the world’s eyes), but, amazingly, we have been called to Christ (1 Cor. 1:26). And if called, then justified, and if justified, then glorified (Rom. 8:30).

In other words, I do not see in Scripture where we are told to expect or look for a specific call to a specific task in life.

He goes on to say that we do not need to necessarily abandon the language of 'calling' but we do need to be very careful in how we use the terms 'call' or 'calling'. We want to be making sensible decisions and thinking through whether something is a wise and appropriate route to follow rather than looking for a special word from God about a specific job, place or career. DeYoung highlights that ministry books typically talk about the three components of a 'call' - an internal call, an external call and a formal call - and that these can be a useful frame to use in decision-making.

In the circles we're from, and in our agency, we typically talk about the 'call' to overseas Christian service in a similar way. I often hear it as 'desire, opportunity, affirmation'. That is the desire to go (the inward call), the affirmation of a sending church of the gifting and maturity of the one(s) being sent (the external call) and the opportunity of being free to go and with an appropriate place, people and need to go to (the formal call).

DeYoung goes on to issue a warning at the end of his blog post though:

In short, if this is what is meant by “calling”—know yourself, listen to others, find where you are needed—then, by all means, let’s try to discern our callings. But if “calling” involves waiting for promptings, listening for still small voices, and attaching divine authority to our vocational decisions, then we’d be better off dropping the language altogether (except as its used in the Bible) and labor less mysteriously to help each other grow in wisdom.

And this is where the problem comes in for us. I use the term 'called' as a shorthand to mean exactly what DeYoung says - know yourself, listen to others, find out where you are needed. When I say 'God called us to Turkey', I mean 'God gave my husband and I the desire to serve the church in Turkey, and our family and life situation made our going possible; our sending church affirmed our suitability for that role and, with the support of our agency, sent us; we were sent to help in the work of making and growing disciples within the context of a local church; and with the help of local partners, we found a church and city where the local pastor wanted us to come and where there was a clear need.' It's just that most of the time that's a bit of a mouthful and if we're all on the same page with what being 'called' means, it's easier just to say 'called'.

But the nature of overseas Christian service means mixing and working with other believers, both national and foreign, who are from different Christian circles to us. And so when I say 'called' they may have the same understanding as I do or they may be thinking about promptings, still small voices, etc. 

As a result, while I may still use the term 'calling' with certain groups of people, for most of my conversations here I've taken DeYoung's advice and dropped the word 'called'. I found I still needed some kind of term to describe succinctly how we ended up here though. So I use the word 'brought'.

God brought us to Turkey. God brought us to our current city.

Using this language has several advantages. Firstly, it is not the word 'called'. It is the terms 'called', 'call' and 'calling' that seem particularly associated with still small voices. By using a different word, those immediate associations are avoided. And as a more concrete term, it removes the possibility of talking about 'calling' as an abstract or unrealised feeling. Secondly, it opens the way to talk about how God brought us here. It feels more natural and less intrusive to ask someone 'so how did God bring you here?' than it does to ask 'so how exactly were you called?'. 

Most importantly, it puts God, not us, centre stage. There is sometimes a tendency when talking about being 'called' to make it more about us than it should be; we heard the voice, waited for the sign, went through the open door. Others may say, "this is our calling". And when we feel the weight of being 'called', we want to see the fruit of our work, the evidence that we really were called. Returning to our home country can feel like failure and lead to questioning God - "but I thought I was called to this? Was there a mistake? Am I no longer called?".

But this is God's work and it's our privilege to play just a tiny part in it. God brought us here, therefore we can be faithful to the work and leave the results in God's hands. God brought us here and so he will sustain us when we'd be ready to give up and say it's just too hard. God brought us here and he'll keep us here for as long as he wants. God brought us here, so he can also bring us back to our home country if he desires.

God brought us here and we can trust in his goodness and sovereignty.

Socially distanced church: our priority and our problem

We love our church. It's not always the easiest to take three young children to church but I've written before that we believe that Sundays, meeting with the local body of Christ, are good for children. Even for third culture kids who can miss a lot of what is going on in the service, we believe there are benefits and blessings from church in a second language. Being with our local church fellowship on a Sunday to meet and worship God together is the priority of our week.

Our church has now been able to meet in person for the last two Sundays. Being back together in person is special even if not quite the same with masks, social distancing and a temperature check at the door. We've attended the last two weeks as a family, all of us except the baby dutifully masked. But we're now wrestling with the question of whether we take our children back this Sunday. 

The reality is that we don't have enough space in our church building for everyone to come and remain socially distant from each other. The members of one household (e.g. a family) obviously do not sit socially distanced, but with a relatively high percentage of our church family being individuals, we don't have enough space for even a third of the normal congregation to come.

Should we keep our children at home to literally create space for others to come? 

Last Sunday one of our students brought two friends to church. In all likelihood, it was probably their first time ever attending a church service, their first time hearing the Bible read and preached, their first time experiencing a group of Christians worshipping God together. Our current family circumstances means that one of us almost invariably misses the sermon because we're out with the baby and our other two children remain in the service but do not have the Turkish language ability to understand what is said. Is it better for one of us to stay at home with the children so we do not risk having to turn people away who have never heard the Gospel before?

This is a hard issue. We believe wholeheartedly that going to church as a family on a Sunday is the most important thing we do all week. Aside from the very real concern about protecting the reputation of the church in a Muslim society, we believe it is right to willingly obey the central and local government's rules about social distancing. While social distancing is required for our church services, there is not the physical space for everyone who wants to come. We are also foreigners who have come to serve the local Turkish church; each of us must look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others (Phil 2:4) and that is doubly true when we have come as cross-cultural workers. We must put the interests of the church, and of Turks, above our own interests. But how do we do that while also looking to the interests of our children? Added to which, we have no idea of timescales. There's a reasonable probability that we'll need to be social distancing for the next several months, possibly to the end of 2020 or beyond. I'm typing this and recoiling at even having to countenance the idea of not taking our children to church for most of 2020.

We're praying for wisdom, talking to our pastor and thinking through different solutions currently. Do we set up a video relay in another part of the church building? Do we alternate with another family and take it in turns to come to church? What about my husband and I alternating who goes to church each week and whoever goes takes either the 5 year old or the 3 year old (who can sit on a lap and not take up extra space), leaving the others at home to join by Zoom? If as a church we need to start thinking medium term, do we need to start thinking about knocking through walls in the church building to create a bigger meeting room?

This is uncharted territory for us, and for others who will be thinking through similar issues. There are no ideal solutions right now, only making the best of a non-ideal situation. But God is not a distant god waiting to punish us for not availing ourselves of the means of grace that he set out. He is our loving Father who knows our hearts and our desire to be in church together each Sunday. He understands when we tell him that we really want to be meeting with our church family to worship him each Sunday but we just can't figure out a way for all of us to do that legally, safely and while loving our neighbours. He  has given us the Holy Spirit and gives us wisdom to think through the options and decide on what we think is the best way forward.

At the same time as thinking through all of this, I've been working on writing up the testimony of a good Turkish believer friend. She became a Christian as a teenager but due to significant family pressures and the need for parental permission for under-18s to go to church here, she was unable to go to church (with the exception of Christmas and Easter services) for three years. For some of that time she had no easy access to a Bible. She desperately wanted to go to church but couldn't and the Lord kept her throughout all of that time. Her experience reassures me of God's goodness. God has given us the local church as a means of grace for our good and growth as believers and being part of a community of local believers is a crucial part of what it means to be a Christian. But when we've done everything we can and it is just not possible for us to be at church together every week, we can trust in God's goodness and faithfulness to bless, sustain and strengthen us - and our children.

People are complicated

"Look, I've killed the monster!" he cries triumphantly, cape trailing behind him, stick sword in hand. My three year old and five year old's favourite role play game is some version of "goody vs baddy". Monsters vs superheroes. Knights vs dragons. If we watch a film, they want to know who the goody is and who the baddy is. In the darkest moments of a film (and we're talking Disney and Pixar here), they crave the reassurance that the goody will win in the end. We talk about the great story of good vs evil too. They point to the picture illustrating the story of Revelation in their children's Bible, of Jesus conquering the dragon, and they tell us "Jesus wins."

There's a developmental appropriateness to young children's desire to divide the world into goodies and baddies, to categorise them neatly as one or the other. Recent events have shown that adults are not immune either to the temptation to divide people into simple categories of 'goody' and 'baddy'. For instance, there has been a move to recategorise historical figures from 'goody' to 'baddy' with the toppling of statues; in the UK, protestors toppled the statue of slave trader philanthropist Edward Colston and threw it into the harbour. A statue of Winston Churchill has been boarded up ahead of planned protests; he is regarded by many as a great wartime leader. He also believed in racial hierarchies. 

Christians are not immune to these problems either. We fall in love with our spiritual heroes and then belatedly realise they too have feet of clay. Martin Luther and his anti-semitism. Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and their ownership of slaves. John Wesley's marriage. William Carey's family life. It can get more personal too. Church leaders fall into sin. Christians we looked up to let us down. And with the tangle of thoughts and emotions that we're left with, it's easy to either turn a blind eye to someone's sin, rationalising it away, or to go to the other extreme and dismiss every good action or truthful word they've ever done or spoken.

We might also take groups of people and automatically assign them to be goodies or baddies. Cops. Protesters. Politicians. Civil servants. Journalists. Bankers. Climate change activists. Climate change deniers. Creationists. Evolutionists. Social workers. Home schoolers. Baptists. Anglicans. J K Rowling. The list goes on.

The world would be a simpler place if we could just think of everyone as either a goody or a baddy.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." In the same vein (but not quite as literary high-brow), British comedy actor John Cleese recently tweeted a clip of his from 30 years ago in which he says, "the great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in you." 

Both Solzhenitsyn and Cleese are echoing the truth that people are complicated. As image bearers of God, every one of us is able to do good. As people who have rejected God and trampled on his law, every one of us does evil. That is not to say that we are all equal in our degree of goodness or evilness. The line that divides good and evil does not cleave every human heart equally in two. But the history of humanity is a history of complex people. Heroes have flaws. Villains are capable of good deeds. David who killed Goliath was the same David who took another man's wife and had her husband murdered. A towering theologian can hold appalling views (and not just be excused as a 'child of his time').

The line dividing good and evil cuts through my heart too. As I look back at Christians of the past and wonder how they could have got some things so very right and other things so terribly wrong, I wonder what a Christian living in fifty, one hundred, two hundred years time would say if they could look back at my life. If they nodded their heads in agreement with my reformed, Baptist theology, what words and actions of mine would cause them to wince? On what issues would they ask how could someone who held to those Biblical principles end up so far from the mark in that particular way?

As our children get older, we're slowly teaching them that while good and evil are real and clear categories, labeling people as good or evil isn't quite so clear cut as they'd like to believe. We're reminding them that in the ultimate good vs evil story, we're the baddies and the only goody is Jesus. And yet we're also baddies who image God and so we can still reflect God's goodness, albeit in a distorted way. 

And so this is my plea to the adults: resist the caricatures. Recognise that people are complicated. Good and evil swirls together in each of our hearts. It's not that good and evil don't matter. I'm not saying that you should never describe someone as evil. I'm not saying that we should never apply church discipline, call out false teachers or judge that a leader is unfit for church or public office.

But we need to be nuanced in our thinking. It's a whole lot easier to view the world through a lens that views individuals (or groups of individuals) as simply goodies or baddies. But good and evil are too important to simply take the easy option. We must be honest about both the failings of people we admire and the good deeds of those we don't. We need to praise the good and we also need to be unequivocal about the bad. We need to be people of truth and integrity.

Post script: the following articles have been helpful for me in educating myself and sharpening my thinking on this issue, particularly regarding Christian heroes.

"Jonathan Edwards, Slavery, and the Theology of African-Americans", Thabiti Anyabwile

"Luther's Jewish Problem", Bernard Howard

"Some thoughts about statues..." Michael Ots

"When Our Heroes Don't Live Up to Their Theology", Thomas Kidd

"How I Process The Moral Failures of My Historical Heroes", John Piper

Smartphones and a simple change

It doesn't grab your attention. It was pretty cheap. The children like to play with it so it's been dropped on the floor a couple of times already; if you shake it, you can hear an ominous rattle of some loose parts inside.

A basic digital clock has been hands down my best purchase of the last year. 

I've been using a mobile phone as my digital clock and alarm since I was a teenager. I'd fumble for it in the night when I woke to check the time. It was often the last thing I checked at night and the first thing I looked at it in the morning. 

It had some good uses. Sometimes I used the last few minutes before I slept to catch up on my Bible memorisation. Sometimes I started the audio Bible app as soon I woke and let the Word of God flow over me for the first few minutes of my day. But far too often I checked my messages and emails first, followed by the news, followed sometimes by social media or random Internet browsing. 

I've read a lot in these last couple of years about smartphones and how they are changing us and the distraction they can be. I've read how getting rid of a smartphone temporarily or permanently, can be helpful and considered that option, but the reality is that I need my smartphone (or, more precisely, Whatsapp) for life here and for communication with those in my home country. Then I stumbled across this article on wrong reasons to check your phone in the morning and it resonated with me.

So I took the simple option and bought a digital alarm clock. I developed a new habit of leaving my phone in another room at night. My digital clock tells me the time. It wakes me up in a morning if I need it to (although with three children under the age of 5, that feature is rarely needed right now). And it does nothing else. I no longer start my day by looking at my phone and then get sucked into messages, emails, news or social media. 

And the crazy thing is that I've only gained with this change. If I have a few moments to myself before I need to get up in a morning, I get to use them in more spiritually profitable and mentally healthy ways. There have been no negative consequences from delaying checking my messages for an hour or two after I wake and only positive effects from framing my day with the most important things, thinking first of God and then the people he has literally put in front of me.

I'm not saying I've got it all sorted. Sometimes I get up early with the baby and grab my phone as soon as I get into the kitchen. Occasionally I forget to leave my phone in a different room. There are also times where, for ministry or family reasons, I need to be able to be contacted in the middle of the night. In those times, I keep my phone in the bedroom, all notifications muted except for incoming calls, and well out of arm's reach.

Buying a digital alarm clock sounds incredibly simple. It is incredibly simple! In fact it's so simple that it seems a little ridiculous to be writing a blog post about it. But it turns out simple changes can be some of the most effective. 

Ten years on

I'd like to say that I remember the first time the nine of us met together but I can't find the memory. I have plenty of other memories of the nine of us together to choose from though.

We were the new Executive Committee of our university's Christian Union (CU). A bunch of eager 19 and 20 year-olds who had the responsibility of leading the CU for the next year. We were all from different tribes of evangelicalism and attended a variety of churches between us. Between us there was (and continues to be) differing views over several 'secondary' theological issues and so there was plenty of potential for disagreements. But we were all united in the fundamentals of the Gospel and committed to helping our fellow Christian students make Christ known at our university.

That year we organised evangelistic events and talks, encouraged each other and our fellow students to pray, tried to help Christian students to get stuck into local churches, hosted CU meetings and weekends away, supported our small group student leaders and tried to share the Gospel with our own friends. We worked hard together, as well as being involved in our own churches and even managed to fit in some studying for our degrees as well.

We hadn't chosen each other as friends but had been thrown together by virtue of us all being asked to, and then agreeing, to take on different roles on the 'Exec'. But we spent a lot of time with each other and we grew close that year. We prayed together a lot. We laughed until we cried and sometimes we actually cried. In fact, after we'd finished our official duties and were no longer constrained to spend time together, we voluntarily went away for a few days as a group. I'd been a Christian since I was a fairly young child, but I grew so much that year and a lot of it was due to those people.

One conversation we had made a strong impression on me. I don't remember the specifics but I do remember the atmosphere becoming serious and the sober looks passed between us. Somehow it had come up in conversation that many people who were professing, active Christians at university slid away from the faith after graduation and during their 20s. Someone might have quoted some statistics about the percentage who fall away - I have no idea how substantiated they were. But we were mature enough to realise that having been CU leaders, dedicated in our Christian service, was no guarantee of continuing on in the faith. I remember the feeling of looking at each other, hoping that we'd prove the genuineness of our faith by keeping going.

Since then life has moved on and we've lost contact as a group. Some of us have kept in touch with others and, predictably, we've mostly seen each other at weddings. So it was a joy last week to have a ten year virtual reunion via a video call. Eight of us were able to make it, and there was news of the ninth person too. For one evening, we picked up where we'd left off in our friendships as we talked and laughed together. And I could have cried to hear that we are all continuing to follow Jesus.

As we all shared our different stories of what we've been doing in the last decade and how God has been at work in our lives, God's faithfulness shone through so clearly. There were happy updates of marriage, children, church life, work and house moves. The disappointments and griefs were given space too. They were all a monument to God's goodness.

This is not to boast in our own staying power though. For one thing, we're all only 30-ish years old! God willing, we have a lot of the race yet to run. Yet much more importantly, it is the Lord who keeps us. I firmly believe that no genuine Christian can fall away from the faith; the God who has called us will bring us safely home.

It's been a strange and difficult last couple of months. But in the midst of everything going on, I'm so glad that we were able to take a couple of hours to celebrate God's goodness to us. We raised our virtual Ebenezer and proclaimed that the Lord has helped us this far. And we prayed that God would keep us over the next ten years - and beyond - and finish the good work that he has started in each of us.