Is designated from a church budget that George establishes
with the help of the leaders. And we have categories of, of
spending for, you know, like the overhead of the church.
You know, our rent here and utilities, you know, run us
probably 90,000 a year that comes.
We pay that because of what you guys were able to give.
We have other expenses. We have, I believe it's 13
people on payroll. No one's getting rich here and
no one's making more than what the average person would make in
a job out there. Some people are part time.
We also have the expenses of, of Grace FM, which is is pretty
high to, to run the radio station, the the building out
front. We've been praying about
possibly expanding. This used to be 1 big building
with the Family Dollar when they were there.
They're gone now and the landlord said you guys might
want their clothes, right? Whatever goes out of business,
I'm thinking, well, that's never going to go out of business.
Well, guess what? They're out of business or their
clothes, right? So there's 8000 square feet
there and we love to be able to do that.
So we, we talked to the landlord, had you guys praying
about it and they want $18.00 a square foot, which is like more
than we can afford. We, we spend about, it's about I
think it's $5.60 a square feet, square foot for 13,000 square
feet, which we have here. So we're not going to go and
spend that and triple that to have that small space upfront.
So pray that the landlord might change his mind because the
sign's been up for a long time and no one's talking about
renting it. So maybe they might come back to
us and say, hey, you know, this might be good for you guys,
we're going to give you a better deal.
So if they would, then we could expand and, and have that space.
And then we also have a fund of savings for future need if down
the road something opens up. There's a church that contacted
us a while back that may be interested in selling their
property. And it's, it's a really nice
facility and we would have it as our own instead of renting.
But in order to do that, we have to have money to do that, right?
And we wouldn't ever do anything to put the church in financial
upheaval or pressure. You know, it's something we're
just praying about. But we we habitually save also.
So there there is maybe something to help us down down
the road in the future. So giving is an act of worship.
It's it's not they're leaving. They don't like the message.
Our money. I'm just kidding.
You know it, it's it's part of the worship like we sing, we
worship, we're in the word, we worship, we take communion where
we worship and giving is part of our worship.
Jesus said seek first the Kingdom of God and his
righteousness and everything else you have need of will be
added to you. So the more you understand that
concept and you put God first in your budget, the more and this
isn't a prosperity message your gospel here.
It's just the reality of if you, if you so abundantly, you'll
reap abundantly. Cindy and I always and I didn't
have much money when we first married.
We always understood the principle of giving and it was
always the number one line item in our budget.
You know, had mortgages and cars and raising kids and all that
kind of stuff, entertainment, vacation, those are all part of
the budget. But we all, we, we never
circumvented putting God first in our finances and he's, he's
blessed us because of that. We've never been in a situation
where we've been out of work or needed to beg for money from our
parents or anything like that. He's just provided so
faithfully. So it's a principle of giving.
Jesus says layout for yourselves.
Treasures in heaven versus treasures on earth, where
treasures on earth moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in,
steal away cars rest as great as it is when you get a new car,
eventually it's not a new car anymore.
It's dinged up, right, John? And that's how you make money
fixing cars that are dinged up it it's funny, man, you ride
passes graveyards of cars and you see that all those, all that
metal in there rusted away. And how much did we spend for
our cars at one time, right? You got to be cautious about
that, I guess, But and then you know, people can rob you.
I remember when we were first married, we lived in a motel
room as efficiency in Atlantic City.
And somehow someone got in the door with a key and I didn't
have it locked properly. And next thing I know I wake up
and someone's in a room. Like thank God I chased him out
and and we had our money, our paycheck in our pockets of our
pants instead of on the table. So he didn't get much.
He got a camera and I think A8 track tape recorder or
something. And that was, that was it, you
know, but it was gone. And, you know, we didn't have a
whole lot back then. But when you find that you, you
have a budget and, and you got to, you got to pay your bills,
you got to pay your taxes, you got to take care of your kids
and your mortgage and your car payments and all the, all the
things are important. You never want to not have the
Lord in your, your budget because this is, this is what
this is about. Because of them being faithful
in how they manage the offerings.
They didn't have to tell the people, hey, these people in
Jerusalem need some help. So we're going to have another
offering today. It was already there available.
So we have that in the bank account for crisis as we have
that in the bank account for benevolence.
When someone in our, our Community Church here is in
crisis, we're able to help them and, and help them get through
some tough times temporarily. And, and that's a blessing.
So this is the purpose of, of the giving.
And it wasn't a duty, but it was a responsibility.
And it wasn't like, I'll give whenever I feel like it.
It was systematic where like every week or every month, some
people give by month, some people give by week, whatever.
It was like program like I, I can't tell Verizon like or my
cell phone. Hey, you know, I'm a little
tapped out this month. I'm not going to pay my bill.
Guess what, I'm not going to have any cell service or my gas
bill or my water bill or my electric bill.
And but it's, it's interesting how I don't know we, we know
those things are important, but we don't think about God's
Kingdom that way. But but God doesn't need our
money like he he can, He does what he doesn't regardless of of
what you give or what I give, but we get a privilege of being
part of that giving right. And and so he says in my
father's house are many mansions.
If it were not so, I would have told you.
And if I told you I'd go to prepare a place for you that
where I am, you may be also, guess what?
There's going to be mansions in heaven.
And whatever you invest in God's Kingdom will be somehow tied
into the type of place you have in heaven.
I don't know what it's going to be like.
There's no socialism in heaven. And, and it's interesting, the
Lord knows who's who's on his team and who's really involved
in supporting his Kingdom and those who are sort of
lackadaisical about it, right? And so, but we won't be thinking
like we get to heaven, boy, why does Eichelberger have that big
house? And I have a small one, right?
And the Lord said, well, well, Steve was really focused on my
Kingdom. And, you know, he, he, he was
really, you know, studious and he gave his income.
And I know you helped too, Clark, but you didn't help us.
And it's not be that way, OK, we're not going to be jealous or
wondering why, why that, but but the ability to experience the
Kingdom in a in a deeper and richer way is going to be
predicated on how much you were involved in in that Kingdom.
And so that's why he says invest in treasures that aren't on
earth, but invest in treasures in heaven.
And so the early church met on Sundays and that was not out of
coincidence because Jesus rose from the dead on Resurrection
Sunday. And we just left chapter 15
where it talked about the resurrection.
And now we're in 16 and he's talking to them about meeting on
the first day of the week, which is, which is Sunday.
So Paul didn't ask for special collections.
He assumed and, and, and planned on that church being prepared to
help with this crisis in Jerusalem, which they were able
to do. We have a big missionary focus
in this church and we'll talk about that in a minute.
The missionaries we support, why we do and all that kind of
stuff. But giving is a personal,
individual deal, has nothing to do with me or anybody else.
It's between you and God. And giving helps with outreach.
It enables us to do things that we could never do without being
a team together and what it is we do do here.
One of the the toughest things when you're a pastor is when
there's a snow day and your church got to close, right.
The church is closed. Guess what, there's no offering
that Sunday, right? And so God catches up with it.
But I I looked at that Sunday that it snowed.
The church lost $7000 that week. That's a lot of money, right?
Does it the, the catch up? Well, the Lord where he guys, he
provides and the church has caught up.
But we don't have to worry about, you know, the finances
because as long as we do it the right way, God's going to bless
the finances. But everything's based upon
Matthew 2820 where the Great Commission says go into all the
world and preach the gospel to every living creature.
In order to do that and to send people out and to plant churches
and have missionaries, it requires revenue or cash.
God tells us that we're to give as he's prospered us In Second
Corinthians Chapter 9 verse 7, it says we're to give
cheerfully, not out of constraint or guilt trip.
I love this verse. It says let each one give as he
purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity.
For God loves a cheerful giver. So if you're not cheerful and
giving, don't give. Don't, don't.
Whatever you do, do not give because it's going to burn.
Don't think like, well, you know, I, I should help this
church out. So I'll throw 5 or 10 bucks in
the box on the way out. But I really don't want to do
that because I'd rather go to Longhorn for lunch, right?
But you know, if you're thinking that way, don't give.
You know, God only wants you to give if you have a heart and a
desire to give, right? It's supposed to be joyful, not
a not a like have to, but I want to.
I remember one of our teachers in Bible colleges, a funny
story, he was talking about the word to give hilariously.
And what does that mean? And I don't know if he was a
golfer or whatever, but he said, yeah, it's like you're playing
golf and you get a hole in one and you're so excited.
You go to the 19th hole where people have a beer or a glass of
wine or coke or whatever their interest in drink, and he goes
in, he's so happy because he got that hole in one.
He's a drinks for everyone and he doesn't care about how much
it's going to cost. He's just so excited.
He got the hole in one. And so this sort of an
interesting concept that you want to have that kind of energy
and that kind of joy and giving cheerfully and you you give
proportionally. Like obviously everybody has
different budgets. Some people are really tight to
the line and they're only able to give a certain amount based
upon their income. Some people say you give 10%.
Well, I know people that are focused on giving 2030405060.
There was a guy, RJ Letourneau had an engineering school in
Texas. He was very wealthy, aerospace
kind of guy, long before aerospace was a big deal.
He's an engineer in flight communications and Letourneau
Institute and he wanted to challenge God based upon what
God bless them with. He said, Lord, I want to
eventually live on 10% of what I get.
God made that guy so wealthy multimillionaire that the 10%
was nothing. He eventually was able to give
90%. Very fascinating story.
So people give as God purposes in their heart.
So if I'm making say 500,000 a year, which I don't, I wish I
did, but I don't, 50,000 is 10%. Well, someone else is making
10,000 a year gives 1000. I'm, I'm not any better than the
person that's given the one proportionately, but if God's
blessing me and I have bandwidth financially that I can afford to
give to his work and his work isn't thus Calvary Chapel.
It's every ministry around the world that you might be
compelled to be involved with. If I'm making 500, maybe I can
afford to give 30,030% of my income or someone else has given
10%, but there's no number on what God says you give as far as
percent, 10% is a good place to start, but it how can you out
give God? And if God says to me, Clark, I
want 10% of what you have, I'm thinking that's a deal, Lord, I
can keep 90%, right? That's what it was like in the
Old Testament, 10% was a very small percentage of everything
got in, entrusted the people with right.
So those who earn more obviously have the ability to give more.
So what percent is that? Well, that's something you and
the wife or the family or individual, you, you, you get
before the Lord and you talk about your budget and then you
manage what it is that He's given you.
Now in this church, George is the pastoral financial manager
of the assets of the church along with the elders.
And we vote on things and we pray together before we do
anything. No one does anything
arbitrarily. Lewis and I have no ability to
control anything that happens here.
It's through the body of Christ and through the leadership.
We pray and we steward what it is that God entrusts us with.
So the books are always open. If you're ever concerned about
anything, you can ask George and he'll show you the categories
and what the church has done. If you're, if you're a serious
person who gives and you have any time the opportunity to get
a hold of him. If you're concerned about
anything regarding how the church handles its money, we
have nothing to hide. Total 100% transparency.
If you don't give, then you really have no business looking
at the budget, right? If you give 2%, I don't know, I
don't think you should really even be concerned about the
budget. But if you're giving a
significant amount of your income and you're questioning or
you're ever concerned, you always can look at it and we
have nothing to hide. So enough's enough, right?
I covered enough of that, right? Does anybody not understand what
I said? Is everybody, anybody like what
I said? Raise your hand because anybody
don't like what I said, raise your hand.
OK, we'll talk outside. Get your boxing gloves on.
OK. We're going to talk about
missions now, right? And what what happens in the
church regarding regarding missions.
I'm going to move his chair here so I can see a little bit
better. So put the first slide up.
This is Joy in and Hope Coda. Hope grew up at Calvary Chapel.
She was a teenager, young girl, used to sit in the back, never
talk. We're really shy.
Her and her husband, Christian, they're both church planners
now. And as coming out of this
church, this is a fruit of this ministry and we want to be
involved in helping them with what it is that they do.
So there are significant missionary support team.
They're in Chile working with young girls, Bible studies,
outreach. Chili's a predominantly dead
country as far as Christianity, and so there's a lot of work to
do, but they're they're planning the church there.
She was involved in the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Peru
and, and met her husband Julia in there.
And and so they got married and then they had a heart to go
plant a church in a unreached community and country.
So that's where where they are in Chile.
They just glow for the Lord. Very, very humble, just just a
real blessing. And I saw her at the pastors
conference last year. And sometimes you, you see the
countenance of someone and she just glowed.
She was so beautiful. I said, are you pregnant?
You know, usually when women get pregnant, they glow, right?
And he's. Her husband said, no, no, I
don't think she's pregnant. Yeah.
No, it was Jesus. She was so excited about what he
was going to do in Chile. And so pray for them.
That's one of our main missionaries.
Next one is the Marquis. Marquis.
Wonderful people. They were in Ukraine, Budapest.
Eventually they had to flee Ukraine in the midst of the war.
They're in Budapest now, planting other churches, but
still going back and forth to Ukraine, helping the the people
who are leaving Ukraine and going to different parts of the
country like Budapest, Hungary. And that's where they live now.
His father was a dear friend of mine.
I met him at a pastors conference when there was only
200 of us there. And now there's almost 2000 of
us now Calvary and East Coast. And we developed such a close
friendship. He, he said, Clark, would you
come to Ukraine and help me there?
I said, man, I just started this church a month ago.
I said, I believe I'm supposed to stay there at the, at the
church in Greensburg. But he had such a heart.
And so he came out and, and shared and, and this he planted
over 2530 churches in Ukraine, 2530 churches in Ukraine.
And so hold on just for a second with the Marquis, his wife is
writing a book on what it's like to be a wife of a pastor.
All, all his sons are on fire for the Lord.
And so so we support them as Calvary Chapel missionaries.
Next one's the bail bonds. Anybody remember Christian on
the left when you came or some of you folks remember him when
you were here in the church? Christian Belmont, Just you
remember him, don't you, Christian?
Wonderful. Remember how shy he was, him and
Hope and now him and his wife. He's married, got a couple
beautiful kids. That's his mother-in-law or I
think it's his pastor and his wife.
They visit him. They're in Albania and so
they've just started the church and go to the next slide.
They, they grew up obviously at Calvary here Westmoreland.
And so we, we support them. And next slide, that's one of
their Bible studies. Next slide, that's their church,
very humble, small at this point in time, but the Lord is
beginning to, to fill it up. See where are we going next
year? This is Pakistan.
That's Phi Lehman. He's been a dear friend of mine
since the church started. He's on the left.
His dad was a pastor in Pakistan.
His dad preached in our church and many, many years ago, very
humble man. He took his shoes off when he
went to the pulpit because he said that sacred holy ground,
that was their culture. And that's a very impoverished
area. 1% maybe Christian. Philemon had to flee the country
for religious persecution, passing Bibles out.
His friend was martyred. He came back home.
His family was left there. They were safe and took him two
or three years to get them to the US And we helped with that.
And they live in Philadelphia now.
But he goes back and forth to Pakistan so that we've been
supporting them forever. Next slide more pictures of the
kids in Pakistan that they help. Next slide this is Paul and Pat
diet sort of distorted but he was one of the missionaries new
tribes mission when we Cindy and I went to Bible college and he's
like a hero to me. I was 20, some early 20s and he
was in his mid 40s and good looking strong guy and this a
real pioneer. He get down the riverboat, you
know, to these unreached people groups in Venezuela and learn
the languages. His dad was one of the first
martyrs at New Tribes. He lost his dad when he was a
little boy, but he grew up and his mom was one of the groups of
people that went back to the people that killed his father to
share the gospel and they eventually got saved.
And because of that, there's so much new birth in the jungles of
Venezuela. And Paul, he was captured in a
plane. They took his plane and he, he
was, he thought he was going to die.
And, and his story and remarkable, he told it in the
church here a couple times and how he was able to sneak out in
the middle of the night. The people, the guards were
blinded. They couldn't see him moving
around. He was able to get into the
plane. There was just enough gas to get
out of the jungle and and get safe again.
This amazing, amazing story, Paul, Paul die, they're still
alive. He's been battling cancer.
He was involved with flight training, training missionary
pilots and now he works in prison ministry.
So they just sent us a card recently.
Next slide, This is a Dawson's working in Venezuela.
They use the Google Maps to find like different places in in the
jungle. They used to think that they had
reached most of the people there and all of a sudden they see
these openings and the openings represent where people are are
migrating. They're nomadic people.
And so when they move around their jungle huts, they just
destroy them. They've taken pretty much all
the produce or whatever was available there at the time.
And then they moved to another place and they've been there.
Mike's my age, his mom and dad are missionaries.
They went there when she was pregnant with, I think Gary, his
brother. And when they got off the plane,
the missionaries they were replacing, they said to them,
you guys got to be the biggest fools I've ever met.
And the guy says, why you bring your kids down here to this baby
and then this jungle. And then, well, the Lord did
miracles through this couple and the mom and dad were there and
now they're with the Lord and, and the kids have been there for
over 50 years or 60 years now. And next slide, they were the
first. This is a tribe here that
they're sharing the torches with.
We talked about last fall, little device that has a light
on empowered by sun energy. And then it has the gospel in
their own dialect language, which is remarkable.
And it also has the Jesus information on Jesus movement
movie and all that. They go around, they take
projector and they go into these villages at night and they show
the the Jesus movie and the passion of Christ.
And these people never saw a movie before.
So hundreds of them get together and they don't move.
They just sit there. And then the tears start coming
down their eyes because they start to realize that Jesus died
for them. And because of that, there's
believers all over the tribes of Venezuela, and they're so
thankful that this horrible government event, Venezuela, has
been toppled now so that they can have gas to get into the
villages, because that guy that was running it before really
made it very, very difficult for the missionaries.
So that's the Dawsons, that's the torch there.
And that we keep trying to help supply more of those so that
they can have more to keep getting the gospel.
This is next slide. This is my brother, Pastor Mark
Abrams. He spoke at Calvary Philly here
from Calgary, Philadelphia, initially.
And he's in North Philly now. Big earth when we spoke in our
church last year, Very dear, close friend of mine.
He's a big earth, wind and fire guy.
And anybody like earth, wind and fire in here.
Yeah, I always get him to sing. That's the way of the world
every time we see each other to Congress, come on, sing some
earth, wind and fire for me. But anyway, he's got that high
falsetto voice and he's he actually leads the worship
there. His voice is unbelievable.
And he he's in an impoverished area in in Philly, North
Philadelphia. We support that ministry and
they do all kind of outreaches. Next slide.
They go into the community in the city and food giveaways and
clothing giveaways in the parks in the city of Philadelphia.
Some of the former Eagles help him with the Bible studies
there. It's just really exciting
ministry. This is Christian counseling
associates. We're involved with them.
They are a wonderful organization that has counseling
ministry and three states local and then Arizona and some other
places. They will provide counseling for
anybody that's in crisis, OK. And if you don't have the money,
most counselors will say we we're sorry, we can't help you.
They'll charge only 15 bucks or something like that that you
would pay for a McDonald's meal to help people.
They don't turn anybody away and they're having a banquet coming
up. We support them, wonderful
people. Our brother back here and his
wife, they're involved in serving in that ministry.
Stand up once. We're thankful for what you guys
do in that ministry. Thank you and what else we got
here. Turning Point USA.
This is an organization's faith that we are involved in to.
It's not a political organization on our side, but it
is a conservative organization. And the purpose of TPUSA faith
is to get the gospel out to be salt and light in the community
with outreaches and ministries into the county commissioners
meetings and the school board meetings and the high schools to
help the young people that are leading these groups and most of
the high schools around here. Tuesday night we had or Thursday
night we had a young man from Ligonier High School, 17 years
old, talking about the issues of the culture and they need to get
the gospel out. Very, very smart, sharp young
guy at 17. If any of you young teenagers
are looking for a guy that you want to possibly date, let me
know and I'll hook you up with him.
He's a good looking guy and, and he's got his act together.
Believe me, not too many guys and they're 1718 have their act
together. This guy is solid.
So Fred back there. Fred, stand up for a minute.
He's our local point guy of turning point in our church.
She's a retired military Colonel from the Air Force, right?
And, and so he, he understands the dynamics of what we're
doing. Also the midterm elections that
are coming up and the big ones in the, in the fall, these are,
these are critical for conservative people to vote.
And so we want to have a voting drive to get people registered
to vote so that all Christians are voting.
Last election, 30% of the Christians didn't vote because
they didn't like Trump. 20% of gun, gun owners didn't vote.
Push all that stuff away. Trump will eventually not be
present anymore. Right now he is.
Thank God for the sake of the safety of our borders and these
kind of things. A lot of things he does I'm not
real happy with either. But he's the better of the
choice at that time, right? So you got to vote the lesser of
two evils because you only get two people to choose from, but
you need to vote the Bible. We're going to have Bible
training voting classes so that people understand when they
vote, they're voting biblical principles, not personalities.
OK, That's very important. And if we can get the vote out,
we won't go backwards again. So TPUSA faith is something
we're involved in. Next thing, Grace FM, this is
the the biggest ministry that we're involved in as far as
missions. Let's see here the budget of, of
our mission in the church is 20% about $75,000 of what you guys
give goes toward missions and Grace FM is, is one of the, the,
the biggest things because of the expense of running it,
building it and the to build that station about $130,000.
And the church was able to pay cash for that along with a
partner that we have, Bob Stevens, who is involved with
partial ownership of that station.
Christian guy who owns a lot of radio stations.
He has classic rock, country, easy listen and pop.
We're in the process of getting some ads on those stations to
point people to the sister station, which is 91.7 Grace FM.
So pray for that to be able to reach a secular audience with
letting people. Another Grace FM is involved in
the community. That station reaches far and
wide and people were able to hear the gospel.
Some of you were here because you've heard Grace FM and you
listen to it. And that's that's very, very
exciting.