Welcome to the podcast.

This is episode 388.

My name is Douglas Wilson, and I'm glad you decided to join us.

So what I wanted to do in this podcast is sort of give you an update such as it is and a brief explainer on what we are attempting to do with our church plant in Washington, D.C.,

and also what we're attempting to do in a church plant at Hillsdale, Michigan,

which is going to begin at the end of August, last Sunday in August.

Now, as I'm recording this, we've had two worship services

in D.C. and we're off to a really healthy start. Very grateful for the work on the ground that's

being done. There are some people in the area that have been commuting to a CREC church plant

in Annapolis, Maryland, and they've been

invaluable as they've done the footwork on the ground to get things pulled together. We've rented

a space on basically right near the capital, right downtown D.C. And the first Sunday, we had 230 people. I think we had 160 chairs and 230 people,

and they brought an extra chairs and standing room only. And so this last Sunday was more like 175

people, which meant that the curious or the people who were just coming the first week to see what the heck was going on, that evened out a bit. And so we've got a really robust start there in Washington, D.C. Now, I've written on this. We've talked about this, but I think we should be emphasizing these things in every venue that we have. And so I want to emphasize it here. What we're doing and what we're not doing. What we're not doing is we're not trying to network with people. This is not an ecclesiastical lobbying effort. We are not trying to meet important people so that we can

influence them or lobby them or try to get them to do stuff for us. What we are doing is recognizing

that there are a lot of believers, a lot of Christians in Washington, D.C., who have these

responsibilities already. They're making decisions already. And we want people like that to have

a community, a worshiping community of like-minded people where they can come on the first day of the week and

worship God and worship God in a way that is honoring to him and that encourages his saints

and strengthens them to do the right thing. So this is not an ecclesiastical lobbying agency that meets on Sunday. What we're

doing is we are meeting and worshiping God. That's what we're doing. And we are, we raised

money beforehand to be able, and we raised enough money to fly preachers in, and all the preachers who are coming in are

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