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Ep 146: GraceWay, From Logistics To Ministry Growth (Part 2)

• Pastor/ Artist Fred Kenney Jr. • Season 3 • Episode 146

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"What happens when a logistics exec surrenders his plans and lets God redirect the entire playbook? Pastor Don Schwing continues with us for a conversation about how leadership, faith, and kindness can transform a whole community."

A ground-level story of faith, logistics, and community impact: how a below-market building, creative member lending, and township favor sparked a food pantry, ESL and GED programs, and multi-service growth rooted in worship, not consumption. We share how a simple mindset shift—“I get to”—reshaped prayer, volunteering, metrics, and long-term planning toward disciple making and future campuses.

• Securing a $1M property for ~$600k through providence and persistence
• Member-financed purchase using IRAs with simple interest
• Township favor and streamlined approvals for rapid buildout
• Volunteer-led renovations saving significant labor costs
• A relational food pantry offering prayer and dignity
• ESL and GED pathways that open doors for the gospel
• Staffing and hospitality designed for disciple making
• Service-time strategy to balance capacity and culture
• Protecting volunteers from burnout with rotations
• Planning for multi-site growth over three to five years
• The “I get to” mindset for prayer and service
• Honoring a 90-year legacy while preparing to multiply

To find out more, check out our website at playsonword.org

Pastor Don Schwing, Executive Pastor - GraceWay Bible Church

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SPEAKER_02:

Lord, you know. You're now listening to play is the best. When I was leaving the youth, I would say that we met on Wednesday nights. And so when you talk to your friends and they said, hey, do you want to get together, want to hang out tonight? What do you tell them that you're doing? Do you tell them, well, I have to go to youth group tonight, or I'm going to youth group tonight. Tonight's my youth group night. Why don't you come? You know, what is what is your rationale? I can't do this on Sunday because I have church. No, I said, no, I said, you know, I go to church, you know, church is what I do. I have the privilege of worshiping God.

SPEAKER_00:

What happens when a logistics exact surrenders his plans and lets God redirect the entire place of Pastor Don't continue with us for a conversation about how leadership, faith, and finance can transform the whole community.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello and welcome to Plays on Word Radio, where we discussed, analyze, work, and play on the Word of God. Oh yeah. Thank you for joining us on this excursion today. Let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr., the founder of Plays on Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God.

SPEAKER_03:

Amen, amen, and welcome to Plays on Word Radio. Thank you very much, Katie Kenny and Josh Taylor. My name is Fred David Kenny Jr. from Plays on Word. That's right. That's me. And uh we are continuing our conversation with the Reverend Don Schwing from Graceway Bible Church. Our dear brother Mark Crabtree, who has been on the podcast a couple times, uh uh is an assistant pastor at Graceway Bible Church, and so is Dr. Scott Taransky, who we need to have on the program at some point. God willing, we will have him. But um, we're gonna continue our conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we couldn't find the owner anywhere. We did all the tax records, all the stuff that we were that you could you could do without being a realtor. Uh so we made an announcement at the church hey, this um uh this this is an opportunity for us. We just we cannot find out who the owner is. Somebody from the church calls me on Monday, says, I know somebody who knows somebody. I'll give you a call in about 10 minutes. Calls me back, bound, you know, one, two, three company. I'm like, I think that's the owner. So I called our realtor, like, yep, that's the owner. And we're like, we're like, are you kidding me? So we had our realtor, if we were gonna go to the market, he estimated at about a million dollars uh for the building and and the property. They came in with 600,000 and change. That's what they offered to. Absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh it's it it just god wanted it gets better.

SPEAKER_02:

So we uh banks don't typically like to loan to churches, only special banks do, because they don't ever want to foreclose on a church. And we're not we're not for profit, we don't run carnivals, we don't do any of that stuff. It's just gifts from God. So essentially our books are always break essentially break-even. Uh, you know, we have a little bit of positive giving, and that goes into savings and future growth. Um, so there was we were really not going to be able to get any sort of advantageous rate. So Scott had an idea. Let's appeal to the church. Let's see if we can get, for round numbers, six people to donate a hundred thousand dollars to loan the church a hundred thousand dollars each. We'll charge five percent interest non-compounded. So this way it's it's just the interest at the end of the year. It's not, you know, it's not compounded like on your mortgage. Um and you became your own credit. We exactly did, and we had six people that had IRAs that redirected it to the church. You you put an IRA fund and redirected it to the church, and we bought the building.

SPEAKER_03:

And that you gotta run a book, man. You gotta write a book, man. This this is that that that's amazing. That got where God guides, he provides.

SPEAKER_02:

That was January 2024, and we've been um the township, the township wanted us to do this, they wanted it to come to the church. Uh, and as much as homeowner, I live in this, I live in our town, uh, so as much as homeowners gripe about the township and the inspectors, I've never had a problem, but I realize that some people have and it's one of those things. If you're just honest and up front with them, they're good. If you try to go around them, they're just gonna get to they're gonna get upset and they're gonna really hold you to every every uh screw, you know, and every whatever. Uh so we told them what we wanted to do. We wanted to expand our parking, and they had an issue with the property line because they were saying that there's a certain setback you need to have between property lines when you butt up your parking space. It's just like if you put a shed on your home property, you can't put it up right against your property line, you have to have a certain setback. And they're like, Well, tell you what, if you were to combine those two lots together, you wouldn't need to worry about any setback at all. And you could just do whatever you want to do. And we're like, okay, great idea. Do we need to go to the planning board, the zoning board? Do we need to do any of that sort of stuff? And they thought about and they're like, nah, we'll just do this in the office. We could it could have been tens of thousands of dollars of lawyers and and it could still be in red tape right now. It could still be in red tape. And they're like, no problem. So they got that that, we got we're on a county road, so we got the approval with the county. Everything just just flowed all completely God's hand in all of this. So we start we start doing the work. There's certain things that you technically should have permits for, but the guy who runs the who's the um the chairman of that whatever department uh said, you're fine. You don't need a demo permit for that. Just go ahead and do your stuff, just be safe when you're doing it. All the life safety stuff we need to do, building fire, electrical, plumbing, all the stuff we needed to do. And whenever we ran into a hiccup, they helped us out. Uh, we have one guy here at the church. He has done almost all of the work by himself. He's essentially G-seated for us, he's just as all the work. And say, you know, again, looking at um how God has blessed us with having this person, and he probably there probably would have been an extra$30,000 in labor. This guy's just taking on himself and just volunteered. So we we have a center.

SPEAKER_03:

Man, that's good.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh we still we were able, they even allowed us to get a temporary CO so we could just operate a food pantry out of the back of it. So we have a food pantry but we've been running for close to a year now, uh, out of there. And it's not a what I would call a drive-thru pantry because there's some churches that are like, okay, here's your bag of groceries, you drop them in the car and then you leave, and it's a sort of a feel good. Uh, but no, we have people come in, we pray with them. Now we don't uh proselytize, we don't like hold the food hostage, but we're like, hey, do you need to pray for anything? We have like a nice prayer room, we can sit in there, we can talk with them. No, and we've been able to share the gospel with several people. Actually, it was amazing. The the first time that I was there, I was there by myself. Two women came in, and I I believe they were I I my impression was that they were lesbians, uh, but I just I just shared God's truth with them. I didn't get into their lifestyle. I'm like, listen, just read scripture, you need to be convicted by the Lord uh to come into a relationship with Him. And they they had hard questions, and you know, I answered them as best as the Lord um had me answer them. Um and we've been able to do this with these families. We've had a couple of families that have started attending Graceway from the connection with the outreach center. We've had people who have started attending Graceway because we have an outreach center, because we are doing this for the community. They want to be part of a church that is engaging the community physically and spiritually through the food pantry, that's engaged and spiritually through English as a second language classes. We started out as one small class. We now have three classes of an evangelism-based ESL uh I love it. Oh my goodness, I love that. That's awesome. What's weird about ESL? I thought it was, you know, with Spanish to English or Arabic to English. No, you just learn English. You you learn English expressions, but you're learning scripture and the Bible. Yeah, you're learning the Bible along the way, and it's it's fantastic. And now we're starting uh GE classes, uh, which are a little bit more um, they're they're not as evangelism, they're not evangelism-based because it's a state uh program, uh, but it's one-on-one with people here at the church, and it opens up pathways to people to share the gospel with them.

SPEAKER_03:

So that's been man, if you know, if you went back uh uh 100 to 200 years, the the textbook was the Bible, man. I mean, people learned how to read from the they learned learned English from the Bible, man. So hey, I love what's going on, man.

SPEAKER_02:

That's awesome. It's been fantastic. And our staff has continued, um, our staff has continued to grow. So as the church church grows, we want to make sure we have the right support with there, right support for people there. We are not a um we are not a, I'm gonna say a consumer focused church. Um churches, uh a lot of times churches are just focused on the numbers. Uh they just want, okay, what's my attendance? And that's it. So but yeah, attendance is there has to be some sort of metric. I mean, I can't dismiss numbers. There has to be some sort of metric. There, you know, we're we have expenses, so we have to look at the finances and we have, you know, what's the attendance numbers? But that's only one part of it. So where is the disciple making? So how are the baptisms? How are we have our we have a monthly navigating graceway class? So what's the attendance like at that? And what's the visitor retention? Are we adequately ministering to people? So we've set up our um our engagement um uh we call it our hospitality ministry. It's our engagement. So parking, ushering, greeting, uh, welcome area, security, um, fellowship, all part of trying to get people engaged in the body um here at the church. I've started a uh I've started a grace group. They're growth groups, we call them grace groups for Graceway. I started one just for new believers because when you're new, it's hard for you to want, it's hard for you to jump into a group that's been a group for 10 years. Oh, Sally's doing good and Bobby's doing this. I have no idea who Sally and Bobby are. So I started a group just for people who are newer, just as a launching pad for them part of of the the Grace Group uh ministry. But we brought wow, uh, we brought uh Pastor Mark on board. Uh we were seeing a my doctoral work was in um uh engaging uh Gen uh trying to engage Gen Zers uh in the church. Um moving through a couple different uh angles. Uh but I I we were seeing Gen Z really, and now Gen Alpha uh really start to re-engage here at the church. We're seeing we were seeing it grow, and we really felt that we needed someone to a staff person to take charge there. Uh so we hired a mark um Mark uh Crabtree, um, who was pastoring another church as he was close to winding down from that area of ministry. Um and we we had this opportunity for him here, and he's taken it and run with it. He's been so fantastic. We've moved him from part-time to full-time um as he tries to get uh more and more young families engaged. Uh so we have a parsonage on site here. Um yeah, I don't I don't need it, I have I have my own house. Um and then at the same time, um Pastor Boyd um from Pennsylvania Alliance Church was leaving, was stepping aside from the church and started a ministry uh to help refugees. So these are legal refugees who've been um um who've been exploited or at risk of harm in their own countries based on a number of criteria. They've gone through the entire process. They want to try and help them resettle here. They want to try and help them resettle here uh in the area. So we started uh putting refugee families in in our house and our parsonage. Um and then I was with that and the outreach center, and just the only thing I could I could way I could describe it is a spiritual vibe. I just had the sense that Graceway was on the cusp of something huge uh in the area. In addition to that, our township and our board of ed building in two different areas are now being there's a new building being built across the street. So that's like 800 people every day across the street from us. New apartments going up. We got a development, um, we got an empty lot across the street here, uh, maybe some some uh some age restricted housing. I'm like, okay, God has placed us here at this corner for a reason. We're just about in the geographic and um uh population center of the town. We got two high schools, dead center. We got two high schools, 1600 kids each, two miles in each direction. We got two middle schools in each direction. Um, there's like something like I don't know, 1,400 cars every day, or some some huge number, I forget the number, pass in front of our church every day. I'm saying God is doing something huge here. I couldn't put my finger on it, but attendance started to grow and grow. They're like, all right, man, we need to do something because we got way too many at nine o'clock and not enough at 11 or 1045. I said, we need to, because you know the the convention is when your church is about 75% full of seating, uh is you're considered full. We have 200 seats on the floor, and when our attendants at nine o'clock was 220. So we're sitting in the lobby, we're we're in the balcony, we're hanging on the edge, we're you know, and if you're a guest coming in five minutes late, you know, because you were at the welcome table or something like that, you're you're done, you're sitting in the back of a sudden while I'm coming back to a church. So we shifted our service times forward half an hour to 8:30 to 10 and 1015. And that helped a little bit. We saw 8:30 was too early for some people. Uh so we saw some of that shift go to 1015. But the amazing thing was is we started to see so many guests coming in at 1015 that wanted to just they wanted to, that was their that was their choice. And I'm like, this is fantastic. I was like, well, now we're still not now now we're over, we're almost like we're 100% in the first service, and we're at 75 in the second. Well, now what do we do? All right, well, I said, well, okay, well, that's what does three services look like? And so through a couple of different scenarios. We looked at do we uh do we do a Saturday night service? Do we do a Sunday night service? Do we do a midweek service? You know, there's also the challenges with parking. So how do we handle all this stuff?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I came to realize uh that the people who come to worship at Graceway come for the Sunday worship experience, not to consume church. They want to be part of worship. That's what I was talking about, not being a consumer-based church. So they want to be part of worship, and probably about 40% of the people who attend one service stay for the Sunday school that's available that runs concurrent with the next service. So at nine, at eight o'clock, we have 100 people. 50 of them will be staying for a 9:30 Sunday school class. Well, you know, at nine o'clock, maybe we have uh for easy math, I'm gonna make it 180. 90 will stay for the 1045, and the same thing, people who are will stay for the 11 o'clock Sunday school class, and the those that are 11 come early for the 9:30 Sunday school class. So it's it's it's about being part of the life of the church. So Saturday night would not accomplish that. Saturday night would be for people who want to consume church or just want to, yeah, you know, and we we're we do not want to be a type of church where people check a box. Uh, and then a bit of our uh and Sunday evening would sort of be the same thing. Uh and with our Baptist background, we're not a Baptist church, we're a non-denominational independent church, but with our Baptist background, we used to have Sunday night church, and Sunday night was considered an extension of Sunday morning. So that really wouldn't work either. And it would be very difficult for the staff and the volunteers to go home and get back, and we got stuff started up, we got to stop. Like it's these are just let's just let's just do it here. So we had to make it an adjustment we adjusted a little bit. We did have to eliminate one worship song to allow for the time because you have to have the clearance between one service getting out and the other service coming in. Right. But the interesting thing, notoriously, at Graceway, 80% of the people come in five minutes late. I don't know why that is, but when we but when I when we start out in the morning and there's you know 30 people and then we turn around and then they're after the first song, there's 80.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm like, what's going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's amazing. You know what? I'm listening to you, man, and I'm like, I'm seeing how the Lord utilized your logistics background, probably even supervised it, you know, your logistics background um for the specific time and place he's brought you to right now, where like you're probably drawing on things that are just second nature to you, but it's because you've been trained up and like Joseph. Joseph was trained up in logistics way before he worked for Pharaoh. He was he was a logistics guy. He was he was dealing with okay, this is how you manage things and making things, you know, how to handle not just people but budgets and everything else.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's such it is a prior to becoming a you know the pastor here, um, one of the things I had thought God may be using me for is to utilize my logistics to help churches. Because there's lots of pastors that know how to pastor and know how to um preach and care for people, but they don't know how to run an organization. Maybe that would be God would be using me for. And uh when I told Pastor Emmons, our previous pastor, he's like, no, that's not God's plan for you. God has plans for you right here. I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Amen. Yeah, man, that's that's amazing. You know, and um I don't know if I I think I might have mentioned it because the tour we were on and everything's a blur. I think I mentioned it that I went to Scott's church back in 2001. When he was in Ewing? Uh was it Ewing? Uh yeah, the um it was it was at a school. It was in um Robinsville, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh and um I went there and it was before it was before 9-11 actually happened. Yeah, before 9-11 happened, and I remember um just going there and how important it was to have someone um I was getting out the car and I was I was I got out the car and I said, nah, I'm going back to the I'm not, I'm not going. Lord put on my heart I needed to be in a fellowship. You know, being a Lone Ranger internet church guy streaming or watching Charles Stanley on TV is that's uh one thing, but it's not the same as being in a fellowship. Yeah. And um, so the Lord uh you know, he put on my heart to do that, and so I ended up that's how I met Scott Taransky uh 25 years ago or whatever it was. And you know, it's it's just amazing to hear the story of what's happening with you and you guys at Graceway and and what the Lord is is uh doing. And it's probably just the the tip of the iceberg as far as what he has planned.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean part part of the thing, you know, we we need to think three and five years out. So what does I mean our our again, not just focusing on the numbers, but you know, it's because you have to for capacity. Uh we're we're up 13% in in the last uh six weeks. Yeah, so I I and we some of that's gonna tail off. I mean, that's that's just how those things happen, but we're seeing solid retention um just in the last six weeks. Okay, so what and these are and then what so these are people that's go ahead, Teddy.

SPEAKER_03:

No, I was just saying, uh I was just saying these are people that are you know probably seeking the Lord and and just seeking fellowship and you know yeah, uh a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02:

And um, where was my thought going? Oh yeah now three to five years out. So okay, so if we continue at this rate, we can't do four services. So so what is so what does that look like? So what does what does a second location look like? So we want to split the church, but where do we want to plant a campus or another site? So do we um yeah, so I you have to look geographically. Well, where do you have a pocket of people? So there's a couple of areas that we're looking we're looking at around here in a couple of towns over where we know we have maybe 30 or 40 people we could use to start planning that church, and then you bring a pastor on board and you try to do your own live worship, uh, and then you just bring the live sermon over and you work on the logistic, the technical aspect there. Uh, but we, you know, you always need to be looking several steps ahead. You can't be anchored into the idea and cement because the Lord may lead you someplace else, but you need to be thinking about these things so you can be prepared, like, okay, this is where I think the Lord is leading me at this moment, you know, and so you can be prepared to act.

SPEAKER_03:

How how did the the servants that were serving, um, how are they uh how did they adjust when you when you you know started doing more you know services? Uh because usually that's a grind on all everybody involved.

SPEAKER_02:

Fortunately, we're we're we are again with God's blessings, we're not a needy church. Uh so we have no one, there's a couple people who choose to do all three services, but we don't have anybody serving three services. Praise God, wow. That's called okay. Let me modify that. The praise team. Yeah, so the praise team, they play the first, they they play the first service, second service, and the opening of the third, and then they go home. So it is the musicians, but there's um they rotate, so it's not the same musicians every week. So it may be one week they have their three services and the next week they have off, uh, sort of thing. But for the most part, everything is is two services.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, praise God. That's that's so important because I've seen I've seen people that have just a desire to serve the Lord and a heart for God.

SPEAKER_02:

I've seen them actually get burnt, fried, and just and that's why, and and then um Mark's gonna be taking over the the hospitality, all the stuff sort of out front. And you need to depending on how you like anything, depending on how you frame things, you get people excited about serving. We don't ever say we need your help. There's an opportunity for you to serve the Lord and bless the people around you. When you serve the Lord, you're blessed and you bless others. That's the way that you present it. And that's that's the truth. I'm not we're not sugarcoating it or selling it, but you have to present it for what it really is. Yes, there is a need, but that is not the primary opportunity for the primary purpose of someone serving isn't to fulfill a need. It's then to be able to bless the bless the uh bless others and bless themselves. That's part of the disciple making. We are a disciple-making church, and that that um uh that message, that emphasis has to permeate through absolutely every ministry.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I I uh I agree 100%. I recently um explained to I don't know if it was the whole congregation or uh just a group of uh folks from our church that I was watching a an exercise, a bodybuilding video uh lifting weights. I that's one of my passions. I like to you know lift weights and stuff like that. So this one guy who's been doing it for 40 some years, Michael Hearn, he's a um he's not even like a competitive bodybuilder, he's just been in movies and he's just an athlete. He uh somebody asked him, he said, how how can you do this for 40 years and still be in shape and still be excited about going to the gym and working out? And he said, Listen, man, you know, maybe 40 years ago I had a mindset shift from I have to go to the gym to I get to go to the gym. And that little change made such a difference that I actually wait a second, I get to go to the gym. If I take it that way, it's not a burden. And I said, you know what, I w I'm gonna I need to apply that to prayer. Let me apply that to prayer. Uh I I have to oh I have to go pray. Or wait a second, I get to I get to go pray if I just that little few degrees change there makes such a big difference. And I think I think it applies to service as well. It can apply to certain kind of what you're saying as far as you know we're we're not not trying to solicit everybody saying we need your help, or I have to go help. If I get to go help, that's a different approach. I I actually get to help. Wait a second.

SPEAKER_02:

So 100%. Excuse me, when I was leading the youth, one of the things I I would say then we met on Wednesday nights, and so when you talk to your friends in school and they said, Hey, do you want to get together, want to hang out tonight? What do you tell them that you're doing? Do you tell them, well, I have to go to youth group tonight or youth group tonight? So tonight's my youth group tonight. Why don't you come? You know, what is what is your rationale? I I can't, I can't, you know, I can't do this on Sunday because I have church. No, I said, you know, I go to church, you know, church is what I do. I have the privilege of worshiping God.

SPEAKER_03:

I get to go worship God, man. I go, are you kidding me? That's just such a game changer.

SPEAKER_02:

It's amazing because I when I first uh you know, when I first came to to know the Lord, I I was just starting out in my uh my refereeing and I would ref on Sundays and skip church and stuff like that. And then I I my mindset sort of started shifting. I'm like, well, no, I'm not disappointed because I can't ref. I was like, no, I want to go to church. I want to be saved, I want to be worshiping God. I want I want to just come to Him. So now it's like not even I'm like, I could have the best, they could be offering me the best possible highest level match, the feather my cap for my referee and career. I'll be like, yeah, I'm good. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03:

It reminds me of uh the psalms that say uh delight yourself in the in the Lord and He'll give you the desire of your heart. So when you when you delight yourself in Him, He becomes the desire of your heart. It just makes it makes sense. You delight yourself in the Some people are like the well, if I delight myself in the Lord, then then He's gonna give me the desire of my heart, then He'll have me win the lottery, or have bring me my wife or your husband or this and that. And really He becomes the desire of your heart, and it's like you're a lot of the things that you did want start to shift and move move out of the way. And uh He's faithful to give you more of Himself, which is amazing. So well, I man, dude, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule today from Graceway. All of us have just heard not even the tip of the iceberg of what's happening out there. Um maybe we can come back and uh and do another interview with you guys. I'd love I I still need to talk to Scott Taransky too, get brought up to speed on him because I know that he and Mark they were in Africa. Yeah, a couple years ago, yeah. Yeah, wow, I yeah, I remember that, and that's when uh you know uh Mark, it was just funny how I I met Mark um and uh we got to talking, and he was like, Yeah, he mentioned Scott, and I was like, wait, you know Scott Taransky had I haven't heard that name in a while, man. So anyway, we just want to I want to thank you for being on Plays On Word Radio. We're gonna put uh a link to Graceway um uh on our in the show notes. And if anybody is in the Hamilton, Trenton, Robbinsville-ish area, um any other area, am I missing something? You know Largeville, that's that's where Scott School, I think the school was in Largeville at when I went to it was right before 9-11. Um if anybody's in that area, absolutely, but I tell you what, if you decide to go visit this church, you better not show up five minutes later. You're not gonna you're gonna you're not gonna get in because uh the Lord is doing something really special there. And I'm just I pray, man, that the next time we talk, uh the Lord's even gonna have even more of a great testimony of what he's doing in your lives individually and corporately as a body. You know, I was reading a little bit about the history of your uh of of Graceway, man. It was like a tent revival or a tent that was set up back in the 30s.

SPEAKER_02:

1933, it was when they first started meeting, officially became incorporated in 34. But the original name was the non-sectarian Christian Association of New Jersey. So when I throw when I when I do my when I do the monthly uh intro to Graceway, navigating Graceway class, I tell people just look at what it means, non-sectarian, it's no sect, no group, so not especially it was the first non-denominational. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a that's there you guys were the original non-denominational church.

SPEAKER_02:

I love it. And Bible teaching, and it stayed the same, just consistently teaching through the Bible. Amen. That's the key. A couple name changes between then and now, but it's the same same principle, 91 years later.

SPEAKER_03:

And see, anytime I go to an old established church like that, I always like to wonder and ponder. You know, you think about the old saints that were that were there, think about their prayers for what the Lord would would do, and then you realize, wait a second, you're walking in the you are the answer. Lord is using you to answer prayers that were uttered 80 years ago. Or you know what I mean? And it's like, wait a minute, man, what uh here I thought I had something to do with this, but you know, there some old saint is that we're gonna meet in glorious, is saying thank you to the Lord right now. Lord, thank you for it. It's a little later than I expected, but I thank you for answering the prayer. And so you're writing the the wave of prayer.

SPEAKER_02:

Um we moved here, we moved from Trenton to here in 62. So they they moved out of the tent into a they rented a building. But uh we we had our 90th anniversary celebration last year. Uh, we had two people who were at the church in Trenton, and they're like, I yeah, I didn't expect oh ho ho ho that's something right now.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh my goodness, wow, man.

SPEAKER_02:

That's grown and expanded, and all the stuff that the Lord is doing here. It's just what an answer to prayer.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, praise God, man. We might have to interview them, man. We we might have to interview them just to see, you know what I mean. That's that's worth just interviewing, getting them to talk about what was it like back then. And do they remember any of the prayers? Because, you know, I just I I think about the Lord's time is way different than ours, and we sometimes get impatient, like, uh, he's not answering the prayer. He might be like, Hold on, man, I got a 60 year gap going on here for you. But uh God's faithful. So yeah, man, we definitely we absolutely um we we definitely appreciate you. Pastor Don from Graceway Bible Church in Hamilton, I want to say. But my thoughts are like it goes beyond Hamilton. I'm sure you have people from beyond, you know, people from Trenton, maybe some people from Burlington, might even be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02:

Burlington, uh, as far north as Pennington, uh, which is we have some people that drive 30, 30 minutes to come to church. I have one guy that's lives down by Atlantic City. Uh he's coming up here, heard about Graceway. They're looking for a new church and they're planting themselves. Him and his wife want to plant themselves around their church for the future, and he's coming up.

SPEAKER_03:

Praise God. Well, may you guys continue to have an impact on the community for Christ, and may he just smile upon you. And uh man, I'm just maybe we'll maybe we'll talk. I I need to learn some more about logistics, man. You got the experience on the logistics there and the the the overall management aspect because that's where that's a uh I don't want to say a blind spot for me, but I don't have the experience, you know, that I wish I did. And I was like, I know a guy I can probably call and ask what he thinks.

SPEAKER_02:

If you want to pick my brain, give me a call anytime.

SPEAKER_03:

I appreciate it, man. Well, God bless you, man. We love you, and and at some point we're gonna make our way back, and uh, we'll show you our Pete quit. That sounds great. I look forward to it. Yeah, amen. Amen. Well, thank you very much, Pastor Reverend Don Schwing from Graceway Bible Church. Shout out to Dr. Scott Taransky and my man, Mark Crabtree, everybody over at Graceway Bible Church over there in New Jersey. That's all we have time for today. God willing, if the creek don't rise, we'll be back next week. But until then, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

SPEAKER_01:

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace, this program was made possible by the Playson Word family of supporters. To find out more, check out our website at playsonword.org.

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Fred David Kenney, Jr.

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