如果想參閱中文報告, 請到 : 教會事工年度報告(繁體中文) 或 教会事工年度报告(简体中文)

Table of Contents

A Journal of the Plague Year - Part 2

Daniel Defoe wrote A Journal of the Plague Year in the 18^th century about the last major bubonic plague in London. It was purported to be an annus horribilis record of the 1665 outbreak of Medieval proportion. In our current situation, the COVID-19 outbreak unfortunately continues into another year. DCBC went into lockdown on March 13, 2020. By this writing in October 2021, we are really not out of the woods yet.

This long visitation of COVID-19 reminds us of God’s love and protection. As the prophet Jeremiah said in Lamination 3:22-23 (KJV):

It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

As more people get vaccinated, we are less anxious than before. However, masks are still a daily commodity. Special packaging of food is still with us. Many people are still keeping a distance and attending Sunday worship and fellowship meetings only online. Hybrid meetings and classes have made life more complex. Only about half of our pre-pandemic brothers and sisters have returned in person. In a word, things are no longer the same anymore.

The ministry direction during the pandemic is to stay CONNECTED. Thanks to modern technology, we Zoomed so much that some of us have screen fatigue. We are especially thankful to all our lay leaders and pastoral staff who devoted extra effort and time to keep the ministries vibrant and our brothers and sisters well cared for.

Now is the time to make an effort to resume normality. As the Old 100^th reminds us, we need to COME into the house of the Lord:

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. (Psalm 100:4-5, KJV)

In addition to our daily ministries and responsibilities, we have works awaiting us to do and accomplish:

• Train our new deacons.

• Meet and develop a strategic plan for the whole church in the long term.

• Two and half years down the road, recruit and train elders to serve alongside our current active elders.

• Plan and plant a church in a yet to be decided site North of Dallas.

These are but just a few of our priorities.

During the pandemic, we are so thankful to the Lord and to our brothers and sisters that there is no insufficiency in the house of the Lord. Our brothers and sisters have remembered the needs of DCBC. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:21 (The Message version),

The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

Hence, I am confident that things will be all right, just as the hymn Lead Kindly Light assures us:

So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still

Will lead me on.

O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone.

And with the morn those angel faces smile

Which I have loved long since and lost a while.

May the Lord bless you all for your faithfulness.

Sincerely in Christ,

Pastor Samuel Ling

Peace be with you and praise the Lord for a year of transitioning back to normal at DCBC. I humbly share my observations serving as a deacon at DCBC in 2021:

• Witnessing Christ’s love and sacrifice by Pastoral staff preaching the Gospel.

• Steadfast show of love of Christ by many brothers and sisters serving and co-laboring every week as different parts of the body of Christ: Welcome team, Abraham Ministry, Praise, Choir, AV, Facility, Accounting, Stephen Ministry, College, Young adults, Children, Youth, Mandarin, Cantonese and English Fellowships and Community Groups.

• Encouragement with meeting many brothers and sisters in person again

• Witnessing pandemic related sufferings, worries and concerns without defeat

• Thankful for each of the deacons, as servant leaders, in fulfilling our duties and responsibilities in unity through the Holy Spirit.

I am thankful for the countless prayers made prior to the deacon board decisions on DCBC re-opening. We seek His wisdom and discernment and we appreciate the feedback from loving members during the evolving situation.

Praise the Lord for His wisdom and His love each day. I found comfort in the following verses: Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." And Joshua 1:9, "Be strong and courageous. And do not be frightened, do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." We were reminded that the Lord is faithful and the ministries at DCBC are sustained during this challenging time.

We ask you to pray for Pastoral staff and Elders as DCBC Spiritual teachers during this time. Also, through prayers, we seek His wisdom on future church planting and DCBC campus improvement. We hope for everyone to join the Wednesday Night Prayer meeting (via Zoom) and look forward to worshiping in-person with everyone on Sunday.

Finally, I pray for His guidance, so we, as one, continue to serve the Lord humbly at DCBC in sharing the Gospel during this unique time. As Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 4:8-9, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and seen in me - practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” So DCBC can continue to serve the Lord for the next 50 years.

Romans 8:28 (NIV)

²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Philippians 3:13-16

¹³ Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. ¹⁶ Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Ministry report is in Chinese only. Please see 教會事工年度報告(繁體中文), or 教会事工年度报告(简体中文).

The ministry's report is in Chinese only. Please see 教會事工年度報告(繁體中文), or 教会事工年度报告(简体中文).

As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic this year, we are grateful to the Lord for what he has been doing in our midst. We are seeing more brothers and sisters return to Sunday worship service in person, and we are seeing groups continuing to meet regularly. We continue to remember that the English ministry exists to help all generations follow Christ and grow in his family. The core values are God’s word, community, evangelism, equipping, and unity. We will make the report in light of these core values.

• God’s Word

• This year Pastor Josh and David spent time preaching through the book of Genesis. In addition, under the direction of Rev. Ling, there was a sermon series on worship to begin the fall.

• We continue to make God’s Word a priority in all of our ministries as we make it central in all of our meetings and teaching.

• Community

• We currently have 12 community groups that range from 5 to 20 people in the group. Many groups have begun meeting in-person, but some groups are still meeting online. Regardless of the meeting format, our goals are still the same: to exhort one another to grow in their relationship with Christ, with one another, and seek to grow as a disciple-maker for Jesus Christ (UP, IN, and OUT).

• We are also having “connection” classes during the second hour (traditionally Sunday school hour) for newcomers to develop a sense of community. We currently have young adults and adult connection classes.

• Evangelism

• While we did not have anything formal this year, under the leadership of Pastor Josh Ong, the college and young adults had several events to reach out to others.

• All community groups have finished the Life on Mission curriculum.

• We desire to see brothers and sisters proclaim the Gospel of Jesus in their daily lives

• Equipping

• This fall we are leveraging the second hour to equip brothers and sisters theologically and spiritually. We are grateful for teachers like brother Jon Chia (class on Prayer) and sister Mei Yatco (Baptism class) to equip the brothers and sisters.

• We have met regularly with ministry team leaders for training and discussion, whether it be praise team, community group leaders, young adult leaders, etc. We also use those times to discuss ministry needs and pray for one another.

• A few members of the praise ministry attended “Sing! 2021” Conference in-person. It is also continuing the book study over the book Worship Matters, by Bob Kauflin.

• Discipleship in group and 1-on-1 settings is also happening in various parts of English ministry

• Unity

• As in the previous year, we weren’t able to serve as much across language ministries this year due to the pandemic, but we strive to remember that we are all serving Jesus together across various ministries. We are glad to see many brothers and sisters in the English ministry serving in children and youth ministries.

Please continue to pray for the English ministry and the English ministry coworkers.

Due to COVID-19, DCBC Children’s Ministry remained ONLINE for the 2020-2021 school year. We’re so thankful for all the volunteers on the DCBC Kids team who made it possible to minister to kids virtually. And a big THANKS to Deacon Jerry Chen for helping us with all the online technology to minister more effectively to kids.

The mission of DCBC kids is to reach kids by partnering with parents so that they have the greatest opportunity to become mature followers of Christ. We praise God for all the loving brothers and sisters who participated in this mission and served in children’s ministry this past school year! Below are the programs (in-person or online) we ran to achieve our mission:

• Online Children’s Sunday School (3 yrs old- 6th grade) sought to disciple kids through Biblical instruction and life application in small groups. We used Lifeway’s Gospel Project curriculum and adapted it for online use. Our leaders served for an entire school year! We are so grateful for our Sunday School coordinators—Linda Chen and Jenny Xiong—who dedicated their time to recruiting and leading their teams. We also appreciate the youth students for partnering with us to serve in the summer.

• In addition to Sunday School online, Linda Chen led a wonderful team of leaders to record weekly Preschool Family Worship Videos for families to watch together at home for an entire year!

• Online AWANA-LIT on Friday evenings aimed to disciple kids through Bible memorization and instruction. AWANA is an international ministry that seeks to help churches and parents raise children to know, love, and serve Christ. At DCBC, leaders, and kids meet in three Awana Clubs—Cubbies (3-4 yrs. old), Sparks (K-2nd grade), and T&T (3rd-4th grade). This past school year, we also ran LIT (Leaders in Training) for our preteens (5th-6th grade) for the fifth year in a row. LIT aims to empower the next generation by recognizing the uniqueness of every child, reaching them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, disciple them in their personal walk with Him, equipping them to do ministry, and then releasing them to serve in the church and in the world. Kids and leaders meet each week for games, ministry teams, small group time, and large group time. We are grateful for Adam Wong’s dedication and leadership in his fourth year as Awana-LIT Commander! We are also thankful for the many college students who took time in their schedules to serve our kids!

• In July 2021, we resumed in-person ministries below:

  • The Nursery aimed to help kids know and love Jesus by providing a safe and caring environment that fosters growth and learning. Nursery is provided Sundays, Fridays, and during church-wide events. We really appreciate our paid sitters and volunteers who get to know our babies really well. Furthermore, we are extremely blessed to have Pat Lee coordinate our nursery!

  • Children’s Worship sought to train kids to worship God corporately by providing a worship experience appropriate to their development. Each week, kids sing songs, hear God’s Word, and respond to His Word. We appreciate our volunteers (including song leaders, Bible teachers, and room coordinators) that led our worship services.

  • The Welcome Team desired to create a friendly and welcoming environment on Sundays, as well as a fast and accurate check-in experience. We are grateful to our team of greeters for welcoming and checking in our kids every Sunday. We currently have electronic check-in on Sunday mornings and Friday nights.

• Children’s Special Events are one-time or annual ministries that have a specific purpose in reaching, teaching, and equipping kids to be like Jesus. In-person and virtual VBS 2021 was a 5-day experience that brought kids on an adventure where they learn more about Jesus. Kids participated in crafts, snacks, games, and Bible lessons all on Zoom. We are thankful for Jenny Xiong as the director of the VBS team this year. And we are extremely thankful for the VBS core team, teens, and adult volunteers that made the event possible!

In January 2021, we welcomed Jenny Xiong to her new role as Children’s Ministry Assistant Director. In August 2021, we celebrated Minister Sherry Cheng’s 9th year anniversary as full-time Children’s Minister. In addition, we are grateful for our Children’s Deacon Jerry Chen’s dedication to our kids in his sixth year as our children’s deacon! We continue to pray that God would use all the parents and volunteers to challenge our children to become committed followers of Christ.

What a year it has been! We are so thankful that God remains the same even when the whole world shuts down. God has remained so faithful throughout the pandemic! While the world came to a halt, God used the sudden change of pace to bring to the surface the issues of our hearts. I would say each leader in our ministry came to a halting face-to-face with the reality of sin – individual and collective. Through all of it, God has been using every moment to teach us to die to ourselves and to pick up the Cross, and to follow Christ. Our youth ministry got a chance to really evaluate whether we value behavior modification or gospel-centered heart transformation. (If these two concepts are new to you, please stop us and ask. We would love to talk about this with you.)

As we said goodbye to the seniors of 2020, we received a new class of 7th graders. Along with them, a new small group leader. So our girls' small group looked like this: Savannah Holtcamp (7th), Megan Liu & Angela Chan (8th), Rachel Yue (9th), Christy Purnadi (10th), Rachel Pang (11th), and Sarah Li (12th). The boys' small group leaders comprised Clement Setiawan (7th & 8th), Daniel Jee (9th & 10th), Andrew Chow (11th), and Eric Chui (12th). We are especially encouraged by Eric and Sarah who stuck with their group from children’s ministry to the end of high school.

Youth group took place on Zoom the whole academic year of 2020-2021. It was difficult, but we began to see pockets of our youth group who were developing deeper relationships with one another and with Christ as those who showed up continued to meet on zoom. While churches all around the country (maybe even the world) worried about the spiritual state of their parishioners, we saw God bring pockets of teenagers who desired to know Jesus, even more, when situations were not ideal. We even had a teenager tell us that this was the year he grew the most and it was unexpected because there wasn’t a winter retreat or the other programs that we depended upon for spiritual renewal.

With the church building closed, we saw such a pivotal moment for parents and teenagers. For so long, faith and spiritual development had been outsourced to the church. During this time, there was no outsourcing. Parents had to take back the rightful responsibility for the spiritual growth of their children/teenagers. As the youth ministry, we tried our best to equip parents and to give parents tools to talk with their teens on various topics, including politics, relationships/sex, etc. We also tried to create fun ways for families to have fun and to laugh together.

During this time, we continued our regular Friday and Sunday programs to the best of our ability while understanding the zoom fatigue that was plaguing a lot of our adult leaders.

• Friday Night Youth Group:

We preached and studied through the book of Philippians together. We see biblical illiteracy on the rise so we are trying to teach our teenagers to read and study the Bible. We alternated between adult leader-led Bible study and preaching through the book of Philippians. We were really blessed to have Jonathan Chia join our preaching team to speak to the youth. As we look back, Philippians was the book of the Bible we needed to hear from during the pandemic and we are so thankful for the renewal and encouragement we received from the Lord.

Our Friday night youth group is a safe place for teenagers to come as they are and to bring their questions as they are. We saw our student leaders take charge during the pandemic. They did a wonderful job thinking of ways to care for those in our youth group. The Lord has definitely been working in the hearts of our youth as they have been discovering who Christ is to them and who they are in Christ.

• Youth Sunday School:

We had 2 Zoom youth Sunday school classes: Middle school and High school. The middle schoolers went through a curriculum on wisdom with teachers Jennifer Tang, Sharon Wang, Genie Chan, and Peter Hoh. We are so thankful for God’s provision of these loving parents who stretched themselves technologically to love our teens and meet with them on zoom. In the second semester, Clement and Megan Liu went through Jesus’ parables with the middle school students. The high schoolers went through “Gospel-Centered Life” and “Personal Theology” with Clement.

During the summer, some youth helped out in Children’s Sunday school under Sherry and Jenny’s leadership. While others did a group study of a pre-approved book or a book of the Bible.

Due to the pandemic, we had to cancel Winter Retreat and all of our serving projects at the nursing home and OurCalling. We were thankful to be able to gather in person for the grad celebration and see our graduating class be prayed for by the church, followed by an in-person DCCYC before our teens jumped in to help with VBS.

Throughout the pandemic, we remember Jesus’ Words in John 5:17, " My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." We are convicted that God did not stop His Work in the midst of the pandemic; He was very much at work in and through this time. We hope we were faithful to yield to Him and to cooperate with what He was doing.

This 2021 is another challenging year; we modified our ministry approach as this COVID19 Pandemic fluctuated from worse to better and worse again. However, the ministry goal of caring remains the central core of our ministry work.

This year Abraham Hospitality Ministry, under the leadership of Gladys Fung and Patrick Poon, resumed our coffee and snacks services after a period of suspension. We have recruited several church members to serve in this ministry as the church slowly returns to normal.

In the Counseling/Caring ministry – Mei Yatco, the lead facilitator with other team members (William & Kathleen Wu, Humphrey & Grace Ha, and Katherine Lam), continually do our peer counseling ministry online and in-person. This year, we have performed over 300 hours of counseling work.

Journeying with these brothers/sisters toward life transformation requires encouragement, especially as they counter the obstacles during this Pandemic period. For this reason, we have conducted several events to encourage our church members that include the following:

• Mother's Day – On this particular Sunday, we have conducted our celebration with an online worship message, unique mother's day music, and an uplifting message of love from our children.

• Father's Day – We honored and encouraged our father through a worship message on this special day. We have online recorded children's statements to show their appreciation for their father's spiritual leadership.

• Other Programs – We had an online Sunday school/workshop on Parenting, communication, and financial stewardship.

God is merciful and has sufficient grace for those willing to seek His care. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray that DCBC members will join and serve alongside with family ministry this coming year.

Come near to God and he will come near to you … James 4:8

2021 is a year to test the church's resilience! Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, our Church Sunday worship has been changed to in-person and live online broadcasts, allowing sisters and brothers to worship God in church and at home via YouTube! Praise the Lord! Although during the epidemic, the A/V co-workers, praise team, and choir co-workers still serve at the church every Sunday. Make weekly in-person and online worship go smoothly.

Praise the Lord! Bless our co-workers, and witness God's glory and grace in person.

The teams of the Worship Ministry are as follows:

• The AV team – hardware is led by Brother Gilfred Fang. Software is led by Brother David Jee.

• Mandarin A/V team leader is Brother Daniel Chen. Cantonese A/V team leader is Brother Eric Tai. English A/V team leader is Brother David Wang.

• Usher team – Mandarin team coordinator was Brother Dong-Yau Lin before August, and Sister Jean Chen resumed the team coordinator after phase 3 from August. Cantonese team coordinator is Sister Esther Chen, English team coordinator is Elder Kenny Hsu.

• Communion Prepare Team (responsible for preparing communion table and kits for the Holy Communion) – Mandarin team is led by Brothers Mark Hsu and Simon Shie, the English team is led by Brother Alex Wong. Also thanks to church administrator Sister Diana Swindler and Brother Ken Yip's assistance.

• Decoration team – Sister Gloria Pang is leading the team.

• Worship/Praise Team – Mandarin Choir is led by Director Grace Tu, Cantonese Praise team is led by Sister Denise Chen, English Praise team is led by Sister Florence Ku.

Looking ahead to 2022, pray that the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end soon, so that every sister and brother can return to the church to participate in worship. Also pray that more sisters and brothers will participate in church service, pray for each other, and support each other. I would like to thank all of the brothers, sisters, and pastoral staff who participate in the worship service in the year 2021!

Ministry report is in Chinese only. Please see 教會事工年度報告(繁體中文), or 教会事工年度报告(简体中文).

We praise the Lord, the missions committee was able to regularly meet on a monthly basis in the midst of COVID-19 via Zoom. This year the missions committee continued to prayerfully adapt our missions approach as international travels were limited.

We are grateful for new opportunities the Lord has provided for us to engage in virtual and local missions.

In the midst of the pandemic, we are committed to the vision and mission of making disciples of all nations. We want to see all generations follow Jesus and grow in his family - both here in the DFW and to the ends of the earth. To that end, we continued to be focused on our vision to: Excite & Educate, Engage, Equip, and Empower.

Excite & Educate the Congregation for Local and Global Missions

• Pastor David has completed training the missions committee with summaries of Well-Sent by Steve Beirn to grow our vision for DCBC becoming a sending church.

• While we had to cancel in person Short Term Missions (“STM”), DCBC mobilized care packages to be sent to our missionaries Spring 2021; we will plan to have care packages sent to them for the Christmas season as well.

• We have conducted Missionary Connections online by engaging select missionaries every 2-3 months, both at home and abroad to share updates on their ministry and prayer requests.

Engage the Congregation in Local and Global Missions

• BridgeBuilders: Praise the LORD that DCBC continues to partner with a local mission organization, BridgeBuilders, whose vision is to restore relationships under the banner of Christ by engaging, equipping, and empowering individuals, families, and communities in South Dallas.

  • Adopt-a-Block: Our church has been regularly serving with BridgeBuilders at their Adopt-a-Block, a ministry to help the community to beautify the neighborhood. During Adopt-A-Block, we are able to engage the community and pray for them, while beautifying the neighborhood.

  • Prayer Booth: Our church had several opportunities to set up a prayer booth during community events at BridgeBuilders, whereby we’re able to set up a tent with snacks and engage the community in conversations with the goal to pray with them and develop relationships.

• Chinese International Students: We are grateful for brothers and sisters like Davis and Nancy Wong, Elder Hank and Schia-Yiou Cheng, and Sylvia Chiang for leading the church to engage in reaching out to Chinese international students; under their leadership, we continue to have a vibrant ministry where people come to follow Jesus and grow in his family. DCBC served over 30 international students by picking them up from the airport and helping them get settled in Dallas. Regular Friday in-person Bible study has resumed since the beginning of September.

• Compassion International: DCBC launched our partnership with Compassion International and Church at the Cross to sponsor 75 children each (150 children total) at a local church in El Coca, Ecuador. We praise the Lord that both churches were able to sponsor the 75 children in the partnership church. In addition, DCBC brothers and sisters sponsored an additional 14 children in Quito area of Ecuador.

• Afghanistan Refugee Drive: DCBC partnered with Northwest Bible Church’s Northwest Community Center to raise 50 sets of personal hygiene kits (toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo, etc).

Equip the Congregation in Local and Global Missions

To equip the church, we continue to educate the congregation through the following:

• Chinese Mission Convention (CMC) Global 2021 - Pastor David has been participating in the planning of the conference with Ambassadors for Christ (AFC) in partnership with other Chinese heritage churches in Texas. The conference will be online from December 28-29, 2021. We will be asking brothers and sisters to join the conference and plan to have an in-person “watch party” so we can gather to be equipped for local and global missions.

• Evangelism Explosion (EE) training - thanks to Bill Chen for leading the training for EE in Mandarin; we are continuing to train brothers and sisters to proclaim the gospel.

Empower (and also encourage) DCBC Supported Missionaries

• One of the main ways we empower overseas missionaries and missions organizations is by supporting them with finance and prayer. Currently, we are supporting 15 missions workers and 11 missions organizations.

• While we are not able to conduct STM, we plan to continue to care for our missionaries through the “adopt a missionary” project by various community and fellowship groups to send care packages to our missionaries.

We need the church’s prayerful support - please continue to pray for the missions ministry and for DCBC to become a missional, sending church.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”—Ephesians 2:8-10

Praise the lord that we have many brothers and sisters who are willing to serve the Lord with their gifts in our church ministries. Because of God’s grace and His providence, most of our essential ministries can still be available despite the COVID-19 outbreak. Even though most of the membership services have been suspended during the pandemic, we still have experienced His guidance and His faithfulness. The following is a brief report of our ministries in 2021.

Membership: Nine brothers and sisters have joined our church to become members since late last year. We welcome them to become part of our family in Christ. We will grow spiritually and co-labor together to serve our Lord. Including the new members, we now have a total of 484 active DCBC members.

Food Service: Praise the Lord that our church had continuously been providing free lunches every Sunday for more than 50 years before the COVID 19 outbreak. Even though the Sunday church lunch had been suspended during the pandemic, we were able to clean up the kitchen thoroughly and did attempt to restart it on August 1 when the outbreak seemed to be tamed at that time. The kitchen ministry is ready to serve again when the pandemic is over. We also thank the brothers and sisters in the Abraham ministry who continue to serve coffee and tea for us every Sunday in the second half of 2021. Pray for God’s blessings and guidance for the ministries.

Church Cleaning: The church is the body of Christ and the place for us to worship God. We appreciate the support from our brothers and sisters in the church cleaning day over the past year. It was suspended this year due to the pandemic.

Senior Transportation: Our church has a fourteen-passenger bus and an eight-passenger van to provide transportation service to brothers and sisters who need help in transportation. Our main service has been for the twenty seniors who live in the Silver Gardens apartment. The service has been suspended due to the pandemic. We have 18 brothers and sisters serving as drivers in this ministry before the suspension. We appreciate their service and devotion. Pray that the pandemic will be over soon, and we will serve together again to provide loving care and services to the senior brothers and sisters in our church.

Member Caring: Our church provides Christian needy funds and interest-free emergency loans for members who need financial help. They can contact our pastoral staff or Membership deacon for these.

Facility Rental: As a service to our members or other Christian organizations, our church provides facility rentals for personal use such as weddings or evangelical meetings. The service was suspended due to the pandemic and has been available on a case-by-case basis. e.g. UTD EPIC will use our classroom on a small scale in November for their Fall retreat.

Membership services and ministries try to serve and co-labor with everyone who comes to our church. Pray that the pandemic will be over soon and our ministries will be back to normal. In the meantime, we continue to care for each other and lift up one another. May God continue to bless these ministries and His name will be glorified.

Finance Department at DCBC encompasses three areas:

• Accounting – manages all aspects of inflow and outflow of funds, financial statements, and financial record keeping

• IT/Technology (ITT) – keeps all the computers, servers, printers, software, etc. up-to-date, running, and functioning

• Human Resources – manages staff compensation, benefits, and employment

The ITT team made improvements to the communication infrastructure at DCBC with increased internet speed and upgraded wireless access points to address streaming of Sunday service and class zoom meetings. Accounting and ITT teams continue to support the various ministries with IT needs and also with Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) options for VBS, Awana, and Offering.

The financial summary for 2021 through September at DCBC is as follows:

Total Offering was $1,051,613 against outflows of $1,065,631, a net balance of -$14,017.

• The General Fund cash inflow was $948,516 against an outflow of $925,226 with positive cash flow of $23,289.54 with a balance of $2,445,045.

• The Building Fund cash inflow was $29,390 with a balance of $46,195. $120,000 will be paid back to the Long Term Development Fund later this year.

• The Mission Fund cash inflow was $76,707 against an outflow of $138,904 with a negative cash flow of -$62,197.42 with a balance of $215,634.

Thanks to our DCBC supporters for providing financial support to meet the needs of our church. We are thankful for the dedication and work of our Finance Department co-workers in utilizing their gifts to serve our Lord faithfully all these years and during the pandemic. Their service provides a consistent and smooth operation for our church’s finances which supports our pastoral staff and allows them to devote themselves to prayer, counseling, ministry, and preaching.

We are thankful for the continued financial support provided to help our church to be able to provide various support to meet the needs of the various programs and ministries.

The year 2021 can be described as coming out of sleep mode for our building and facilities. As we planned for a slow return to full operations, we had to restart many parts of the facilities that had been dormant for about a year. As we did that, we had numerous problems spring up. Our greatest challenge was maintaining and repairing many of the HVAC units. Most notably, the Family Center’s main cooling unit failed in the middle of Sunday service in June and the unit that cools the Fellowship Hall failed in July. We were blessed with George Howell having relationships with HVAC contractor that were able to quickly repair the Family Center unit before the following Sunday. We were less fortunate with the Fellowship Hall unit because it required the replacement of a major component that was very difficult to find. After a few weeks of using portable cooling units, it was repaired. We had minor plumbing issues, burnt-out lights, elevator inspection challenges, and numerous other issues. We got through them all.

The most significant blessing we experienced was surviving the storm in February. Despite all of the mayhem, many in Texas experienced with ice, no power, and broken water pipes, our church never lost power, did not have any water pipes rupture, and did not suffer any meaningful damage. In fact, we opened our church for a few nights for people to stay overnight at the church. The Lord truly protected our church.

We have been able to prepare our church for a return to full usage. We cleaned the carpets throughout the entire church, we have implemented a regular cleaning and disinfecting process on Sunday and through the week, we have installed better air filters, we have installed many in-room portable air purifiers, and many other steps to bring the church back to full operational status.

The Lord has been good.

David M. Wang

Deacon - General Services