Tim Ord on the line, Tim, can you hear me? I sure can. How are you doing? Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Yep, yep, I'm good. I'm good, I can hear you. Good, how are you doing? Good, good. Good, fantastic. Well, we got your charts up here. The first one we're looking at is on gold. I'm interested to hear what you have to say on this. All right, yeah, this is actually the gold chart. And it goes back to a long time, 2005. And I put some cycle lines on there. There's a red cycle line, and there's a blue cycle line. And the red one's an eight-year cycle line, and the blue one's a 16-year cycle line. Anyhow, over the course of years, the eight-year and 16 years, I've done a good job picking out decent lows. And the last low was picked out in 2016. And that was when the eight-year and the 16-year corresponded right on the money. And now we have the eight-year coming-in effect. I present this chart at least six months ago on your program. And late 2003 or 2023, the eight-year cycle is going to hit a low, while we're hitting it right now. And it seems to be lining up pretty well. And I did some fibonacci stuff on this chart. From the low of 2016 up to the high of 2021, the market gold itself, this is cash gold. Only you trace a 38.2% retracement. So that's a small retracement. If you retrace anything less than a half, a lot of times this is at least a halfway point of the next move up. So we could see a powerful rally, I think, coming. We got the cycles about right for a rally. The fibonacci relationship seems to be working out. The more time you test the high, we tested that 2,000 high a little bit, actually, over that three times, probably the next time we go through.  But the fourth time even gives a higher percentage that you'll probably break through that 2,000 level and head on up. The top window is the RSI of this is actually a monthly chart. But when the RSI is above 50, usually that's when the uptrends happen. I noted it all in blue there. So we had a bear market starting in 2012, down to this 2016 low. That's when the RSI was below 50. And in general, the state above 50. We're currently above 50 right now. We're at 5450.  But we got back a RSI, got back above 50. So there's quite a bit of evidence that important something on a bigger time frame is about to happen. And this is on a monthly time frame. So fibonacci, as they say, this is probably a halfway point to move up. The cycle work is on for a move now. The RSI has been above 50 for the last about a year, I think, at the last August. It hit that low. And so everything's kind of set. So let's move on to the next chart. And that's gold. So gold, it looks really bullish going forward here. So let's look at the next chart, chart number 2. We got it right here, GDX ADP. Yep. And this is at the monthly. The top window is a monthly GDX. And the bottom window is a monthly GDX up-down volume and it's a cumulative. And the next window higher, which is the middle window, is a monthly GDX advanced decline cumulative and it's cumulative volume. And there's a couple things that I want to point out. When these give signals, a lot of times they're multi-year. So this is not a short-term chart.  And if they bearish all the way into 2016 and then they closed above the mid-Bollinger band, that's the blue line. When it closes below the mid-Bollinger band, it's a red line. So you can see, it gave a signal in 2016, stayed long until late 2017, gave a cell signal. Then gave a bicycle back in 2019, gave a cell signal in 2021. And right now, both indicators are still below the mid-Bollinger band. But I have shaded pink areas there to identify times when this gets below extreme lows, I guess you might say. The lowest it's ever been was 2016 on the middle chart. Touched that level in 2018. But we've been in this yellow or this pink area since 2021, more or less kind of trended sideways here. We got above the mid-Bollinger band actually a couple of different times and kind of came back down. But I think the next time it turns up, probably going to just stay up. But we're in an important area according to history because we're in that pink zone, this middle chart right now, the pink zone, which I think is a very oversold condition. A lot of times, you get this oversold, you really get good rallies out of it. And the bottom window, which is advanced, or which is the up-down volume, it actually got below the 2016 low. So it's really, on a historical level, extremely oversold. And it too, right now, is still below the mid-Bollinger band. But these are big time frames here. So once they do close above the mid-Bollinger band, at some point they will. I think they'll probably be sooner than later. They are late giving a buy signal, but they basically get majority of the rally. So even though they haven't gave buy signals yet, but it flipped to chart three. So this is a, yeah, the chart three, the previous chart, chart two, was a monthly time frame. This is the same indicator, but on a weekly time frame. And so they're going to get shorter signals. These are multi-month signals. Most of them, they're usually anywhere from two months to six-month signals. So you'll get, where the monthly charts may stay long for two, three, four years, the weekly cycles will give, cycle in and out of short-term signals that may last a couple of months, may stay long or short, maybe six months. The last signal it gave on both signal, or on both indicators, which is the up-down volume cumulative and advanced line cumulative, was back in April of this year. It gave a sell signal as both close, or either one can close below it, either one does, that's the signal, but both turned down in April of this year. And now for the first time, both are closing above the mid-Bullinger band. So I hear the music, so. Yeah, hang on, Tim, because I want to keep hearing some more about this. I want to hear some few charts yet to go through. Folks, stay tuned and we'll be right back with Tim Ord of the Ord-Oracle.com. Go check them out, we'll be right back for you. Welcome back, folks. This is Jacob Schup, filming for Tom O'Brien. We are with Tim Ord of the Ord Oracle, that is Ord-Oracle.com. Left off, we're looking at the GDX. Tim, are you still with us? Yep, I'm here, so. Fantastic. Yeah, we can continue. So we looked at the yearly gold going back to, I think, 2005, wherever it was. All the cycles of works are in sequence right now. Then we looked at the monthly cumulative up-down volume advanced climb indicators. That was chart two. And both of them are extremely oversold on the monthly time frame. They haven't closed above mid-Bullinger band. But now we're looking at the weekly up-down volume advanced climb indicators. And now we have closed above the mid-Bullinger band. So the weeklies are on a bi-signal. I didn't show the dailies, because the dailies actually flipped to a bi-signal here, I don't know, a week or two ago. So they're more responsive, but they whip around longer more. The weeklies are less whippy. But they're still a little bit late, so you didn't get it at the bottom. But once you get the weeklies turned up, like I said, you don't get whipped around a lot. But I'm saying, if we're just starting to bi-signal on the weeklies, most of those signals last at least two months, and a lot of them last six months. So this signal is probably good all the way into year-end. So in general, we think we're probably going to move all the way into year-end. And if you flip back to chart number two for a second anyhow, if the weeklies are on a bi-signal and it runs into year-end, the monthlys will flip to a bi-signal, because both indicators will be going up. So if the monthlys flip to a bi-signal, chances are this could be a multi-year bi-signal currently going on. So this may essentially go all the way into 2025, maybe 2026. So this could be a big signal. The market has just been really kind of choppy since 2021. We need an impulse wave to start. And these indicators suggest that's probably going to happen here over the next couple of months. We're probably on a bigger timeframe. We're starting an impulse wave. And actually, that impulse wave, in my opinion, probably started last August. This consolidation we had down from the April high was just part of a bigger uptrend. But anyhow, we do think a multi-year probably rally is starting here. So anyhow, it's pretty much all I have to say about that. Yeah, fantastic. We can, you have questions on it or? No, I think this is a very convincing analysis on that. OK. We can go to chart four. OK. Right here we have. We're going to switch to the S&Ps, both the four and chart five are on the S&Ps. And this is what I like to happen. This is a swag breath thrust indicator. And a nutshell is the advancing issues by total issues and take that and do a 10-day average. And so when it has to hit down 0.4, that's run to 0.6 in 10 days. In general, this mirrors what this swag breath thrust indicator really does. And so we did get a reading below 0.4 here about a week ago. And we need a run now to above 0.6 by October 19, which is Thursday. We're coming in right now around 0.53. So in general, for this to trigger, we need the market to actually continue to rally into this Thursday to trigger this indicator. Why is it important to trigger this indicator? This indicator is good for picking out here midterm lows. If you notice, I have the red and blue lines across the chart. And that tells you when the swag breath thrust indicator was triggered. If you notice, they all come at powerful bottoms. And we had three triggers back at that. The solvation phase from 2022 to 2023 are around that 4,000 level on the SPX. And you got three of them in that range. That was a very bullish signal to get three over that time period in a year. So that's why it was kind of extremely bullish in that sideways consolidation, because it triggered three breath thrust swag breath thrust. It did it three times. So that was a pretty powerful signal. I'm hoping it's going to do it coming into Thursday. And it does do it in Thursday. It doesn't really need to, but if it does, it'd add to the bullish picture, because I'm thinking we're going to probably rally all the way to year end. That's saying we're going to have some mild consolations along the way. We will. But in general, that'd be a powerful sign if this indicator can give above 0.6 by Thursday. And it's possible. The market is off a little bit today. But if Monday or if Wednesday and Thursday rally, that may trigger that 0.6 area. And that's all we need. So will it do it? Not for sure. We'll have to wait and see. But here's another indicator on page last. We're going to pay our chart five. And this is the second window up from the bottom is the 10-day average of the trend. And usually when it gets above 0.2, it's a bullish sign for the market. That's when panic happens. And the trend reading above 1.2 is usually a bullish sign, because that's where more selling numbers volume goes into the downstocks. That's usually a good sign. That's what bombs are made of. And when it gets down below 0.9, that's usually kind of a worrisome sign that the market has rallied too much too soon and usually get pullbacks. And all the red lines on this chart show the times when the trend was 0.9 or lower. Currently, we're at 0.86. Sometimes this can be a little bit early. So if we do rally this week, this is Optic Expression Week, which normally has a bullish bias. And so we could spot we rally into Friday. Even if we do, we'll probably have next week down. Optic Expression Week normally means bullish. So it kind of has a bullish fling. And this indicator, even though it's 0.86 on a 10-day average, it can delay a two, three day before that very signal trick kicks in. So if the market does rally, I'm still thinking we're going to have a pullback in the market. If it didn't start, it may be Friday. It'll probably start next week. So how big the pullback will be? I don't know. It could be at worst case 4,200. We could test the previous flow at worst. But it would be a pullback that you should buy. Because the bigger trends up, I think we'll hit new highs going to year-end. And we're entering into one of the most bullish seasonally periods that start actually after next week, at the end of October, the first of November, usually starts a really bullish seasonality. So it could be a little bit choppy between now and then. I'm thinking. So you've got to be a little bit careful here over the next couple of weeks. Absolutely. Tim, thank you so much. We're really looking forward to Tuesday to see if the spike-breath indicator, excuse me, the thrust, how that pulls out. And just thank you so much for coming on. It's always a pleasure. All right, thank you. Yep. Tim, have a good day. All right, folks, be right back. Just stay there.


Ephesians chapter four, and the sermon is, and he gave some to be pastors. He gave some to be pastors. And we find that verse there, that phrase in Ephesians chapter four, beginning in verse 11, when the Lord is talking about giving gifts to his church. Now, it's interesting as we talk about this, as we begin this discussion this morning on how we organize the church. We talked about having a sermon that discusses our church government, and so I wanna keep my commitment to you and preach that to you this morning. So we're gonna find out about how churches are to be organized. We're gonna learn about our church government and how that's to operate. It's very interesting to me, in light of what we've been talking about, and especially with our brother's exhortation and evangelism this morning, is that Ephesians chapter four, the Bible says that God gave these gifts, these leaders, these elders, to the church for the purpose, not that they would do all the work themselves, right? But that they would equip the people of God to do the ministry of God, to do the work of the ministry. And it's also very interesting to me as you follow that passage throughout the paragraph, as you get down to verse 12, he gave these pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, until we all come to a unity of the faith. Now as you go on, look at verse 14. This also serves another purpose that I think has special significance for us that I want to remind you of and reiterate to you right now. Verse 14, those pastors, those teachers, those evangelists in the church, those gifted brothers and sisters were given by God, verse 14, that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Now we go through trials in the church. We've seen the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting men among us. Have we not? But the Lord gives, the Lord blesses His church with older men, older women, who can teach younger men, younger women, right? The Lord blesses the church with godly brothers and sisters who know the word of God, so that you can be disciple, so that you can be taught, so that you can be edified, so that you can grow up in the faith so that you and I don't respond any longer like children. We're not tossed to and fro when these things come upon us, but we know the word of God. We've been taught the word of God. We have godly brothers and sisters among us that we can stand fast when the trial hits. Amen. Though it's a gift, the Lord is gracious to us. And I'm telling you what, the Lord has been incredibly gracious to our church.  It is a tremendous blessing. And it's something that we need to be extremely thankful for. The Lord has been very gracious to us. You think about this as we discuss today, this morning, as we discuss how the church is to be organized, how the Lord in his wisdom has organized how we're to be led, how we're to be governed, and then how we're to interrelate with that governing, interrelate with that leading, how we're to operate as members in the church. And it is in the wisdom of God that this is set up. This is by the teaching, the instruction from the scripture. As we think about that, I wanna make a point to begin, and I want you to apply this point to what we're talking about to this morning. If the church is to be a witness of God to the world, then everything that we do should be thought of in terms of that focus. And if you think of it in terms of that focus, then everything we do becomes incredibly important. Everything from how we pray, to how we interact with one another, to how we fellowship, to how we preach the gospel, to how we preach, and certainly to how we are led. It is all for the purpose that we worship our great God and King who is reigning and ruling, and will one day fully reign and rule over this earth that is currently under the power of the wicked one, will rule and reign completely. And it's how we are to interrelate with that rule and reign that we learn in how we're led and governed in the church. We need to be very careful about these things because they all have importance, they all matter. And so as we get into this conversation today about church government, church government might be taken to some as secondary issue or something that isn't that important or just something that why do we have to learn about that? But it is incredibly important when we consider the work that we have to do and how we're to do it. Can you imagine, let me ask you a question up front. Can you imagine, think of for a moment, the perfect fellowship that Adam and Eve had with God in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God. There was no sin unhindered, unfettered by sin altogether. It was perfect fellowship. God spoke to them audibly, taught them what they were to know about him, taught them how they were to interrelate with him. It was perfect fellowship with God. But when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, that fellowship ended. And when that fellowship ended because of our sin, Adam and Eve became exiles. And because Adam and Eve were exiles, we, with Adam as our representative head, we become exiles because of our sin. In Genesis chapter three, verse 24, the Bible says God drove out the man. This is because of sin. God drove out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. On that day, we became outcasts from God because of our sin and we lost sight of God. We lost sight of God. We read the account of Moses in Exodus 33 where Moses wanted to see God's glory, right?  And yet God said to Moses, no man can see my face and live. God is holy and God is just. God is fully separate from sin. You can't even look upon God and live because we are sinners. We have been separated from God because of our sin. We've lost sight of God. The world at that time caught a glimpse of God or were to catch a glimpse of God in God's people, the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel to work to be priests to God, a holy nation and the nations that lived around Israel were to see the God of Israel and how they lived and how they practiced their faithfulness to God and how they obeyed God. And from that perspective, they could see the justice of God. They could see the mercy of God, the patience of God. They could see the judgment of God. And now as you fast forward into the church age, into the New Testament age, Christ, the image of the invisible God comes into the picture. And Christ says to Philip in John 14, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And looking at Christ, we see the perfect revelation of God in God the Son. These eyewitnesses of Christ, and first John 1 said of Jesus, that it was him whom they have heard which they have seen with their eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled. It'd been awesome, right? To be there with Christ, a perfect revelation of God. God chose to display himself, to display his glory through Christ, fully God and fully man. But today, we're no longer able to see Christ, right? Christ is seated in the heavenlies. We can no longer say with those apostles at that time what our eyes have seen and our hands have handled. And so how does the lost world around us get a visible view or a visible expression of who God is? How does that happen today? How are they to catch a glimpse of him? How are they to learn of him, to know of him? How are they to know what he's like in his rule and in his reign? There are those described by Psalm 14, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They're atheists running around. How do they catch a glimpse of God? How do they understand who God is and what he's like? Certainly the heavens declare the glory of God. We know that from Psalm 19. We see the Lord certainly in his word and what God has revealed of Christ in his word can be read, can be seen. But today, with his word, the most visible expression of God on the earth is the body of Christ, his church. The church is to be a visible, objective, expressive view of Christ in the way that we preach the gospel. In our doctrine, in our display as a pillar and ground of the truth, in our display of truth, in our preaching of the gospel to the lost. Paul says in Ephesians, chapter three, verse eight. Listen to what Paul says here. It says, to me who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. So as the church goes out with their doctrine, as the church goes out with the gospel, we preach Christ and the lost hear of Christ through the preaching of his word. But he goes on to say, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church. It's a church that is a visible expression, makes known Christ to the lost world. And he goes on to say to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. His eternal purpose, God's eternal purpose is accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, is made known by the church. A church is a visible expression of Christ, visible expression of the gospel. It's through the church that the lost world should see Christ in the lives of her people. We're to live holy lives so that the lost world can see Christ in us. It's through the church that the lost world should hear the gospel preached so that they might be saved. It's through the church that the lost world should visibly see the love of Christ, should visibly see the justice of God, the forgiveness of God, the mercy of God, the transformative power of God through the gospel and the glory of God displayed in the lives of his people. Maybe you're here today and you've not put faith in Christ. And you're here today because you're looking for a glimpse of God. You are weighed down and you feel the weight of a great burden that you carry, a great burden of your sin.  And you've not ever seen the forgiveness of God, the mercy of God. You've not come to grips with the justice of God, the judgment of God, the wrath of God. And if you've realized you're carrying that great burden, every day that passes, you're loading more lead bricks into your burden, more lead bricks into your backpack and your weight gets heavier and heavier, the weight of your sin. And it's the weight of that sin that will drag you to hell, lying, deceit, lust, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, cheating, stealing, hypocrisy, do not be deceived, the Bible says in First Corinthians chapter six, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Look around you.  As First Corinthians six describes, they were once like you, but they've been washed, been cleansed, been forgiven, been set apart, been made right, or being sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. A patterns of sin in your life can be broken. The just penalty that you deserve is paid in Christ if you have repented and put your faith in Him. The love of Christ, the hope of eternal life fills the heart of a Christian. How is it that that won't change someone's life? In a biblical church, you're gonna hear Christians sharing the gospel with you.   That's a biblical church. That's a church who cares about being representatives of Christ to a lost world. They're going to point you to your only hope in the scriptures, your only hope is Christ.  The Bible says that Jesus will give you rest. Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Bible says you must repent. You must turn from your sin and place your faith in Christ, all of your hope, all of your trust in Christ alone. You can't depend on any of your own works.  Must place your faith in Christ alone. To turn to Christ by faith according to Hebrews 11 is to believe that God is and believe that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. To believe that your good works are filthy rags. To believe that everything that needs to be done has been done by Christ and in Christ who lived a perfect sinless life, died on Calvary paying the penalty for sin for those that would repent and believe and raised in power by God on the third day according to the scriptures. Do you want forgiveness? Do you want eternal life? Do you wanna have your sin forgiven? Do you want Christ? You must repent and believe in the gospel. It's the church that is the pillar and ground of that truth that displays Christ to a lost world. The church is to display that through the preaching of the gospel, through our lives, through our testimony. Let me ask you some questions and think about these for a moment. If the church is to preach and to display Christ, what would the church display about Christ if it were filled with hypocrites? What would the church display about Christ if it failed to preach the gospel? If you don't preach the gospel, you can't properly call yourself a follower of Christ. We're to preach the gospel. It is the only hope to sinners that there is. What would the church display if it failed to take a stand against sin in the body? What would the church display about Christ if it were filled with a bunch of people who knew doctrine but who didn't fervently live it out? What would the church display about Christ if it were unloving, inhospitable, or unkind? What would the church display if it didn't pray? If it didn't seek the forgiveness of one another, didn't love one another, didn't fervently worship more to the point of our subject today, what would the church communicator display about Christ if it didn't equip faithfully its people for the work of the ministry? If the church didn't have authority, had no authority, if it were chaotic or disorderly, if it weren't led, if it weren't obedient to the scriptures, if it had no leadership, if it had no structure, if it had no organization, Paul says of the Corinthians, let all things be done decently and in order. And the purpose of that statement was so that someone coming in from the outside didn't think we were all mad and couldn't control ourselves. Why is that? Why are we to do things decently and in order? It's because we're citizens of the kingdom and God is a God of decency and order and God rules and reigns in that way. We see that order in organization expressed all over the New Testament, all over the pages of the New Testament, we see examples of church meetings, don't we? We see examples of the church faithfully practicing discipline. We see examples in scripture of qualifications for membership in the church. We see examples of churches organized in ministry. We see the qualifications of an appointment for elders and deacons in the church, how the church is to be led, how the church is to be served. And we see the practice of the ordinances in the church. And one of the ways that the church is charged to display Christ is to function with biblical order and a biblical leadership. And it's incredibly important, a biblical form of church government. This display is for the purpose of displaying Christ's authority over his body, God's authority over his people. And we're all to be under that authority and submit to that authority. It is an expression of his kingdom, an expression of his rule and his reign. So as we get into this conversation about church government, there's a few points that I want you to see. The first point is that this authority ultimately belongs to Christ. That Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone is the head of the church.  Burned at the stake for making such a simple statement that Jesus Christ is the head of his church and not the Pope and Rome. John Huss went to the stake and burned. Huss means goose. You get the phrase, your goose is cooked, came from John Huss burning at the stake for making the statement that Jesus Christ is the head of his church. All authority has been given to him, the Bible says in Matthew 28. Christ is the chief shepherd. But now Christ, as he administers his authority in the body, administers his authority through the word of God, through the word of God. And his word has been placed into the hands of faithful men who are called to lead. Now that means if Christ administers his authority through his word, then all that we need to know about preaching, all that we need to know about discipling, all that we need to know about evangelism, all that we need to know about preaching and teaching, all that we need to know about organizing our lives together, all that we need to know about joy and hope and our eternal future and our salvation and Christ, everything that we need to know is known through the word of God. We hold here to the sufficiency of the scripture. And the scripture has not left us in the dark with how we're to organize ourselves and lead ourselves in the church. The scripture is sufficient for that also and has given us good instruction for how we're to lead and organize. What that means is this, for your Christian life and then also for how we lead and govern the church, we're not to believe one thing and then go to the Bible to try to drum up verses that justify our thing that we already believe. So in other words, we don't just assume that our government is right and then go to the Bible and try to twist scriptures together to try to justify why we hold to the government that we have. For you, your doctrine doesn't come because I believe this about evangelism and then you go to the scripture and try to drum up passages of scripture to justify why you think your belief is right. Your doctrine of evangelism is to be formed from the scriptures and from the scriptures first. So we, if we're gonna know how we do things, how we practice things in the church, we have to go to the Bible first, gain instruction from the word of God and then govern ourselves according to the word of God. Our goal is a church is to do just that. We search the scriptures for principles with respect to how we're to be led, how we're to be organized, how our government is to operate and we find that sufficiently in the word of God. The secondly, in as much as Christ mediates or administers his government, his authority through the word of God, Christ has then placed his word, like I said, in the hands of qualified elders to lead his people and lead his people as under shepherds. Christ being the chief shepherd and then elders as under shepherds to help in the leadership of the church. And we'll talk about qualifications for these men in a moment, but I want you to see a few distinguishing characteristics about elder leadership in the church. The first thing I want you to see is that elder leadership in the church is to be plural. There's to be more than one. We'll talk about that word in a moment, but there's to be more than one. In Acts, if you're taking notes, Acts chapter 14, verse 23, Acts 14, 23, the Bible says, so when they had appointed elders plural in every church singular and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. We see an example in Acts 14, 23 of appointing multiple plural elders in a singular church. In Acts chapter 20, verse 17, Paul from Miletus sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. Elders being plural, church being singular again. Paul calls for the multiple plurality of elders from the church in Ephesus to come to him in Miletus. In Titus chapter one, verse five, the Bible says, for this reason, Paul says to Titus, I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders plural in every city as I commanded you. It was very common at that time to have one church per city. You had multiple elders being appointed in a singular church in that singular city. In James chapter five, verse 14, James asks, is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders plural of the church singular and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. Now that kind of thing is repeated throughout the New Testament. Elder used in its plural form, church used in its singular form, 16 times we see plural elders in the context of a singular local church. Five times we see elder used in its singular senses. One example of that in 1 Timothy chapter five, verse 19, where the Bible instructs do not receive an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. That could be speaking of any elder in a church that had a plurality of elders. Does that make sense? The clear teaching, the very clear teaching of the Bible is that a church is organized and governed with a plurality of elders to lead, more than one. Now you can investigate that more, but it's definitive in the New Testament. It's inarguable. And so a single elder model just can't be sustained from scripture. It's not something that can be supported from the scripture. There is a plurality of qualified elders. Now plurality is great and it's very, very helpful. Again, in the wisdom of God, plurality really helps us. Elders have weaknesses. They're not perfect men. Some of them have a lot of weaknesses. And what is really, really helpful about plurality of eldership is that those other godly men make up for their weaknesses. One brother may be very direct and another elder may be a little softer around the edges to help offset him. There are some brothers who are very passive and some brothers who are very much go-getters. There are some brothers who have more knowledge than other brothers. Or more experience than other brothers. This is a way that the Lord in his wisdom helps to bolster the strength of elder leadership in his church. So first, elders are to be plural. There's to be more than one. Secondly, we're speaking about here one office and one office only. In that sense, we'll talk about this more in a moment, there's not a hierarchy. It's one office. And so when the Bible uses different words for this office, the Bible uses those words interchangeably for the same office and each of the words given just gives nuance to how that office is to be worked in. The description of that office. I'll give you some examples. First word is elder, presbyteros. It literally means gray-headed. And I qualify for that word. It means gray-headed, just an older guy. It speaks to maturity, speaks to not a novice. Somebody who's been in the faith a little while. The next word that is used is overseer. We see the word bishop in 1 Timothy chapter three, verse one. Bishop, that word is episcopos. And that word means overseer. Someone who has oversight watching over the flock. And it's sort of that word describes the function of the office of elder as being one of oversight. And the last word we see is the word pastor or shepherd, poiman is the word. And there's a shepherding sense to that word. All three of those give nuance to the one office of elder in the church, or bishop, or overseer, or pastor. We're talking about one office. Now, we see several examples in the New Testament where those words are used interchangeably of the same office. And one of those is in 1 Peter chapter five, verses one through three. 1 Peter chapter five, verses one through three. Now, this is a general epistle written to a whole lot of churches, a whole lot of Christians and a whole lot of different churches. And then Peter says, the elders, plural, who are among you, I exhort, I who am a fellow elder, see there it's that singular use of the word elder because Peter is referring to himself. It's one of the five times in the New Testament that's done. I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed shepherd the flock of God. That word shepherd there is the verb form of that word, poiman, for pastor. It's the verb form of that word. Again, another word used for the same office. Shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers. There's the third word, oversight of the flock. He goes on not by compulsion, but willingly, and not for dishonest gain, but eagerly, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples of the flock. Now, you'll find that same interchangeable use of those words in Acts chapter 20, verse 28, and in Titus chapter one, verses six and seven. All that to say, there's no hierarchy. We're not talking about pastors who are in authority over elders who are in authority over overseers. There's no hierarchy like that. There's not a bench of bishops that has control over all the other bishops that eventually waits in a pope who has control over everybody. It's unbiblical. There's just nothing of that in scripture. There's no hierarchy here. There won't be a case where the role of a pastor is higher than that of the role of an elder. We're talking about the same office. Sometimes we use those words to describe the function or role that that particular leader is fulfilling. So those words may be used interchangeably, but we're speaking about the same office with the same responsibility, with the same authority, with the same equality, if that makes sense. All right, third. First, it's plural. Second, we're talking about one office. And third, there is parody in that office as opposed to disparity. Parity means equality. Equality in authority and equality in responsibility. Parity basically means that each elder gets a vote. We sit down at the table to make decisions. Everybody gets a vote. It's not that this guy, he's been here six months longer than this guy, and so he gets two votes and this guy gets one vote. Or one of the guys is bald and so he gets a half a vote. The other guy's got a full head of hair. We're gonna give him four votes, right? Doesn't have anything to do with that. Parity means each guy gets a vote, okay? Each guy gets an equal vote. That works really well with three or more. Difficult sometimes with two. Maybe you can understand why. Parity works really well with three or more. Parity primarily pertains to making decisions leading the church and making decisions for the church. However, that being said, you have equality in responsibility, equality in authority, but there may be a functional difference. There may be functional differences in giftedness of those men that are raised up. There may be a functional difference in their experience, in their knowledge of the word of God, in their leadership ability. There may be a functional difference in their statuses, full-time, part-time, or lay-elder, as someone who works outside of the church. The church doesn't pay them. Maybe a functional difference in their job description, in their role. Many functional differences between those that may be charged with leading the church. In that case, there are implications for that. You may have those that are, their primary responsibility is preaching and teaching. You may have another elder whose primary responsibility is leading small groups, leading the teaching ministry of the church. There may be another elder whose primary function is finances and administration and he teaches some classes. There may be another elder who is responsible for the evangelism outreach of the church, the missions of the church. We see that in various ways throughout the scripture. There also may be, because of giftedness, because of role, because of function, those elders that have a different job description or a different role in the church, we see that displayed in Christ choosing the apostles. Jesus calls the 12 to himself, and in calling the 12 to himself, singles out three for special attention, Peter, James, and John, right? Out of Peter, James, and John, calls out one, Peter. And in effect, in that, Peter becomes a leader of leaders, or becomes a first among equals, so to speak. And we see that singled out in 1 Timothy chapter five, verse 17, where Paul, in addressing Timothy, says, let those ruling well elders and laboring in word of doctrine elders be counted worthy of double honor. There's this distinction made between elders doing the role of an elder and those who are ruling well, laboring in word and doctrine. This is seen also in Jesus Christ sending letters to the seven churches in Revelation, to the messenger or the pastor of that church. There was one who was singled out that he sent those letters to. Now keep in mind as we think about this, this is a functional difference, not a formal one. It's a functional difference, not a formal one. And what I mean by that is that it's not a difference in equality, not a difference in authority, not a difference in responsibility, not a difference in that vote, not a difference in the leadership, simply a functional difference, not a formal one. Each elder is under equal accountability. Each elder is to serve the congregation, each elder gets an equal vote. We see functional differences. You can see functional differences, can't you, in the Trinity itself.  Just a functional difference even among the Trinity. That being said, the office of elder may involve functional differences in their role based on giftedness. For brother is extremely gifted in preaching and teaching, well that brother needs to be preaching and teaching. There may be a brother who comes on that's extremely gifted in administration and we need to use his gift. It may not be our gift and it is his, he needs to use his gift. So there may be functional differences in their gifting, maybe functional differences in their role. In other words, you may have plurality, you may have parody, you may have the scriptural necessities, you go to the table to lead, you vote as equals and yet elders may be appointed to various roles in the church. And as you can expect in our church, you may have full-time elders. You do and we hope to have more of them. You may have part-time elders and you'll have lay elders, elders that we can't afford to pay yet that we'd love to bring on full-time as soon as we can that work outside the church until we can afford to bring them on. Based on job description, you may have a senior pastor and associate pastors. You may have elders that perform certain functions in the church in one area of church-like like over small groups or evangelism or teaching or Sunday school. You've got pastors, all of them fulfilling the same office, same responsibilities, same equality, parody and plurality, but they are functionally responsible in different areas in the church. That being said, fourthly, we do not see a hierarchy. There is no hierarchy. There is no leading bishop over other bishops. There is no leading pastor who is in charge of all the other pastors. There's simply no basis for that outside of or inside the scriptures, no basis for that. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, many give their explanation for why there is this outside governing body over the church from the example of Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council. If you know that story from the Bible, they simply went to the Jerusalem Council for counsel. It had no governing authority over the rest of the churches. For us today, one of the baptistic distinctives, one of the distinctives of us being Baptist is that we believe in the autonomy of the local church. In other words, we rule and govern ourselves. There is no council. There is no synod. There is no bench of bishops. There is no pope. There is no perichurch organization that rules over us. We govern and rule ourselves under the authority of Christ our head and his word. And no one else does that to us. Authority rests with the church. That authority involves membership who comes in, also involves discipline sometimes who goes out. It involves who becomes elders. It involves the keys of the kingdom. That is a local church authority. Now all that being said, we looked at what that elder is, what that elder does, how are we to interrelate then with one another in this government? And the way I like to think of this, I like to think of it as a dance. It's a dance and it's a careful dance, but it's a beautiful dance when it's done right. Considering God appointed authority in the church, there must be this dance between leadership and members. Can a leader in the church abuse his authority? Yeah, happens all the time, doesn't it? But does that then negate or cancel out the need for authority? No, we've gotta have authority in the church. It has to be God appointed authority and it's gotta be godly authority. Can church members, can they fail to submit to the authority that God has placed in the church? Yes, happens all the time. But does that negate or eradicate the need for godly authority in the church? No, doesn't mean we just need to throw it out the window as useless or senseless because people aren't gonna submit to it anyway. No, we're to have godly biblical authority. On one side, on the side of the elder, the elder must not overextend or abuse or overreach with his authority. Jesus said in Mark chapter 10, verse 42, describing leadership. Jesus called them to himself and said to them, you know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles, lord it over them. This is an abuse of authority. They're great ones, exercise authority over them and he's thinking in an abusive authoritarian way. Yet it shall not be so among you, but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. We're as elders, the elders are not to lord it over the people and not to abuse or overreach with their authority. On the other side, the church member, they must submit to those, obey those that have the rule over them. The author of Hebrews says in chapter 13, verse 17, obey those who rule over you and be submissive for they watch out for your souls as those who must give an account. There's no qualification to the word obey. There's no qualification to the word submit. In the dance, the elder doesn't overreach his authority. In the dance, he doesn't abuse his authority. His authority extends so far as it is a derived authority from Christ through his word and doesn't reach past his word. So the elder has great responsibility and great needs to take great care in how he leads. On the other side of the dance, the member with great care obeys and submits to and follows his leadership. And that's the responsibility of the members and they need to be careful in how they do that. The elders lead within the scope of the office, not overstepping their bounds. Members follow their leadership as long as their leadership follows Christ and keep watch over their soul. Elders should be marked by a careful understanding that the church doesn't belong to them. The church belongs to Christ. It's his church. The church members should trust, protect, respect and honor its elders and submit to their leadership. Listen very carefully. This is a quote from Mark Never. Listen to what he says. A recognition of the fallen nature of authority and the possibility of its abuse is good and healthy. Power, apart from God's purposes, is always demonic. But a suspicion of all authority or an innate distrust of it is very bad. Are you distrusting leadership? You have an evil suspicion about your leadership. It's very bad. Really, it reveals more of the person questioning than of the authority they're questioning. Moreover, it shows a cancerous denigration in our capacity to operate as those made in God's image. In other words, if we are made in God's image, we should be able to operate trusting in the Lord, operate as the Lord has instructed us to operate. Godly elders not overstepping their bounds, godly memberships submitting to their leadership. To live as he meant us to live, we have to be able to trust him and even to no small extent to trust those made in his image. Everyone in the Bible, from Adam to Eve, to rogue rulers in the book of Revelation, show their evil fundamentally by denying God's authority and usurping it as their own. I would say to you, submit to you that everyone who has ever been put out under biblical church discipline, just biblical reasons, has failed in part at this exhortation, fundamentally not submitting themselves to God's authority in the church. To reject authority then is short-sighted and it's self-destructive. So that's the dance, how we interrelate. How do we select those that have a lead over us in the church? One, God raises them up from among us. I want you to think just for a moment right now, you've been here for a short period of time, you've seen, who are those men that come to mind that the Lord has raised up among us? Lord has done that, hasn't he? He's been very, very gracious to us and has raised men among us to lead. Secondly, we confirm in the Lord raising them among us and we visibly, that becomes evidence and we see that. We confirm their qualifications. We find those qualifications in 1 Timothy, or in Titus chapter one, verses six through nine. And also we see them, turn with me here, to 1 Timothy chapter three, verses one through seven. Very quickly through 1 Timothy chapter three, beginning in verse one, we see that the elder is to be blameless. A bishop then, verse two, must be blameless. That means not culpable. The accusation won't stick because the accusation is false. Are elders going to sin? Absolutely, we're still sinners. We still battle with a flesh. Can an elder repent? Absolutely, but if there is a part of his character that fundamentally disqualifies him for the office of elder, he can't be an elder. And what this is saying in the fact that an elder is blameless, is that one of those disqualifying accusations can't stick. Someone comes and says, oh, this one, the guy's not hospitable. That's the character of his life. And that accusation doesn't stick because he's blameless. Listen, he doesn't rule his household well. Well, that accusation doesn't stick because he's blameless, does that make sense? An elder is going to be hurled upon.  It's gonna be just hurled upon with accusations. Accusations, accusations, accusations. What it means to be blameless is that those are baseless accusations that don't stick because the character of the man is such that he's not culpable for what he's being accused of, blameless. He's the husband of one wife, not a philanderer. He's a one woman man if he's married. He's temperate. Temperate here means holding no wine. It means self-controlled with appetites. He's got himself under control. He is sober-minded, sober-minded meaning, sober-minded, meaning disciplined, meaning self-controlled, thoughtful, disciplined. He is quickly disgruntled with foolishness, right? Sober-minded. He is to be of good behavior, self-explanatory. Hospitable means demonstrates love and care, specifically and especially to those that he doesn't know. Demonstrating love and care, hospitable. Able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetousness, not covetous, but one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. His children behave themselves. He has order in his household, and that's evident in his family. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? He's not a novice. He's not a brand new Christian. Less being puffed up with pride, he fall into the same condemnation of the devil. How many of you seen in the experience of our own church a younger Christian? It seems always to be young men who grab onto some tidbit of doctrine that get puffed up with pride. Did we see that? Yes, fairly common. We don't need a young man who's gonna be puffed up with pride in the office of an elder unless he fall into the same condemnation as a devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside. Good testimony in the sense that interacts well with those on the outside. He is hospitable, loving, caring toward those on the outside. Is an elder in a biblical church gonna have enemies on the outside? Yes. How many enemies do we see assaulting Paul continuously throughout his ministry? This is an elder who's loving, caring with those on the outside. Lost people who see Christ in his life. That's what that's referring to. And that is lest he fall into reproach in the snare of the devil. Once you confirm their qualifications, you confirm their gifts and calling. See a man raised up among us who meets the qualifications and then you see how the Lord has grown him. You see the Lord's gifting in his teaching, in his understanding of the scriptures, in how he disciples, how he cares for the flock, how he labors in the flock. Many times these men are already performing the duties of an elder among us and no one's asked them to. That's just their character, that's just what they do. They're already laboring in that office and we see that as evidence among us. Those men are proven and we evidence their gifts and calling, we can confirm that. Next, the church affirms the leading of the elders. Elders, as they appoint other elders, the church is to affirm that. They also agree with the elders, the leaders of the church, these men are called and qualified. And lastly, we appoint them. So God raises them up, we confirm their qualifications, we confirm their gifts, their calling as being from the Lord, we affirm them and we appoint them. Lastly, what is your responsibility in this? You take part in the dance. You have a very important, as members of this church, we all have a very important responsibility to do our part in the dance. If you don't know how to dance, you need to learn how to dance. You've got to play your part. You have great responsibility in the church. You have a job here. It's not just a time to come for, I know how entertaining this is. It's not to come for entertaining, entertainment. This is, you've got a job, you've got a responsibility in the church. You're to take your part in the dance and submit to their leadership. That's why it's so important that you take part, you take participation in who we appoint as elders because you're going to have to submit to them. You're saying, I'm going to submit to them, I'm going to follow them as they follow Christ. They're taking, they're looking out for my soul. I'm going to obey those that have the rule over me. And you're to follow the outcome of their faith. You're to follow the outcome of their faith. The elders that you're bringing on need to be men who are responsible with their leadership. They don't overreach, overstep their bounds. They are appropriately qualified as the scripture calls them to be and they understand that their authority is a derived authority from Christ only so far as it goes through the word of God. Make sense? All that to be said. And in light of us talking about this very subject today, I am incredibly happy, glad, just joyful in the Lord to be able to present to you today three men that we're going to be calling as elders of our church. And so very exciting announcement. We're going to begin today the process of which you play a part, the process of appointing them to this role in accord with the scriptures. And so please welcome these brothers as I call them. We want them to come forward. Want you to know who they are. We want to pray for them and we want to begin this process together. So great joy. Man, I love these guys. Jimmy Feliciano, Mark Mudge and Rick Fernandez. You guys can come up here. Yeah, God bless you guys. A very weighty matter, right? A very serious matter in our church, but a very joyful one. I, how many of you can attest with me? The Lord has been so gracious to us, right? And raising up men among us to help. Would you say amen to that? Amen. The Lord has been extremely gracious to us and I'm very grateful. I know you are very grateful. I hear you talk about them all the time. And that's not gossip, it's all good. I just love these brothers, right? So our church is, I know you love these brothers and I know these brothers love you. We pray for you. We talk about you all the time and all in good ways too, just loving you. And so I'm very pleased in the Lord to be able to serve alongside these brothers and to serve along you. And to serve along you in walking through this process now of appointing them to this very important role in our church. These men first have obviously been raised up among us, right? They are men whose giftedness and calling have been made evident among us. Have they not? Right. They have been functioning in the capacity of this office on their own to this point and have been doing extremely well in that. Very, very sober-minded, very thoughtful, very intentional in the way that they serve you here. And I believe that they meet the qualifications outlined in 1 Timothy chapter three and in Titus chapter one. And so I want you and I together as a church together to have the opportunity to affirm them with me for this office. And so with that, what begins today is an affirmation process of these men in our church. You have between now and April 20th where that process will be complete and we'll affirm them for the office. Now what that looks like is this. Take the time that you need to talk to them. These guys could get a good meal, so take them to dinner, take them to lunch. Talk to them, ask them questions, ask questions of them, ask questions about their theology, ask questions of how they view their role as elder, ask questions of their wives, ask them about their kids and how they manage their household. Ask them questions. You take the time that you need between now and April 20th to, if you don't already, get to know them. Talk to them. The other important aspect of that is to resolve any concerns that you have, any issues that you have. All need to be completely resolved, completely done before April 20th. Now that being said, that's incumbent upon you. If you've got an issue or have a problem, you need to go to that brother and talk to him. If it's a concern or problem that you would have difficulty in affirming the brother for the office, then you need to let that brother know, talk with him to confirm that, to deal with that, resolve that and you need to let me know as well. We need to know that before April 20th so that we can work to resolve that. April 20th is not an up or down yes or no vote. April 20th is us together affirming what God has done and affirming these brothers in our midst. And so we're going to be affirming them on April 20th, barring any difficulty. Similar to the wording in a marriage ceremony. Maybe this is one way to think about it. When two people are getting married, long-term commitment, right? Long-term. And the pastor gets up in the marriage ceremony and says, there's anyone here who has any reason why these two should not be joined together. Let him speak now or forever hold his peace. Well, you've got between now and April 20th to take care of that. And on April 20th, we're gonna affirm these men for the office of elder in our church. So, once we affirm these men, Lord willing, we're going to install them as elders that it will have a ceremony to install them and we're gonna have a celebration. Celebrating God's grace to us and raising them up for this role. So with that, let's take some time and pray for these brothers. I pray that God would bless this process. Pray that God would bless them in the work that he's raising them up to do is a very difficult, I can attest to that, very difficult, very serious work. And we want the Lord to care for them, to continue caring for our church and caring for us as we go through this process together. And Ben, would you mind praying for these guys?


They face additional barriers people like me haven't had to face and they aren't recognised as much, so we need to do more to highlight their achievements. I nominated Sara Metagion for the Jocelyn Balbenel Medal and Prize last year. She's a brilliant physicist who makes time to do incredible outreach work with schools. She's a queer woman of colour who is an inspiration to the young people she meets. Please nominate your minority colleagues because despite the lack of visibility in our field, they do exist. They don't receive the recognition they deserve and as an early career researcher, we really do need all the help we can get right now to succeed in physics, especially if you're from an underserved community.


Hi, and welcome everybody to DAPA Day 2024. In the next session, we will talk about .NET Aspire and DAPA. Will it be a new doing team or not? And I'm Robin. I'm your guide for the show in the next 30 minutes. I'm enterprise and solution architect currently working at Ripple with 17 years of experience in IT and 12 years in experience in Azure and also in building distributed systems at scale. You can find a lot of information about me and my work on my personal website or Twitter now called xjitab or LinkedIn. Feel free to connect on any of these platforms if you have any question after the talk or if you need more information or simply want a small exchange. So the state of enterprise developers is slightly mixed in the industry. But most of us must develop resilient, scalable, and distributed apps that interact with multiple services or consist of multiple services. And all of these enterprise developers mostly want to focus on writing code and not learning new infrastructure predicament and new ways to deploy stuff. So this is all influenced by the trend of serverless platforms with simple code to cloud pipelines. Also low code and no code environments. And this all combined results in the use of multiple languages and frameworks during development. And this is definitely a point where we need help to make a little bit easier. And this is also the reason why most of us are hold it back on this to create or develop distributed applications. So there's a limited set of tools and run times to build distributed applications. DAPA is for sure one of the good examples to use. So run times have limited language support, a tightly controlled future set. And especially for the needs of developers, it's mostly too complex to work with in the daily business. And also the run time mostly targets specific infrastructure platforms with limited portability. Local debugging is mostly nearly impossible if you develop distributed applications. And all this is already tagged slightly by the well-known DAPA framework. And you know with all this components and functionalities built in and the ability to host it on multiple cloud platforms and so on. But the real interesting thing to get this on a local developers in a loop running, there's a new way. So we can say hello to the new kid on the block. And it's simply .NET Aspire. So what's .NET Aspire? .NET Aspire is an opinionated, cloud-ready stack for building observable production already and distributed applications. So to sum it up, .NET Aspire will help you in setting up C-sharp applications mainly in Azure Cloud. Or if you do so later on to develop them locally. So what's in? .NET Aspire consists of three major parts, I would say. So that one part is the orchestration. .NET Aspire helps up to wire up a multi-project application and their dependencies with ease. So you have the possibility to easily define your application and to easily orchestrate the startup, the new deployment for tests and so on, and for the local run-up. So .NET Aspire also consists of components. So .NET Aspire provides components as new packages for commonly used services like Redis, Postgres, Cosmos DB, Service Bus, SQL Database, and so on. And .NET Aspire also comes with a tooling. The tooling brings templates for projects for adding .NET Aspire to existing projects and also a nice integration into Visual Studio and the .NET CLI. I guess later on there will be also an integration for Visual Studio Code, but for now we are fixed to Visual Studio. And to make all this work, .NET Aspire has a few fundamentals. In the end it's about 10 fundamentals. So first fundamental is orchestration. So .NET Aspire provides APIs for expressing resources and dependencies with a new distributed application that you want to debug or run locally or later on also deploy to Azure with Azure Developer CLI. And for this to make it more consumable in the end, .NET Aspire also adds another fundamental, the .NET Aspire dashboard. So the .NET Aspire dashboard is a built-in dashboard that brings your observability and visibility to all these applications and projects and dependencies in your distributed application. So it will help you to have a look into logs, traces, environment configurations, metrics in real-time, and it will also give you an overview about container spin-up during the process. The third fundamental you already heard about it before are components. So components are simply a created set of new packages that facilitates integration of cloud-net applications. So it's mostly fixed to the prominent services like Cosmos DB, Redis, SQL Database on Azure, and so on. Or a source account. For most of the components, you can also use the emulator to run them really locally without deploying a bit into the cloud. So, but for sure you can also use .NET Aspire to deploy Pulumi, Terraform, or Bicep templates. The next thing, the next fundamental in this group would be networking. So one advantage of .NET Aspire is that it wires up all this inner loop networking by itself. So you define the dependencies and .NET Aspire takes care of the connection between. And this is really great if you have huge apps because you don't need to deal with IP addresses, ports, and so on. It's all done by .NET Aspire. And for this, .NET Aspire also brings service discovery. So fifth fundamental. So it used the built-in capabilities of .NET and it's configuration-based endpoint resolver that's added in .NET Aspire. So later on, I will show you the app host project and where you define all the dependencies and this configuration-based endpoint resolver will help you to wire up everything. So it's a combination of networking and services discovery in this board. Next big thing are service defaults. So cloud native applications have a lot or have the need to be configured a lot and to get a convenient and streamlined, streamlined log experience and also streamlined way of working of the applications, you need to take care of a lot of management of settings and all this can be combined in .NET Aspire with the service defaults. Now, after we have defined service default, seven networking place components used, the dashboard is still there and the orchestration is clear. We have a part where it comes also tricky on this route applications. So in some scenarios, you want to store or persist data. For this, .NET Aspire brings volumes which can be used to persist data during the applications are running because otherwise the containers would really start empty on each try and with this way you can store your database content in this volume or store your uploaded files on the .NET storage emulation or something else. And they will be available after restart of the .NET Aspire app host project. The next big thing are health checks. So if you build your application and you need always to know how is the health status of your overall application and this is something .NET Aspire also brings with ease. So it uses a built-in .NET infrastructure for health checks and adding them to the project. So it's really helpful to get a full observability over the orchestrated project. So you can check the status of each app you fired up. And the last big thing, for me, it's mostly the importance, it's telemetry. So if you have this telemetry in place or if you have overall telemetry in place you have a really good insight into your application. And this can be easily done with open telemetry and for this, .NET Aspire for sure uses the .NET open telemetry SDK and leverages from its powerful integration. So for now on, there's also the functionality to use the dashboard and send the telemetry from other applications in. So it's there since the latest preview version they released recently. And I guess there will be a lot of development in this case, in this direction that you also can only leverage from specific parts of this framework. And to understand the example I will show you later on there's another thing we should talk about and it's the .NET Aspire terminology. So you see the basic definition of a really simple weather forecast project where the web front end is creating an API that's randomly generates weather forecasts. And the references you see here, they're defined for the web front end is on one hand the API and on the other hand the cache for the front end payout to cache. So and to make it a little bit more clear what's happening there, I borrowed the graphic from Microsoft Learn and you can see how this app host project is defined. So overall you have this app host orchestrator project. So it always has an app host suffix in the end by convention. And within this project you define your app model. In this case, it's a distributed application. And with this builder that's created there you can simply define resources like the cache, the API service or the web front end. In the end it's also a resource even it's don't have a variable to be referenced later on. And to make it then more easily to reference everything or every component within your project, it's easily to add the references as already mentioned for example in the web front end. So if you spin up or want to spin up the web front end with a reference to the cache and the API services it's all you need to do is to add these references and for sure also provide this written short codes or magic strings into the web app. So it's not the nicest example in the end but for sure it's a valid example to show you the terminology. So and if we want to combine Donut, Aspire and Dapper I think we are on a really, really good track to combine both technologies. So Donut, Aspire provides the built in possibilities to inject the Dapper sidecar into the local developers in a loop of .NET based applications. So I will show you in a live demo how you can simply add this Dapper sidecar into your developer loop. So and to get this combination why we also have Dapper in this game is so Dapper provides on the other hand the APIs for building reliable and secure microservices and as Dapper and .NET Aspire are complementary technologies Aspire will help you with service discovery to limit the resilience and health checks out of the box. So always in case you write or develop .NET on C sharp applications. And to understand a little bit more I will simply explain a little bit deeper in the next slide why I think .NET Aspire is a good choice to use the abstractions of the underlying cloud platform from Dapper and combine it with the opinionated configuration of the cloud technologies that .NET Aspire provides to you. So one of the main pain points most of us or most of our developers always face Docker compose. So it's an excellent technology but it's getting really unproductive when you only want to run multiple projects or executables. So you have to do a lot of configuration and to do this configuration we already at the next valid point. So one big disadvantage is declarative code at this point. So Docker compose requires you to write YAML code but YAML gets quite complex by adding abstractions to other services. And if you also then add compositions it's gets even more complex.  So this is a real big pain point if you work with Docker compose. And to make it feel better or make it even better I think the use of imperative code or an imperative coding language will help you and this is what Don and Aspire does. So to make it at this point to an end what's the reason why we want to add Don and Dapper but Don and Aspire to this point is that we have a kind of abstraction that brings. So if we don't use Don and Aspire we mostly need to write specific code for specific technologies. So if we want to use Kubernetes or console we need to write different things as we want if we use other technologies. So this is where Don and Aspire simply steps in and the next few minutes I will show you and guide you through the Don and Aspire demo and we'll combine this with Dapper and within this demo. So I will slightly switch the screens. So I need to move to my virtual machine and now you can see the full power of Don and Aspire combined with Dapper as we have our already mentioned app host project and within this app host project we have defined the app model in this case always the distributed application at the cache as before as you have already seen it in the stateful example and in this case we already added a state store a Dapper state store to our environment or our application. We define the API service again in this case I added the state store at this point to store the forecasted weather for 10 seconds and in the end we also define the web component with a double sidecar name web and also the reference cache. So what's happening there to have a look into the code on the app services it's pretty simple and straightforward. We added the Dapper client in the builder added the service defaults from Don and Aspire and also we add the forecasting logic in there so we have some summaries or weather we have a weather forecast that checks for a stored forecast in the state store and if there is no forecast it will generate a new one and save it to the state store again. So if it's not already finds some forecast it will or if it's already finding a forecasted one it will just returned and to define all this you see we only reference the state store we defined already here. So it uses a name we define here to get it back or to derive it from the service discovery and that's everything we have to see like here. If we have a look into the web component we have also adding the Dapper client to the builder of the application and that's simply all we did at this place but in the weather client that simply calls our API that I showed you before we invoke a Dapper client and we are giving in that we need to talk to the API Dapper Sidecar and we want to use the weather forecast API we created before and this is nearly everything you need to do within your application so you don't need to deal with IPs you don't need to deal with ports or something else it's all handled internally by .NET Aspire and I already showed you that we add the service defaults to the startup code you can see it at this point here and we also do adding the latest output cache at this point we defined also in our app host project and if you then have a look to the service defaults then are simply added to the applications by baladot.addServiceDefaults is everything needs to be done to add the open telemetry and the default health checks and the service discovery to the project is combined in this extension so we have done all this in one place for all of your projects and all the projects using the standard service defaults are doing it in the same way so the configuration of open telemetry the added services to the builder are always the same and they always use the same settings over all applications you fire up so you have also the possibility to enable the Azure Monitor exporter enable the Promotors exporter and also you can do more things with Promotors and so on so it's most of these things are pretty fine but you feel free to extend it if you need it so there's a lot of possibility to extend it in the end so you can also add more meter providers and so on so and if we fire up our app host project to see Donut, Aspire and DAPA in action it simply builds the application and fires up the app host project and this will take a few seconds and afterwards we will already get the chance to see the beautiful Donut, Aspire dashboard so you can see that we have a container in there where we edit the latest cache we have the DAPA sidecar for the API services we have the DAPA sidecar for the web frontend and we have the both projects API service and web frontend so to have a look into there you can see that if you use the endpoints link you are already redirected to the right API endpoint or if you click on the endpoint for the web app you always get redirected into the right place of the web app. Well, after this I want to show you what adds into the DAPA dashboard into the Donut, Aspire dashboard, sorry for that and you can view for example the configuration the environment variables of the projects in so if we have a look at them in the web frontend you can have a look into each of them and you can easily click on the I and it will show you the value so this is pretty straightforward and you see the configuration for example for the cache and so on that's always or that's added here as environment variable or the DAPA HTTP port and you can also view them for the API service and also for the cache DAPA sidecar is mostly is also filled with some values so you have a fuel observability about all settings so you also can have a look into the matrix and the logs so you have the console logs for example from the API service DAPA sidecar you could have also a look into the console logs of the web frontend it's just a startup process in you have the possibility to have a look into the structure logs and also in traces so and you see already the call we have done and if we now go through our web app and just open the weather tab there's another forecast generated it's slightly different from the one I loaded in this case on the first call to the API and if we have a look to the traces they are updated in nearly real time or in a real time in this case and you can also have a look into the metrics of your application so if we have a look in the metrics of the web frontend and we can have a look into the request duration or active requests per second so it's all shown in near real time so if we just reload the page you then should see also an active request coming in so this is what I want to show you in a quick demo I think most important is the fact that it's really easy to add the DAPA sidecar without any further configuration and also without any further writing of YAML and if you would use the Azure developer CLI you could also deploy this directly to Azure so I will not show this because of the time limit we have and I will step back to the presentation and summarize a little bit what we talked about so I strongly see the positive things that come in with Don at Aspire and I'm a big fan of imperative programming languages so the abstraction and simplification capabilities of Don at Aspire which is coming with the tool are much more powerful than the voices that stands against adding another tool to the tool chain so use the power of Don at Aspire and makes your life and the life of all your developers easier so to sum it up a little bit so imperative language support is the key for success at this point so use the power of your IDE and leverage from various advantages like types, intelligence, abstractions and so on so Don at Aspire is for now in public preview it's currently preview four it's already provides a solid ground to work with it and it will be extended under this first general available release that is proposed for this year and I think this will be the game changer on working with DAPA in Donat and Azure environments mostly because of its integration and of its tooling because you have all the power at hand you have this components you have the integration in Visual Studio and the Donat CLI you have a template so that you can easily edit to your existing projects with ease and without too heavy state so begin your journey utilize Donat, Aspire and DAPA to improve the developer's day-to-day work experience and feel free to join the DAPA Discord channel there you will find me also and I will respond to your questions slightly and I will publish the code example from this from my talk in the session on my GitHub account and you will find it there within the next days so enjoy the rest of the day have fun watching the other sessions and see you next time, bye.