 goodness gracious. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. We have with us today Reverend Dr. Leigh Ann Hadley and Leigh Ann has worked with our conference through the Center for Leadership Development for five years now that has worked with children for much longer. So we are really excited and she's invited Melinda Schunk who's in Arkansas and they'll introduce themselves more later. But to come and share with us some best practices for pastoral care with children, youth and families. And as they reminded me it can go beyond just children and youth up to our adults and seniors and everything. So we will be recording this and we'll put that out on our website and on our Facebook pages. So feel free to pass this on to staff, pastors, anyone you think that that would benefit from these years of wisdom and pastoral care practices. So we are really excited and I will pass this over to Leigh Ann and Melinda. Okay, hey I'm so glad that you all are here. My name is Leigh Ann Hadley and I'm an elder in the United Methodist Church and I started out in ministry working with children and here I am 35 years later still working with children. And so I am currently serving at Christ Church United Methodist in Louisville, Kentucky and I also do a consulting kind of program called A Time for Children where I do workshops and lectures and I've worked so much with the North Texas Conference on that. So that's what I am. I'm also an author and I have two books that I thought I plugged, Bless to Be a Blessing, which is Sacred Circle Time with Kids and then I also have a book called Touching Heaven, which I wrote a few years ago, but it's about children and their experiences with God as they die and so those are my selling books that I've done. But I'm delighted to be with you and I believe strongly in what we're doing today and the need for pastoral care in addition to programming during this time of crisis. So I'm going to turn it over to Melinda to introduce herself. Melinda is my new friend. I think she is the bomb. I love her so much and I'm glad that she's here. So Melinda, introduce yourself. Well, thank you, Leanne. My name is Melinda Schunk and I am relatively new to Arkansas. This is our fourth year living here and I was a classroom teacher for seven years for 12 years in children's ministry. Took a couple years off. We have four kids and now I am coordinator for the Arkansas Conference. So I work with, develop, train, advocate for all children's ministers here in the state. And so Leanne and I met each other when I hired her to come to our Beyond Conference, which you all are welcome to come to each January. We have that, but she was our guest speaker and so that's where I had her come and train and then things just took off from there. So last week I did the same training for our conference as well in a webinar. Yeah, so it's so impressive. I just asked her to jump on today. So if we can have our slides now, we're going to start with just a moment of worship and Melinda's going to read the scripture and I'll just say a few words about it. And Leanne, before we start, if you have any questions as the presentation is going on, if y'all just submit them in that chat box just as they come up and we'll have time at the end to answer those questions. So no need to hold it in your head. Just vote on the chat and we'll keep up with it. Right. Go ahead. Here's the slide. There we go. There we go. All right. So we need the next one that has the scripture. I chose this verse because I just felt that we are creating a temple, a virtual temple. So our focus verse for today is, in my distress, I cried out to the Lord. I cried out to my God. God heard my voice from his temple. My cry for help reached his ears. Second Samuel 227. I think that there is a theology out there which is flawed, which says that we only cry out to God with joy. And I think that lamenting and crying and going to God with our authentic selves is something, a new narrative that we need to reclaim. It was certainly part of the exile. It's certainly part of our lives today. And it breaks my heart when people say, I want to to complain, but of course I can't complain to God. God will get angry to me. And so I love this because it reminds us that it is in our times of distress that we can cry out and that God wants to hear us no matter what. So this scripture works great for the children that we're going to work with. They need to cry out. They need to have a place where they can speak to God. And that's what we're going to try to do is create this sacred space using these stones with children. But I also think that we need a place to cry out because we are distressed. And not only are we distressed, but we're carrying the distress of everybody on our shoulders. And so I just wanted, I love the scripture. I think it reminds us that it's okay to cry out to God when we're uncertain. So I want to talk a little bit, and the next slide, about why we need holy listening. And so let me just tell you, I think holy listening, if I had to give it a definition, it would be that it's holding sacred space for God to do God's work. So we are not the people who fix the children. We're not the people who have to have special gift to do this other than we have to have the faith in God that if we gather with another person, where two people are gathered, there I will be so that God can do God's work. And I particularly think that we need holy listening right now. As soon as this pandemic broke out, I was aware that our children are going to be deeply impacted by this. At first it seemed like children wouldn't because they're not going to catch it. And if they do, they're probably not going to have complications from it, unless they are already immune suppressed or something like that. For the bulk of our children, they're going to watch this happening around them. But when you think of the group that is going to be affected, it's going to be their grandparents. So we are going to have children in our congregations who lose their teachers, their grandparents, their loved ones. And there is two statistics that I want to point out. One is that with just regular life, no pandemic, 20% of all children, so one in five, will lose a significant loved one before the age of 12. So that's if we didn't have a pandemic going on. We had this pandemic, which is going to affect our older population. And that statistic is going to skyrocket. And the second statistic is that every time somebody dies and a child is affected, 30 other children will be aware of that death and affected by it. So if in our church, one of our children loses their grandparent, there will be at least 30 other children who know that child, who go to school with that child. It could be 60, it could be 100 kids. And what we want to make sure is that that child gets holy listening, but the others do too, because they're going to be wondering, is it my grandmother next? How is my friend? How do I feel? They're going to be processing grief too. So this is going to get, the numbers are going to get huge quickly. And it's going to be important for us to be ready. Now that's just my opinion, but Melinda has done some research for us. So Melinda, share with the big dogs. Okay. Well, these articles are very current and from 2020, but it also just shows how Leanne is following the spirit and knowing and looking ahead and knowing what is working. And these articles share that. So the first talks about children being resilient. You've heard that on the news. You've heard that, oh, kids are resilient. Kids are resilient. And my skin started to crawl when I heard that because I thought to myself, my goodness, if kids are so resilient, then why do people have childhood trauma? Why do people complain that this happened in my childhood and I didn't deal with it? And now I have this as an adult. So I think resilient is being misused. Resilient is true. Children are resilient when given the tools to talk through and deal with the feelings, the fears, the trauma that they've experienced, then they are very resilient. And so here are two studies and I'm just not that you can read, but some of you might be on a small iPad or a phone. And so I'll just read it out loud. It says, Father Gil said the actual dynamics of how kids absorb this pandemic will follow patterns observed during and after Katrina. According to the 2017 study, kids experience the general atmosphere of anxiety and panic as acutely as adults do. Only they might be better at hiding it. They actually might not even know they're having it. That fact might contribute to a general sense among adults that children are somehow naturally resilient and can bounce back easily. And that attitude from adults can hamper both per proactive attempts to help children process what's happening and necessary therapeutic efforts after the disaster. So this was written by Van Newkirk to an Atlantic staff writer for 2020. But then the next article I found as great evidence and very helpful is from, is from Scott Baranito, Senior Editor of the Harvard Business Review for 2020. And he says, when you name it and you feel it and it moves through you, emotions need motion. So there's a physical activity that goes with emotions. Do you see how Leanne had this all figured out before this article was written? It is important we acknowledge what we go through. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn't help because your body's producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they'll happen in an orderly way and it empowers us. Then we're not the victims. So this is if you need concrete evidence, this tells us right here why we need listening to become holy listeners and why holy listening stones will work. And you'll see that as we go through the process if this is new for you. Okay. So we want to talk just a second about the stages of grief. So these are, you know, if you've ever done much workshops on grief or whatever, you know that Elizabeth Kubler Ross is the one who really coined the five stages of grief and we're familiar with those. What I love about this illustration of them is that a lot of people think that they are linear so that our goal is to get somebody to a place of acceptance. And I think for many of us who have been through grief, we feel like we need to reach that place of acceptance too. I heard Elizabeth Kubler Ross speak. It's been a lot of years ago and now she has died, but at the thing that I heard her speak at, she said, you know, I love my stages of grief. I believe that they are accurate. After all these years of using them, I still believe that there are five stages of grief and that they are accurate and that they're helpful. And she said, and you know, it made me a rich woman and I was able to do all this help, work all these people. But what I don't like is that it is set sort of this goal for people where they feel like unless they're in acceptance, they're doing it wrong. And she said, I just wish everybody would understand that these are just feelings that we have. So it's more like popcorn popping. You're going to feel bargaining in one minute, angered another acceptance at another. And in holy listening, we're not doing anything to move children towards anything. We are holding space for whatever they're feeling. So some of our children will be in bargaining, some of them will be in anger, some of them will be in sadness. And it is not our job to move them into a place of acceptance or understanding or anything. We hold the sacred space. And I think that is critical to understand the difference between holy listening and maybe therapy, which might work to help kids get into a place of acceptance. That's not what we're about. And it's certainly not what we're about during the time of the crisis. In addition to this, there was another stage at it. And I'll have Melinda explain that stage. So David Kessler studied with Elizabeth and was good friends. After she passed, he himself had lost his 21 year old son. And he said, Oh my goodness, I've been working with grief and counseling people. And now I'm actually having all of these feelings and understanding this to a level that I never could have helped with anybody else. And when he'd gone through and felt his stages, he also found he was feeling a sense of meaning that not meaning like his son died for a reason, but some kind of meaning came out of some good, just God redeems to something good coming out of something bad. And so a couple years ago, he met with the Acuba Ross family and requested that he ask that if meaning, if you see that down in the little blue, could be added to the five stages of grief, and they concurred and let him add meaning. So now there are currently six stages of grief. Okay, great. Okay, so we've talked a lot about the, you know, why, the why, the why, now we're going to get down to business because it is my goal that by the time we get off of this webinar that you go out and find yourself some rocks, you make some symbols on them and you start doing holy listening. You will be proficient. It is, I am certain by the end of this webinar. So this is my grandson Griffin and I thought before we go any further, we'll just show you kind of what it looks like to do holy listening with an actual child. So this is Griffin several years ago, but oh, I just love him. Okay, you can watch and see how holy listening stones work. Are we not getting sound on that? I don't have the sound. Is anybody? And I am here with my grandson Griffin. Griffin, tell them how old you are. Four. He's four years old and Griffin has never done holy listening stones before. I don't always use holy listening stones with four-year-olds, so we're going to try it and see what Griffin does with them. So Griffin, these are holy listening stones. They are stones that help you put your feelings into words and to tell God how you're feeling today. Okay? So I want you to look at these stones and then I want you to pick like three of them and tell us how you're feeling today. Okay? Say what you find. Trying to get these on the tree and then having a broken heart. Why do you have a broken heart? Because my friend doesn't want to play with me. Your friend doesn't want to play with you and that breaks your heart? I didn't know you had a broken heart. Okay, and what's the circle? The circle is one's writing a race car in the house. Oh, okay. So somebody, so this one, he was going to put leaves on the tree. This is a race car, race track. He loves cars, don't you? But this one was interesting because he said that his friend broke his heart because his friend doesn't want to play with him and that breaks his heart. So he told us something very important about himself. He's only four and yet he found one of the stones at least that spoke to him. So Griffin, if you were going to do a prayer to God, what would your prayer be? What do you want from God? What do you want to tell God or what do you need from God? What do you want to say to God today? What did you want to tell God? There's two water going to make you wake up. Okay, so he said that Jesus died on the cross and that made him very, very sad. And now there's two waters and that water goes somewhere and it's going to take him to Jesus and make him feel happy again. Okay, now let me show you one other tool. Okay, you want to start all over? Okay, what do you want to do? Is that a happy face? I don't know, what do you think? Okay, so that's a happy face. Okay, tell us what that means. When you're sad, you see a star face and then if you're sad, you want to make a tower and that makes you happy. Okay, so you see how they work? They're the language of children. And so whether I understand exactly what he's saying or he just plays with them or whatever, he's becoming familiar with them. And then when he needs them, he can use them. So Griffin, thank you so much for helping us. I want to show my friends one more thing, okay? Let's get those out of the way. These are the ones that I usually use with somebody, Griffin's age. And they look just like the Holy Listing Stones, except instead of just having random things on them, they're different faces. Like this is a scrunchy sad face. This is a little bit happy. This is a little bit happy. This is like, oh, surprised. This one is, oh, this is very happy. This is very sad. And look at this one, he's crying. So Griffin, out of all of these faces, I want you to just tell me, how are you today? How are you right now? Can you show me on a face? Oh, he's very happy. Okay. And what about when you think about school? Do you like school? How does school make you feel? How do you feel about school? What's that face mean? Sad. Sad? Why don't you like school? Do you like school? No. What makes you sad at school? Oh, he's happy at school. Okay. All right. Great, Griffin. Thank you. So these are Holy Listing Stones. And you can see that even a four-year-old can use them. He's often running. So even a four-year-old can use them. But usually I use them with kindergarten through sixth grade. But I wanted to show you the power of the symbolic language of children. So anyway, thank you so much for joining me. I hope that you'll make some Holy Listing Stones and use them. They are a great tool for you to use with children. So make yourself a set, use them, and just see what happens. I think you will be delightfully surprised. Thank you. God bless you. All right. Great. Griffin, a great job. So I wanted you to see how simple it is. It's not going to be like this holy experience. It's going to be a kid sitting down with you. You're holding sacred space. They're going to say something about how they're feeling. And then they're going to ask God for what they need. And the stones, the genius in the stones is simply that they speak the language of children. Children do not have words for what they're feeling. There's too many feelings jumbled up inside of them. Actually, none of us do when we're in crisis. And so the stones just are like that tipping point that help children put their feelings into words. So I just want to show you real quick how it works. And that what I did with Britain, or with Griffin, sorry, I was following my son's name, what I said, what I did with Griffin has a process to it. And it's simply this, you find a sacred space, so you make space. And a lot of times I lay out a little cloth and I light a little candle to make it like this is special space. And then you prepare your stones, you just lay them out and that just gets the kids interested. There's something about the symbols that kids like. And so you don't have to say, now we're going to do holy listening, sit down, you just say, I got some rocks, you want to look at them? And I have yet to find a kid who's not kind of like, I'll look at them, even teenagers, even adults are like, what are those? So you lay your stones out, and then you ask them to choose two or three to show you, you know, how they're feeling. They choose them. You simply say, tell me more. They tell you. And then you say, pick another stone and show me what your prayer is. They do. Or maybe you say a prayer, and then you bless the child. And that's as simple as it is. So the most complicated part about this is getting yourself something, a piece of paper, some rocks, some little glass globs, whatever it is to make your stones. Once you get your stones, all you have to do is hold sacred space and let that child share something. The beauty of it is it's short. It doesn't take forever. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. But if you trust the process, we have found that this is the most effective way to get children to speak about their deep and important feelings. All right. So since the symbols are up here, and if somebody in this group has never done holy listening stones before, a question that came up on the webinar last week was, what do those symbols mean? What do they mean? People wanted to place a meaning on one of those images. What would you say when someone says, well, what do they mean? I need to know a meaning for those pictures. That is a great question. In fact, when I first developed holy listening stones, I just, I made a game. They were a game. And so I would have the heart and then it would be like, when are you feeling loved? And the little spongy face, you know, was like, when are you confused? And the little shut eyes? When do you feel sad? Whatever. And then children started coming to my center. I had a spirituality center at the time. Children started coming and we were playing with the rocks and they would say, that's not a, those eyes aren't shut. Those eyes are open. That's how I feel when it's my birthday party. Or that isn't a road that leads to happiness. That's flushing down the toilet. So they don't really have any meaning. That's the beauty of them. Children will see in those rocks, whatever they need to tell you. The rocks just help them start to put it into words. And it also breaks this tension. So if you're a child and you come to me and I say, I know that you're upset about COVID-19. I want you to tell me how you're feeling. The kid just automatically withdraws the same way as any kid would when they feel pushed. And then you say, you know, tell me, tell me, the kid pulls away, pulls away, and then you're in this battle between everybody saying, oh gee, my phone's ringing. And then the kids, you know, they push away from you, push away from you, push away from you. And with the stones, they break the tension between you. You simply say, look, there's a stone. Pick one. And so they're not feeling pushed to talk. They want to talk. It gives them a language. So it's a kind and a gentle way to get children to talk. So thanks for that question. There's no right or wrong to the questions, to the stones. They're all whatever you see in the stones. All right. So I told you how to do the stones. And then Melinda's going to share some ways that we use them in churches. And then we're going to get to the video part of how do you do this during COVID-19. So tell us some ideas about how these have been used in churches, Melinda. Well, this air to this, the one to the left with you see the little animal creatures around it on wooden, those are wooden craft circles that someone has taken a black Sharpie and just drew Leanne symbols on top of the little wood chips. And she has that setting. In fact, that is from and note if there's any youth directors here, Hendricks College Foundation for Call. She is a deaconess and she uses this with her college students when they come in in order to house college going fine. Why don't you grab a couple of stones and tell me why you grabbed is how she gets those college students to open up. So the one that looks the most childish is at a college campus, which I think is a fun way for you all to start looking at that. She also went to Dollar Tree and found the little turtle and the lion and the dinosaur and the to add to a talking points because if somebody wasn't seen in a symbol, something she would say well which animal which which cartoon image are you feeling today. And so sometimes people would pick a turtle up and they would say slow as a turtle and so or they might pick up the cupcake and say I'm having a sweet day. It's just so sweet. And so everybody had different reasons. And it's again, they mean nothing. There are tool to get conversation starting the one to the bottom by the little zippers. Those are actual stones that were taken out of a pebble yard. And the children's minister just took a black sharpie and she drew the symbols on that and she has that center. She has a prayer center, a room set up with prayer stations all around it. And weekly she has someone who's been trained as a holy listener and they wear a holy listener sticker and the child goes and grabs the person that has the holy listener sticker on and says come here we need to do holy listening and the child and the adult go and they sit at that table and they do their holy listening stones and that is just done in a weekly when we do not have a pandemic going on and we get to touch people and be around them. This is how they're used in a ministry setting easily and low functioning and as long as you have a trained holy listener it works. You'll see a little writing up there that I said never do this behind closed doors. Leanne's church does it in a hallway. This obviously they're adults at the college but at the church where they do it it's a big open space room where lots of people are doing different prayer stations all around. So those are some safe sanctuary things you want to keep in mind when you're doing that. You want to have a private conversation but just like when we're in a party or a large situation when two people are gathered in a public space you can have speak quietly with one another and have a very caring and sharing sacred space without being pulling someone in an isolated situation so just so that measure is out there and we're going to talk about that when we get on the phone with somebody and how that looks when we're on the phone as well. Yeah so it's my goal that in these churches that every church would do holy listening on a regular basis but whether you've got that going in your church or not that's why we're doing this webinar. It is time for us to take off our programming hats and put on our pastoral care hats. Children need the pastoral care as much as they need their Bible stories and everything else. So we've now played with this for the last few weeks and we are prepared to show you kind of what does it look like to do this through video. You saw it in person what does it look like on video. So Melinda I'll let you explain this because you're the one that met with this child. Okay well first of all I have an iPhone so I immediately it was like oh yeah I can totally do this. I can FaceTime with my people and then it dawned on me my husband has a droid. Oh oh oh not everybody you cannot connect with everyone. You could do this over a zoom it's a it's you could it's totally doable over a zoom but it's a little more instrument-ish and you'll see when I when you see the video if you're doing it phone to phone. So you would want to be prepared before going into a virtual time by downloading they have Skype for iPhone and I've used that they have Google Duo which is very nice and the recording that you're going to watch quickly here is done with Google Duo and then just talk video chat and messenger and I've not used that but those are would be the three you probably want to have those apps on. The other thing before chatting with someone 18 years and younger is you would want to reach out to the parents. So the before the I did this video that you're going to watch I called the mom and I said hey Mandy I would love to do holy listening stones with your child and she's like what are you talking about and I was like oh well she knows what this is because we've done this we do this at the end of our time together when she's in class with me on Sundays and Wednesdays and I would really love to be able to record this for our training purposes and her mom was like well tell me more so here's a mom whose child had been doing it and she didn't know she was doing it so you're going to need to take some time to talk through the parents with the parents and that's when you're going to explain I'm going to have show some symbols on the screen and they're going to pick two to three of those and then they're going to tell me why they chose those and I'm going to listen to them and then we're going to pray about it and that's all it is and the mom was like oh yeah yeah yeah I can totally do that that works for me and and I said and I would love it if you stayed in the room if you felt comfortable it'd be really nice so see again I'm setting up a safe sanctuary situation that I invited the mom to be present during that time so or the parent now if the parents like oh no I think they'll talk better if it's just the two of you so if their response is that to you you would then say that sounds great can you put me can you put us in a living room or a shared space that you might be in and out of so that if if there's questions or anything that you're an earshot and so that again keeps you as a volunteer or a pastoral staff in the safe sanctuary by your asking the parent to stay within earshot of what you're doing in a virtual listening holy listening moment okay so I'm I'm going to need you Emma to click on the so there's no volume with this and you'll notice there I am and I'm greeting that sweet little she's a fourth grader and so the reason I chose a fourth grader is you saw a four-year-old do it and this one you're seeing a fourth grader so I'm showing her see on the little screen below you'll see I am not putting very much time with my face it goes on the stones and it goes the camera goes onto the candle so I'm asking her oh here's our holy listening stones and our candle and I have that all set up ahead of time don't set it up with them on the phone have it all laid out and then I said what do we need to do and then she tells me that we need to light the candle and I asked her why do we light the candle when we're doing holy listening and she said because the holy spirit is with us in this conversation and I said you are so right thank you so then we light the candle and then do you notice I still do not have the camera on my face it's still on the stones this sets the child at ease and gives them continuous time to study now the stones I took the camera down and I'm showing them and look at her face look at her study the reason there's no volume so you can look at her expressions in a few minutes here look at her eyes got big as she makes some of the choices you will see her look up into her left that's the memory she's having a really good memory and it's why she chooses one of the stones now I can't see there we go I gotta move my okay so here she's getting ready to make her choices and then I point to them and I'm like this one and then she shakes her head yes that one and there she's thinking again and she picks another still the camera's not on me it's all about her and so she picks so what she ends up picking so do you see then I push away everything that we're not using and I focus the camera on the three stones and she picks that the swirl and the sunshine and the exclamation point so the first one look at you see you're looking up she's explaining to me why she picked the sunshine because her mom and dad bought them a trampoline last week during the to keep them busy and they've had so much fun on the trampoline so then we go to the swirl one and she says the swirl is because we're in a pandemic and everything is swirling around and it's just a lot is what she's telling me and that's what she picked and the last one is the exclamation point and she said she chose that because she just feels excited and anxious and she doesn't know what's coming next now the entire time that I'm doing having this conversation her mom is holding the camera for her and her mom is listening to this her mom later texts me and then phone calls me and said I have never heard Sydney talk to anybody like she was just talking in such a comfortable relaxed manner she's always such an anxious child is what her mom said and I didn't even know you all did this at the end of each class so as we go on she finishes talking and then the most important my most favorite part is I was said Sid would you like to pray and then she and we ran her in class she'll usually say yes but this time she said no but you always want to offer them the chance to pray and to pray and praying for them to release and relax and give it up to God so Emma you can stop the video here and then Leanne all right great all right so you see how simple this is what we're asking you to do is just trust a process and until you do it you think wow I mean is this going to work it works children are like popcans who have just been shaken and what holy listening does is it lets a little bit of their feelings out at each time that you meet with them and it is amazing we can survive this if we just don't shut down it's that keeping those emotions moving keeping those emotions coming out and out now so I'm just going to review really quick so there's the beginning time you greet the person you ask them you know if they want to look at the rocks whatever and we also have done a little variation on it where we say go into your house and find something that reminds you of how you're feeling so they might get a sad teddy bear or they might get something and bring to you and so that's really been great that's been like an addition to the rocks since we've got them at home anyway and it helps them to focus a little bit better so um so that's the beginning and then the next slide is simply the next slide is um you give them the stones to pick and you just listen and what I want to stress is that this is not a time to fix anything it is an acknowledgement that their feelings are real it's holding sacred space and it's allowing God to do God's work and lots of people will say I don't know why we need holy listening if my kid gets really bad we'll get a therapist well first of all most children who need care won't get a therapist they're expensive they're on high demand there won't be enough of them going around just for the people who are the most affected by this COVID-19 there aren't when COVID-19 isn't happening there aren't enough child psychiatrists but this is the church's work like beyond whether somebody else could do this this is our work we are the ones who believe that we have a God who when we hold sacred space will come and heal children and heal all of us and so um I don't know why we would farm that out this is our job to sit and hold sacred space together with the kids and that's all you're doing during holy listening then in the next slide um it simply is a closing and you say you know thank you and thank you for for doing this with me you blow out the candle you put the rocks away and then you do the most important thing of all and that is um the blessing I think there's a slide on the blessing no there isn't but anyway here's um this is the blessing in your closing if you do nothing else except warmly greet a kid let them choose a stone and then bless them the blessing is important what you say during the blessing to a child is thank you you have shared your feelings with me and I appreciate it and God has heard your feelings you don't promise them anything you don't say I'm sure God will do this or God will do that you simply say I could feel God in this presence and I hope you can and in this time together thank you and then um and then you give it back to God this is hard work it's hard work because all of us went into ministry because we care deeply about people and their emotions and so as they share you can't help but take that on yourself and so the blessing no longer tells the child your feelings matter God has heard your feelings thank you for sharing your feelings with me uh it also gives you a chance to give that back to God if you carry those feelings you know it's one thing if it's one kid or two kids but by the time you've talked to five or six kids plus their parents and have a day plus your own stuff that's going on it's just too much so use that blessing to say God I am taking this child and their worries and I'm placing them where they belong which is not in my heart it is in your heart you made this child you created this child you love this child I'm trusting you with every bit of this child's situation give that to God and then you'll be refreshed to go back out and do your work do you have anything to say about that Melinda anything else um yeah just another important thing and as many of you are pastors or do any kind of pastoral care know that it isn't especially during this time you're have the um first two things you need to not think that as the pastor the children's minister and the youth it's the three of you your staff's job to do this this training is going to be recorded and we want you to anybody that you feel their spiritual gift is to be a holy listener you show them that video and you say I need help because the possibility is that this is going to be bigger than an average church week a pastor might have to do three three funerals in a week and that was a hard busy week or maybe some of you have stories to tell that you had five and that was an emotional hard week but you may have five heavy conversations in one day you may have the inability to have a funeral and you're going to have all of that family all of those people needing somewhere to to release so have as many people in your church trained in this so that you're not carrying the weight of your entire congregation or your parish because this is going to be bigger than what we normally see in a normal week in ministry and the second is somebody needs to be a whole a holy listener for the holy listeners so Leanne tends to be the holy listener for the for the holy for her her time for children people they call and like tell her but nominate somebody within your staff or your parish or if the senior pastor wants to be the holy listener for the holy listeners that also is a is a good thing to so decide who's going to be the listener for the for the holy listener because if blowing out the candle is good when it's grief about not that it's simple grief but what you just saw Sid share with me was not anything that I would carry heavy now had she lost or a child had died or it was a big grief I'm going to need to let that go as well so writing it down and blowing out a candle may not let that grief off of of the holy listener so pick someone who's the holy listener for your holy listening team is the other thing I would add so now we're on the next slide and this is a video modeling of holy listening for a teenager this happens to be my son he's 17 years old he has done this since he was very little so he knew exactly what we were doing so I didn't have to do a lot of prompting or talking with him about it but because he knew enough about it he said I'm not doing my own stuff I'm not saying my own things and because he that's very personal it's very intimate and it's very personal saying it's sharing so I took a Leanne's example that she had shared that a student had done with her and I said okay well do Leanne's example and so you're going to watch him and this is another angle that we did there so you could kind of see I'm in my house he's in another space in the house and I have him on FaceTime here I have the holy listening all set up you're going to hear a common response that you're you might get from a child a teen and maybe an adult where I said how are you doing fine do you want to talk about it now and I give him choices and so choices I believe is key another key point that why these holy listening stones work so well is because everybody likes a choice nobody likes to be made to do something and so when you're asking someone point on tell me how you feel they have no other thing that's that's their only that's their only you're just you're putting them on the spot where when we give choices we're going to get more from someone and get to a deeper level so if you could click on that Emma oh and there's a little feedback but I left it in there so that you could see it's good to have earphones sometimes when you do this hey brave I just wanted to reach out to you your mom had messaged me and said that you weren't feeling super good so I wanted to do a little FaceTime with you and chat what's going on really your voice doesn't sound fine and it's definitely been a lot going on lately is there a hey do you want to do holy listening stones remember we've done that before with that hope okay well do you want to go around your house and find something that might describe what you're feeling like go through your stuff and find something okay all right so let me flip this around and I know it's been a while since you've done this but before we get going we always light a candle remember and do you remember why we light a candle to remind us that God is present the God's Holy Spirit is present so got a candle lit and then I'm going to shine over or put the camera over the stone pictures and you just take them take your time and look at all the symbols and remember the symbols can be anything you want them to be so I want you to look all over them and see if any of those symbols would describe or give a picture clue to what you're feeling so now that you've looked at all can you pick three of them that might be an image that represents how you're feeling okay question mark the question mark the x and the foot which one would you let us kind of tell me about first why did you pick is like symbolize like moving and stuff so that's what it made me feel like excellent good choice that's totally valid I think so many of us could agree to pick that one okay how about that x what's for is it an x or is it a t or what is that it's an x I think what does it mean to you why did you want to pick that one well it's because my dad he's a nurse at the hospital and there's so many like bad things going on and I'm kind of scared that he's going to get sick but the people are going to get sick and die so that's kind of like that your x out kind of thing valid that is a very real feeling they're ready sorry and what about the question mark I haven't seen a lot of my friends on Instagram and Facebook they like staying away from each other they're not social distancing that is a struggle I'm so sorry those are definitely valid feelings that's definitely something to be upset about can we just take all these valid concerns and just pray about them really quick do you like to pray or would you like me to pray okay thank you for Brady and thank you for his valid concerns father help him to find ways to venture out and walk and be safe at the same time father god give his dad protection as he works as an essential worker and father help his friends to social distance and help Brady to be in a good example of social distancing here in trials and times of hardness right now and I ask your help for all of us but mostly for Brady and he's feeling in your name we pray always amen all right babe oh you know what I was wondering as we were talking I was kind of hearing some voices so to the next time we FaceTime together I'm going to have you turn your volume down or is it my volume or my feedback can you hear me because I'm getting a little feedback but it may be it's my phone okay so I'm going to blow the candle out just know that I'm here for you whenever and I'm going to check back with you in a couple days and we'll do this again and and you let me know how you're feeling with your friends and seeing them on Instagram okay all right take care that's great so did you see how she got a little push back at the beginning of that that's not uncommon and sometimes you just have to push a tiny bit I've had kids before who don't want to do it and I just let I just say call me later then you know I don't push but if you if you can just get them to choose one stone you can see the magic of them once they start doing it once they engage they're going to do it so we've seen a four-year-old a fourth grader and a teenager doing these I am telling you they work for all ages and this is simple you can do this so um so basically the steps are get a candle connect with a kid hold that sacred space for God and use the stones because the stones will help them put their feelings into words and then bless them and let go if you do that with the kids in your lives you're going to help them tremendously in the weeks and the days to come so that's kind of the end of our presentation but I know I've been seeing the chat thing going off so um what questions have there been what can we help you with um as far as questions um so one question that just came up was that um the examples you all used were um were with kids that are in youth that have already are already comfortable with the stones and so how would you introduce them at this point to groups um or your children or youth who are not familiar with uh this method right well the first one if you remember was Griffin he'd never seen them before and that's why we included that one was because basically what you do is you say listen I know you're upset or your mom told me you were or this is upsetting times whatever I'm gonna lay these stones out and they're going to help you put your feelings into words um I don't do a lot of like do you want to talk to me how do you feel about talking to me because the go-to answer for children is no I'm fine and um little ones might be want to but some of them won't um I had I talked to a child during this crisis actually and he loves me like we are deep friends like this kid he does all my tech work for me you know he's in sixth grade he does all my technical work and all that and I called him his mom asked me to call him he asked me to talk and when we got on the phone I wasn't going to use the stones because I didn't think we needed them and he's just like and I said how do you feel oh yeah I'm okay finally I got the stones because he could not get to that deep place of what he was feeling so I think that you have to trust the stones and you have to say I've got a tool that will help you talk do you want to try it or not and you kind of show them because once they see them they're kind of like ooh they they go for them in my office where I used to have my spirituality center I would have a plate of cookies and a plate of holy listening stones and kids would come in who had never met me before and they would say what are those and they would be pointing at the stones not the cookies so there's something about the symbols all being together they're just cool looking and they're kind of magnets for kids so you would start just like we started these calls you would say um I've heard you're upset um your mom asked me to talk to you you've asked me to talk to you let's use this tool a little help you get started and they want the help um it helps them to start nobody likes that awkward phase of I don't know what to say I don't know if I'll cry I don't know who this person is just get right to it and use those stones yeah another approach you did a zoom or um so in a church setting sometimes we'll do two or three kids together in a little small group so if it is someone who you know that um is just really closed down and just not going to be able to just jump in and start sharing as as in most cases happens you could get um to like I would get sit and a couple uh another student and then the one who I had some concerns and maybe the three of us or the three students and I would zoom together and you could do this in exact same thing it's just when it's with zoom it's a little unless you have zoom on your phone it's a little harder to show those the stones but um and then you're letting the other kids who've done it before model for them um and kind of break that talking like break that oh that's what they did and so sometimes if I ever have a new kid in a group once they see the other kids share and grab then they'll do it by the end of that discussion but again it's not you don't need a lot of prep and again um Leanne said if they're not into the the symbols on the stone go find something in your house that is visibly shows me how you're feeling right now they might who knows what they're gonna grab a blank sheet of paper a stuffed animal a plant it doesn't matter but they just need to explain why they grab that for you so you they don't have to be experts in this but great question thank you I would say that's the number one question I get is like what do I say to start and you say here are some rocks they will show me how you feel use them really the less you can talk about it it kind of gets scary if you're like it's going to tell me your deepest feelings it's going to get deep you're going to really cry well you know nobody wants to talk so just get the stones I'll show them and I would say in 99 percent of the cases they don't need help they'll start talking to you the minute they see the symbols because that's their language symbolic language and you're just asking the question why why did you pick that why and I think one of my favorite examples that Leanne ever said was that the one that kind of like might look at it first time and say that's a tree somebody might say oh I picked a tree for growth where she's had another student pick that and they didn't say tree they said it they flipped it upside down and they said it's a bomb my life is exploding you they're going to look at each of those symbols where you might go that's a tree but nope somebody else is looking at it from a different perspective and they're saying no that's that's an explosion so um it looks like I mean there's another question about the ages that you use holy listening stones with but I think y'all pretty much covered that um anyone can use holy listening stones um Kim Meyer said that she's used them with senior citizens even yes been great um and so I think if y'all don't mind um Ashley and Syp who's at Fellowship and Trophy Club just recently used them for the first time with her youth group over Skype so if she wanted to quickly I'm aware of our time so I don't want to keep y'all too long but uh if she wanted to quickly share if you don't mind Ashley and um how that went with your youth group who's never used them before they weren't using them as kids or anything um so that we can have a sort of a first hand account of a group of yeah sure I don't mind sharing really quick uh we have never used them before my students have never seen them before um but you shared Emma the sheet with all the symbols on one of our youth pages so I grabbed that I ended up adding numbers to the sheet so that the kids could reference right away which when they were looking at and we used it for the first time oh two weeks ago and about half of them shared and I didn't make it awkward I just said you can share if you want to about half of them used it and then I used it again this week to see what would happen again and I could only honestly see on their faces when I said we were going to start that time sort of a good like I get to share and they every single one of them shared this week and we're talking like high schoolers so I love that you use the teenage son because it worked so well and and I think they liked making meaning out of the symbols so they shared some really real stuff that I don't think I ever would have gotten out of them um and I just explained I was I was sharing over in the chat with somebody who was asking how do you introduce this I just said hey I know it's awkward for us to have these conversations on zoom it's hard to kind of get into conversation so I just want to try this new thing and so I kind of I shared the screen you can do just like y'all are doing a screen share in here I shared the screen with the symbols on it and they it went right away and it's been awesome so we're going to use it weekly I'm excited um all right I don't see any more questions y'all did a great job so you definitely covered it um we will post this like I said on our youth and children's page um so that's just more texas conference um let me pull up the official name north texas conference youth and and then there's one for children's ministry as well and then we'll post it on our website ntcumc.org under the covet 19 responses and I'll post it we'll post it with some other resources the the sheet of the stones and the how to for holy listening and the I think someone requested the chat thread so we'll see if we can download that and post that as well um and then I am always here if you have any questions about a time for children or about holy listening you can email me Emma at ntcumc.org I'm happy to help with that in any way possible and we have just really great children's and youth ministers across the north texas conference that are doing really important purposeful um deep work with children's spirituality I'm really blessed to be in ministry with all of you and so we have great a great community here to support each other um so thank you Leanne and Melinda for sharing with us Leanne can you send us with a blessing Leanne it wouldn't be a sacred moment if you didn't send us with a blessing I was just gonna say I just want to thank you all for being here I know that many of us in our jobs we see ourselves kind of as you know programmers and we're not we're pastors first and that's why you went into this work and this crisis does give us an opportunity to test that to know that to be authentic in our jobs and so I just thank you so much for being willing to do this pastoral care piece it is critical it is critical for our kids and for our teens and again I've worked with so many of you in this tech in this conference I know how serious you are about the jobs that you do and you um are touching lots of lives so may god bless you and keep you and may god give you the energy that you need um and the emotional strength that you need to make it through these next few weeks you've got a lot to carry and a lot of little people looking up to you and you are ready and uh you're going to do a beautiful job and remember all you got to do is hold that sacred space god will do most of the work um but your faithfulness allows that to happen so go with god's blessing and be a blessing thank you so much for having us today and um thanks to the to Emma and your staff for making this happen you're the best thanks