 So, let us gather and take our places as we begin our afternoon session. We're running late because some of the lunches were not completed, but we cannot wait any more. So, would you kindly take your place and cease your conversation so that we may hear word and gather? So good afternoon. I hope that the spirit of conversations at lunchtime went well for you and that you've come back refreshed and ready for the afternoon. We still have a great deal amount of business, not only business, but also another our last keynote for our conference and so we're grateful for that. And as we get ready to begin, I want to tell you where we are on the agenda. We're like rounding third base, headed for home. Are y'all awake out there? So Bryant Phelps is going to give our prayer. Bryant is recently graduated from Perkins School of Theology the last couple of years. He has been the SBC 21 intern at St. Paul United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas. He will begin an assignment with us as a Path 1 intern at Grace Avenue in Frisco and he'll be focusing upon the African American community in Collin County where we hope, as I said to you yesterday, to begin a church sometime in the next 12 to 15 months. And so Bryant's going to be doing some work out there on behalf of the North Texas Conference on behalf of the Ministry of Christ and so we're glad about that. And so would you hear, as Bryant prays for us as we begin our session, Bryant? Put her down with me and turn inward to the divine. Let us pray. God of our weary years. God of our silent tears. God who has brought us thus far along the way. Most merciful and loving God. How good it is to speak and talk to you again. We thank you for the opportunity to communicate with you through prayer. As grateful as we are God, we recognize that often our spirit has not been that. We have failed to love others as we love ourselves. We have not given to the needy as cheerfully as we ought to have. We have not talked to those who have not been talked to. And we have not cared for those who needed us most. We pray that you forgive us for our selfish indulgences and pray that you make us one. Make us one red and yellow, black and white, Jew, Gentile, Protestant and Catholic. Make us one. Make us a new creation. Make us the beloved community and make this world the world house. God, keep us on the path we pray in the name of Christ, in the name of liberation, in the name of holiness, in the name of power, we pray. And all of God's children said together, amen. I'm going to direct your attention to the videos. Perkins School of Theology is one of our featured institutions this year. And we have Perkins faculty and staff who are present, but I especially want you to pay attention as we direct our eyes to the screen. Hello, I'm Craig Hill, Dean of Perkins School of Theology. On behalf of Perkins and Southern Methodist University, I'd like to say thank you to you, the laity and clergy of the North Texas annual conference. You play a vital role in the life and mission of Perkins. More than 40% of our United Methodist students are from this annual conference. Student pastors and interns are located throughout your congregations and institutions, and many North Texas clergy serve as mentor pastors. And in so many other ways, both clergy and laity from this conference play key leadership roles in the life of our school. In short, we share a unique and vital connection, and we at Perkins are deeply grateful for that partnership. In all these four years, there was so much information that I received through lectures, through conversations with the professors, through immersion trips. And one of the things that I learned in Perkins is to be contextual. I'm the lead pastor of a transitional church, a church that not only ministers to English-speaking Anglo membership, but mainly Spanish-speaking Latin American members. And all this information I was able to put it in such a way that was contextual and insightful to my ministry at Castle in the United Methodist Church. As I complete my first year as dean, I'd like to share some of the ways we're already building on our strong foundation and on our commitment to prepare women and men for faithful leadership in Christian ministry. At Perkins, we like to say that our graduates are both called to serve and prepared to lead. Any distinctly Christian vocation, especially in leadership, is a call to service. As Jesus said, I am among you as one who serves, and anyone who wants to be first must be servant of all. Servant leadership takes many forms, and we recognize that while some are called to local church ministry or chaplaincy, others are called to non-profit work. Still others are called to deepen their theological understanding so that they can integrate it into their vocations, whether in business, medicine, or other professional arenas. As there are varieties of callings, so Perkins offers varieties of preparation to qualify students for different forms of leadership. For example, those who see themselves serving an ordained ministry in a local church can now pursue our new concentration in church management in cooperation with SMU's Cox School of Business. Others who imagine a future in a social justice or other non-profit ministry can become equipped through another new concentration on social innovation and non-profit engagement in cooperation with SMU's Meadows School of the Arts. As you can see, we want to take full advantage of our location in a leading research university both to deepen and to broaden our students. When I first came to Perkins, it was for my own personal enrichment and what I never anticipated was how much it would enrich my work. I think you'll find that the passion of the professors, the other students, will ignite something in yourself, maybe that you have been missing. The faculty and staff of Perkins themselves are here to serve our students so that our students will in turn be prepared from day one to serve the church and the world. So again, thank you, North Texas Annual Conference, for your prayerful and steadfast support of Perkins School of Theology. May God bless each of you in your own call to service, whatever and wherever that might be, and may God direct, equip, and encourage us all as we work together toward our shared future. So I want to just call attention to Dean Hill is here on the second pew, Connie Nelson, the Director of Public Affairs, Matt Jacobs, the Associate Director of Public Affairs, and there may be other Perkins faculty or staff in the room. I'm just asked that you stand, Dean Hill, if you and your colleagues and others. Alice, so I didn't call these names because I didn't see them. So Alice McKenzie, Professor Preaching, Mark Stom, who is Professor of Worship, and I know I've gotten the full titles right, but Alice and Mark, forgive me, but you know, so if y'all will stand again, Paul Barton is in the back and Paul is the, this is one of those titles that is so long, Paul, but I'm sorry, I just can't remember it. Oh, of course of study. And I know that and there are other important pieces of your portfolio that are important to us as well. Yeah. Okay. Hispanic Latino Ministries Program, and I knew is that I just didn't know what the correct title was. So Paul, thank you for being here. Mark Alice, of course, are members of the conference. As is Connie, we are so grateful about what's happening at Perkins and the work that you're doing, Craig. I just want to say a personal word of appreciation on my, from me, but I hope I speak for the United Methodists of North Texas. We consider that our most important partner in terms of theological formation and education is Perkins School of Theology. And just I want to tell the conference how delighted I am that you are our partner. We're grateful for you. Thank you very much. I probably shouldn't say this, but being a graduate of Perkins School of Theology and being chair of the executive board related my position on the board of trustees, I have a preferential option for theological education. So you know what it is. It's Perkins School of Theology. I want you to know that. Okay, so we're now at the point where we're going to see some ordination videos. Am I correct? Oh, we go to Matt. Okay. So Matt, we go to you. So let's welcome Matt Mioski. He's going to be talking about generosity. Am I correct? Is that right? He just asked me, he said, are you going to talk about generosity? And I said, that's what you wanted. You told me that's what I should talk about. And you thought I would openly defy you up here? And David picked a different talk, but you wanted generosity. So we're going to give you what you wanted. No, first of all, Bishop McKee, I didn't properly thank you yesterday. Thank you for having me here. I really mean it. And thank you to all of you. You've been really hospitable. I've been really impressed too with all the people at First Church Richardson. I think they're amazing. I don't know if you all, I don't know if this occurred to you, but it occurred to me. They don't have to be here. Like we have to, some of us have to be here. They don't have to be here. And they're here anyway. I find that amazing. So thank you. Well, it's good to be back up here with you. Thank you for all of you, gave feedback on yesterday. It was fun to be with you in that regard. There was all sorts of things I could have talked about today. Bishop McKee and I did do some talking. So today's session is a little bit more practical. We're going to talk about generosity, but I'm going to set up kind of why this has become a passion of mine and why I think it's important for all of us really to pay attention to and especially any of you who are relatively new clergy. This is something that if we get right early in our ministry, can transform the way we're able to do ministry for decades. And I think it's critical for all of us clergy and lay things are really changing in terms of how newer generations of people are understanding generosity, understanding, giving to the church. And I hear in a lot of places kind of over and over again, well, we have to keep a certain segment of people happy who are giving all the money. And we forget about the importance of cultivating kind of new generations of people who are going to be fueling ministry in the future. And so I want to, I want to take time to talk about all that, but I'm going to set this in context on why I think it's so important. Two years ago, I was preaching at a conference in North Carolina. And after the conference, a guy came up to me, he was a professor and he said, Hey, I've been doing a little bit of studying and I want to talk to you. I've been studying churches in Methodism that have been started in the past at the time it was like eight years that have grown to over a thousand in worship. And he said, your church is one of those churches. And he said, and I want to just talk to you about, you know, kind of how, well, what's going on in your church. So we sat down and we talked for like an hour. And when he got, when we got done, he said, would you be interested in interviewing other churches with me who fit this category? And I said, absolutely. I mean, I love to learn. And so we set out on a year long process of interviewing. First, we started with those churches. There were five of them at the time that had been started in the past eight years that had grown over a thousand in worship. And then after we talked to those churches, we looked around the country, rural, urban, suburban contexts, churches led by all sorts of different kinds of leaders. We looked at predominantly white churches, predominantly black churches, churches led by women, churches led by men. And we looked at, but what they all had in common is they were rapidly growing. While, while many churches in their area were struggling to, to either keep, keep even or were in slow decline or in some cases fast decline, these churches were bucking the trend. And, and as we studied all of these churches, we observed some common themes that, that arose in them. We called them virtues because they were, you know, the things that these churches were practicing or embodying in a unique way. And we thought that they contributed greatly to their growth. Now I was going to share all eight of them with you, but I'm not going to do that because we're going to talk about one of them. But my talk yesterday on evangelism grew out of the most common one. And so if you go to the next slide really quickly, the first thing we learned is rapidly growing churches are unapologetically evangelical. They put a disproportionate amount of time, energy and resources in sharing Christ with new people and inviting them to the church. It was about invitation. This is what these churches had in common. And so yesterday that's where we started, right? We talked about the importance of evangelism if you were here. The next, the next thing we learned and go to the next slide really quickly is that rapidly growing churches are ducks. I'll explain that in a minute. On the surface, they make it look easy, but underneath the water, they're paddling like crazy to connect new people. This is about discipleship. So rapidly growing churches, a lot of people, you know, look at them from the outside looking in, they look like they have it all together on the stage. It's highly polished, great worship. But where they're really growing is that they're over and over and over again, trying to figure out how do we connect new people and lead them into greater discipleship. So if you're in my workshop yesterday, this is exactly what we talked about. So those of you who were there, some of you were there, nod our heads. We talked about the importance of discipleship. Well, the third most frequent response was this next one. And we'll put it up there. Rapidly growing churches elevate the practice of giving. They teach tithing. They effectively talk about and manage money. And it was about generosity that what all these churches had in common is that they were talking about generosity in fresh, new, unique ways. And it was not only fueling potential for ministry, but energizing and taking people to a place in their discipleship that we oftentimes don't go to in the church. And I became really interested in this because, and I'll share a little bit more about my context, which I did yesterday. I started a church in the city of St. Louis. Now I was explaining this to a few people. You have to understand something about St. Louis. If you've never been there, or if you've never lived in a city that has been in decline numerically, that the city of St. Louis has not grown numerically in 70 years. The population of the city of St. Louis now is almost a third of what it was in 1950. You can just imagine that. Not like Dallas. I mean, it's very different reality. So it's a city that in so many ways is in deep decline. So I wanted to start a church right in that city. And people said, why in the world would you want to do that? Secondly is our vision at the gathering is to create a Christian community that's compelling for new generations of people in St. Louis. So not only did I want to start a church in the city, but I wanted to start a church that was compelling for new generations of people. Now, I used to put a numerical number on that. I'm not going to share that with you because I'm now over the number that I started. But we were certainly going for newer generations. And when we started the church, our bread and butters, we were reaching people 25 to 40 years old. That was it. And when I started that church, there were two things that people said to me all the time. The first thing was, Matt, we think it's so great that you're starting a church in the city. You know, we hope it goes well. We really need new things in the city. And the second thing that would tell me is, and, you know, we just want to warn you, you're probably never going to reach financial sustainability because, you know, we're in the city, you want younger people. This is just never going to, this is probably the numbers are never going to work out. So as I entered into ministry, I was acutely aware that it was going to be a challenge to start a church in the city just because of the nature of St. Louis. And secondly, I went in with this belief, what was talked to me is that young people probably weren't going to give very much. And so you need to be ready to find money from other places. And we made the decision really early on at the gathering to test that theory. We didn't believe that it was true. And instead of rushing off to spend a bunch of time and energy looking for money in other places, we tried from the ground up to cultivate a congregation that saw generosity as absolutely central to what it means to follow Jesus. And I'm not, so some of the stories I'm going to share are not stories meant to brag on the gathering. There's churches here in Dallas that have far exceeded, you know, the things that I'm going to talk about. But I'm going to share these stories because I think it's been miraculous to watch what God has done, not only in our church, but in the lives of people through generosity. So what I want to do is, and I'm going to make a few assumptions and over generalizations, but I want to talk about what I've learned when it comes to talking about teaching, cultivating generosity, especially in newer generations. So those of you who are young, and you know who you are, if you're young, you know, people will come up to me sometimes and say, you know, Matt, what's your definition of young? And I'll say, well, if you have to wonder if you're young, guess what? Young people, it never occurs to them to wonder if they're young. They just are young. I'll let you be the judge of that. If you have to wonder if you're young. But you know, when I came in, I was the youngest ordained pastor in Missouri. I was 24 years old when I was in my first appointment out of seminary, and I was the youngest seminary trained pastor. And I became the resident expert on young people. Can I get a shout out? And some of you are, yeah, thank you. You're the resident. You have a few of those. Like if you're just young and sitting here, you're a unicorn. I mean, it's like a display at the zoo. Everyone walks by you and wants to see you. And that's your insight. So speaking to you for a second, I recognize the danger in oversimplifying or over generalizing generations. But I'm going to do a little bit of that because we've seen it largely play out. We've tested this. But I think it's absolutely critical for the life of the church to figure out how we teach something that Jesus taught all the time. Then we cultivate in people a deep desire to treat money differently and to see what they have as one of the greatest gifts that they can offer to the kingdom of God. And so that's what I want to do. But where we're going to start is actually with something that Greg Jones brought up yesterday. If you were here for Greg's session and you know that one of his whole sessions was about understanding our why, returning to some really foundational questions. Why? Knowing our why. Why do we talk about generosity? We need to start that basic. And I thought to get us, I'm not going to explain the importance of that, but I thought I would show you a video because I think it's a cool video. This video, what I wanted to do, what I want you to pay attention to is the difference that knowing your why makes in how you do something. Okay? The difference that knowing your why makes. Check this out. How do I know? A lot of people when they think of the phrase, how do I know, they always want to put the what behind it? How do I know what I'm supposed to do? The question that you really ask is how do I know why I'm here? Because when you know your why, your what becomes more clear and more impactful. If you know, like for instance, people know that I do comedy, but that's what I do. My why is to inspire people to walk in purpose. So I can do comedy. I can write books. I can be in a movie because all of it is motivated by my why. In fact, I have a new a new web series out called Michael Junior Breaktime. We probably just did the sixth episode. It's on YouTube. So every single Wednesday at three o'clock, we drop a new episode on YouTube of Michael Junior Breaktime. What it is, is it's me. I travel around the country and I do stand up comedy in case you didn't know. And in the middle of my comedy set sometime, I'll stop and just talk to my audience. And we've been filming this and it's, you know, it's pretty cool. So we're in Winston Salem. I'm gonna show you a clip from Winston Salem. And I'm just talking to this guy in the audience and he tells me that he's a musical instructor at a school. So I was like, all right, you're a musical instructor. You know, can you sing? Let me hear you sing a song. So this is what happened at the last episode of Michael Junior Breaktime. Check it. So you're a musical director. Yes, sir. All right. So let me get a couple, let me get a couple bars of like amazing grace. Can you do the first part of that? Let me go ahead. Amazing. How sweet. The sound. That's it. That's where I can sing. You know what I'm saying? What you give me the version is if your uncle just got out of jail, you got shot in the back when you was a kid. I'm just saying, let me see the hood version real quick. If you know what I'm talking about, just see if that exists. Let me see what you got. I want you to catch. The first time I asked him to sing, the second time he knew why. When you know your why, your what becomes more impactful because you're walking towards or in your purpose. That's a cool video. So I don't have to explain it now, but here's the thing. When it comes to generosity in churches for whatever reason, we kind of know what we have to do sort of, and we do it oftentimes tentatively and begrudgingly. And I think we've lost a sense of why we get to do generosity in our churches. And if we can rediscover why we get to do generosity in our churches, I think it would completely transform what this feels like and looks like and what this accomplishes in our congregations. And so that's really my hope for the little bit of time we have together is that you would see your work, leaders, whether lay or clergy, you would see your work around generosity a little bit differently. But we're going to start with why. And I'm going to spend a lot of time on this because I think we've lost a sense of why. So when it comes to generosity, especially when we're trying to cultivate an atmosphere of generosity with new generations, we have to go all the way back to the foundation and we have to reteach people or in some cases teach them for the first time why generosity is important. We have to start with why. And we make assumptions all the time, especially about newer generations, that they'll just give. I mean, I see this in churches all the time that as people come to our church, as they get connected, as they begin to like it, as they call it their own, at some point they'll just eventually do what? They'll just, they'll start giving something. That's our generosity plan in a lot of our churches. And if you haven't figured this out, that actually doesn't work. And it's working even less with newer generations of people. And I'm going to tell you why. It's not because newer generations of people are stingy or they don't want to give money or something like that. What I used to think for years that younger people, I would sort of berate them, not publicly, just in my head. Do you do that? Like the conversation in my head looks a lot different when I step into the pulpit. But I would just say, guys, these people are selfish. They spend money on themselves. They don't understand, they don't get this. And then I finally figured out the reason why a lot of young people don't give or don't quite get generosity is not because they're selfish or they don't care. It's because they're scared. And I began looking even at my own life. And I'm a numbers guy. I said that yesterday, right? Number, the Bible numbers, regular number, any kind of numbers. I like that stuff. And so I went back and I looked at the numbers and I'm going to share something. The year I graduated from college, so I'm 39 years old. The year I graduated from college, that next January, guess what the Dow Jones industrial average, it was 11,722. That was the Dow Jones. I want you to fast forward 10 years to 2011. We'll go even 11 years, 2011. You know, guess what the Dow Jones industrial? By the way, before I do this, we have numbers people out there. What is the stock market traditionally supposed to return? You want to tell me? What was the before the recession? What was it supposed to return? Not 5%. No, 10%. That's right. Around 10%. After 11 years, the Dow Jones industrial average was 11,674. That was 11 years. And the reason I'm sharing that with you is because I don't think, especially if we're older than that, what we have to understand about pretty much everybody under the age of 40 has, they've been told something that they've never actually gotten to see. And that is that if they do well and they save money, that things grow and they haven't made anything. Now things have been different the past few years. I get that. But what we're dealing with is people who are scared. So we have to return to really making a case in our churches about why we think generosity is so important. So let me talk through that a little bit. And we have to really, I think, answer three questions. When it comes to our people, we have to answer three questions. The first question we have to answer is why generosity? Forget church for a second. Forget giving to Jesus or anything else. Just why should we take some of what we have and give it away? And here's the mistake I don't want you to make. Don't answer this question by thinking about why you need it or why you think the church needs it or why Jesus needs it or why God. Why should a person who doesn't necessarily believe you yet, why should they practice generosity? Period. Why generosity? And I'm going to share with you a few of the things that we've learned in our church about why younger people have chosen to give. The first thing is I think it's important for us to connect generosity with purpose. Because young people are exploring questions of purpose and they're looking to make sense of why they're here. I mean, that's the kind of questions. I hope you can remember some of you like back in your 20s, especially, it's like, what am I supposed to be doing? What's my purpose going to be? So the first thing we got to do is connect generosity with purpose. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. And I just love this article because if you look at this article, there's something really basic. This is how I answer the question. When I stand up in front of people and I say, here's why you should practice generosity because you were actually created this way. This is how you were intended to operate. God created you to be a generous person and the world messes that up. Our purpose on earth is to be generous. That's our purpose. By the way, there's scripture for that that I could go quoting, right? There's Genesis. I mean, in the beginning, God says, be fruitful and multiply. You know, but later on in generosity, remember when God blesses Abraham? What does God say to Abraham? I'm blessing you to what? To be a blessing. It's your purpose. Like this is the reason God created you. This is the reason that God has given you whatever God has given you is for you to give it away to other people for you to be a blessing in the lives of others. This is your purpose. But I'll always because younger people are skeptical. I'll say, but if you don't believe the Bible, forget the Bible for just a second. Let me read you something from the Wall Street Journal. I'm going to read to you a couple lines of this. This was an article a few years ago in the Wall Street Journal that the title of it was hardwired to give. And it started out this way. The Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest echoes what many people believe about life. To get ahead, you need to look out for number one. But the latest science shows that in fact, we're also hardwired to be generous. This is what I think is so cool that if you look at science, what this article talks about is that they study people who are generous and then people who save or keep or try to use what they have on themselves. And what they discovered is when we're generous, when we give money away, I'm not talking about time or energy, but money, when we give money away, all sorts of cool things happen in your brain, like dopamine and serotonin are released and it feels good. Now, some young people in my church are literally using other things to try to make themselves feel good. I tell them, you don't have to spend your money on drugs. Just give your money away. You'll feel good. We literally get high. This is true. The science is there. I say, so I'm a very educated, skeptical, urban kind of crowd. I'll say, so if you don't believe the Bible, believe science that when you give money away, this is how you were created to operate. That when we give, it feels good. Literally, it feels good. We have to connect it with purpose and help people see like, oh yeah, this is how I was created to live. That's not it. But the second thing that I love to do is that we have to connect it to happiness. I don't know if you know this. I just wrote a book called Happy, What It Is, and How to Find It. Because I found that in my congregation, this is a primary question that young people are asking. You know, they're kind of looking ahead at their career and life, and who am I going to marry, and where am I going to live, and you know what they want to do? They want to be happy. You know why? Because all their lives, their parents said, I just want you to do what makes you, you know what no one ever taught them? What actually makes us happy? They don't know. So you connect generosity to what makes us happy. Happiness, balance, satisfaction, all these things are strongly correlated with giving. And again, I'll read scripture about this. I'll say, you know, Jesus said, or at least according to Paul, Jesus said, it's better to give than to receive. Remember that? That's an ax at the end. You know, even though he never said it anywhere else, we just have to take ax word for it, that Jesus said this. It's better to give than to receive. That giving makes us happier than getting. This is a simple principle. Giving makes us happier than getting it. And again, I'll say to people, but if you don't believe the Bible, forget the Bible. Let's go back to science and social science over and over and over again. The wisdom of the ages, all the way back to Ecclesiastes till right now proves that this is true. Everybody who gets to the end of their life and gives a field report back to younger people says, hey, don't make the same mistake. I'm it. I thought that money and possessions and stuff and titles that that stuff would make me happy. I got to the end of my life. And guess what I discovered? It didn't work. Do you know what we keep doing for thousands of years? We keep saying, I don't believe that. I'm going to try it my way. We do the same thing. We repeat. I tell young people, I creation this all the time. Don't do that. We've got field research from thousands of years. And if you don't believe the Bible, let me read science again or a social study. This is an article from a guy at Duke. Let me just read this to you. It says this is a time magazine actually in Chicago Tribune. It says, if there's a magic pill for happiness and longevity, we have found it countless studies have found that generosity charitable giving benefits young and old physically and psychologically the benefits of giving are significant. According to those studies, lower blood pressure, lower risk of dementia, less anxiety and depression, reduced cardiovascular risk, overall greater happiness, intuition tells us that giving more to oneself is the best way to be happy. But that is not the case. According to Dan, a really professor of behavioral economics and psychology at Duke University. If you are a recipient of a good deed, you may have momentary happiness, but your long term happiness is higher if you were the giver. It's that simple that you were created this way. You were created to give. That's your purpose. And when you do it, guess what? Life goes better. You're happier. So connected to happiness. The third thing I'd love to do with people is connected to impact because younger people and you've probably heard this. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to make an impact. Right? Who wants to make an impact? I want to make an impact. Any of you out there testified of this. I want to make an impact beyond myself. I want to be part of something meaningful in the world. That's why I became a pastor. I want to impact something greater than myself. We have to connect it to to impact that we have an ability with with what we've been given to do something in the world. And I'll tell people you have one shot at this. You have one trip around this thing and you get to make the biggest impact that you can make. That that's your goal here. And I'll pull out a story from Matthew 25. Remember we did Matthew 25 yesterday when I called you all goats? I didn't really mean that. You all are lovely people. I see nothing but beautiful sheep all the way around. I can't see up in the balcony quite. There may be a few goats hiding out up there. This is a different story in Matthew 25. And I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's long, but it goes something like this. There was a guy and he gave some servants all the different amount of talents. Do you remember this story? You know the story. I don't even have to finish it. You already know it. You know, to one he gave five talents, three, one, and he went away for a long time and the guy who had five put it to use and like doubled it and the guy three, same thing. But the guy who had the one talent, what did he do? Buried it. Master came back and he said, what did you do with what you have? And the one guy said, here, look, this is what I have. He said, great, I'm going to give you even more. And the middle guy on the three said, well, this is what I did. The master said, that's awesome. And then, but the guy who, have you read the end of this story? Both these stories end the same way. Whether you don't like strangers from yesterday or you don't do something cool with what God gave you. Do you know how it ends? Weeping and gnashing of teeth. My favorite phrase in the Bible. If you do sermon series, that'd be a great sermon series gnashing of teeth. All the stories about gnashing of teeth, tooth on the, give that to your graphics department. That's free. I'm not, that's not even part of the talk. If we connect it to impact, that, that generosity is the means by which we make an impact. When we get this right, then we accomplish what we all want to accomplish. We get to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We get to make an impact, connect it to impact. And then, and then the fourth thing I always try to tell people is connected to simplicity. Because guess what? Younger generations, I've really seen this in my context that they actually, they want to live simply. They've seen actually what access, especially if they grew up around a lot of money, that they've, they've seen what access does and it hasn't always panned out well and they want to live simply. And I tell the story, the rich young ruler or the rich ruler or the young man or the, depends which version of the gospel you read, but some guy with a lot of money. And remember, he did everything, right? Everything that God wanted him to do, he did. And Jesus said he just was lacking one thing. And you know, you know the end of that story too. He said, you just give everything you have away and give your money to the poor. There's something about your possessions that's getting in the way of the life that God wants you to live. You got too much and the guy couldn't do it. And he walked away sad because he couldn't follow Jesus. And I tell people, money and possessions is not the means by which you're going to be able to make meaning in your life. But oftentimes they just as much get in the way of what God actually wants to do with us. Generosity is a practice by which we can live more simply and more agilely and be able to use, be used more easily by God to accomplish this purpose. All this is broadly under the heading of when we approach our people, we have to talk about why generosity is not something we need them to do for us, but something that they ought to want to do. It's something they actually need to do for themselves. So we have to answer questions with, by the way, all this stuff is for all people. I'm just telling you unique things that I've learned with younger generations. But we have to reteach why generosity. Second question then, after we do that, okay? And at the end of all that, I usually tell people, so if you're still skeptical and you just think I'm trying to get your money, here's what I want you to do. Just be generous. Be generous to anything. Don't give it to the church. Give it to somewhere else if you want and test this theory and see if it's not true. Then we have to get to the second question. The second question is, okay, I'm in on generosity. I believe you. I'm going to give, but why give to church? Because we make a second mistake when it comes to generosity. We just assume that if people are generous, if they want to be generous, if they get that part, they're going to give to the church because they're going to inherently see the value of church. Guess what? They do not inherently see the value of your church, at least not as a place to put their money. I found this out in a big surprising way three years into the life of the gathering. This was in 2009. And we didn't have a big budget. I mean, maybe our budget was $200,000, something like that. Big, maybe to some, not to others. That's about what it was, $200,000. And Christmas Eve was coming up and you all have done something like this probably, but at the time I had not heard of this idea of giving away your Christmas Eve offering. And somebody came to me. Our conference has a partnership with people in Mozambique and they said, oh, there's this place in Mozambique. It's all ready to be used as a training facility for pastors. And the only thing is they need a well for clean water. If they had clean water, they'd be able to open this thing up and it would make a difference in thousands of lives or something. And I thought about that. I thought, well, we could do that. That'd be cool. We'll dig a well for clean water. So I went to our finance team and, you know, we're all good ideas go to die. And I'm just kidding. Finance people, you're great. Great. Just, we should not let you up in church to talk about generosity. Typically, you should not be the person. But I love the finance team. Do you believe me? I really do love you. I appreciate what you all do. And finance team, this is another freebie. If you didn't know this, there's 53 Sundays this year. That's a bigger, that means a bigger offering. Did you know that finance team? If you're on the finance team, you ought to know that. 53 Sundays this year. That's an extra offering. Have you figured out what you're going to do with that extra offering? So I went to the finance team and I said, hey, let's give away our Christmas Eve offering. And the year before, our Christmas Eve offering was 3,100 bucks. Not bad. And so I said, you know, even if we get 5,000 or, you know, the well was going to cost something like 7,500 or something, I said, you know, let's give it away. And they said, sure, that sounds good. And so we talked about it all during Advent. And we got around to Christmas Eve and we took the Christmas Eve offering and I got a phone call from our finance people because they're working away when everyone else is on vacation because finance people are just those kind of people like salt of the earth sort of people. And they were working away and he called me and said, Matt, our Christmas Eve offering was $35,000. Yeah. And immediately two things came to my mind. The first thing was praise God. That is amazing. And the second thing was, did I say we'd give away all of the Christmas Eve one? Why don't people do? By the way, I just think this is incredible. We've kept up that tradition and it's gone up every year. And this past, you know, this past Christmas, it was $250,000 on Christmas Eve. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Now, but here in all honesty, the second thing I looked at and I said, what is wrong? Because people don't give like that any other time. But all of a sudden when we were going to dig a well for clean water to save lives in Mozambique, guess what? Younger people, the people that told me they would never give and see at our church, I'm able to look at the financial right. So I immediately, I had to look and see who in the world was giving what. I thought maybe somebody dropped a $30,000 check in the play that it didn't happen. The biggest check was like $2,000. People who had given $50, $100 all year, all of a sudden gave a check for $2,000 or $3,000. Not people with a bunch of money, but teachers and young professionals and all of a sudden, and I figured something out that, you know, especially newer generations, you know, there's a piece of wisdom that says that the greatest generation gave to institutions. They were loyal to institutions that boomers gave to people. They needed people who they thought were good leaders of institutions and that younger people, new generations give to causes, direct causes, where they immediately see that when they give a dollar, this is going to happen. You know what I'm talking about? And we tested that, and that was true, that all of a sudden when we put a cause up on the screen, and you all pastors, you've experienced this, like we're going to, we're going to build a well, we're going to dig a well and it's going to save lives if you give a dollar that all of a sudden they began to give. And so what I had to do is I had to back up and I had to figure out, I need to teach people why the church is such a beautiful cause to give money to. I can tell you how I did that really quickly. I'll tell you that I told a story about Mozambique because I went over to Mozambique to visit that well that we ended up digging. And the next year I was on it, I was on this, you know, and I told the story. And I said, when I was over in Mozambique, I met a pastor and he was a really impressive guy. And I asked him a question that I often want to ask young people in this room that are really impressive people. Why did you pick ministry out of all the things you could have done? Because you had options. Why ministry? And this is how he answered me. I'll never forget his answer. I wrote it down. I've used it before and he said this to me. He said, Matt, because there's no hope for this country from Mozambique. There's no hope for this country of hearts and minds are not changed. And he said, I know nothing, nothing that can change hearts and minds like the power of Jesus. And something clicked in my head. And the next year I went before young people and I said, I know all of us want to make a difference. We want to give that direct cause that makes a difference. But I want to tell you why nothing, nothing is more powerful than hearts and lives that are changed by Jesus. What our world needs the most, where our cities need the most, where our country needs the most is people whose hearts are changed by Jesus. And so I got from people in my congregation, give me the top five things you love to support. And they threw out all sort of, you know, salvation army, united way, hospital, whatever it was. And what I did is I went back and looked at the history of each of those organizations and you pick almost any major nonprofit and guess what the beginning of that organization, guess who started one of those organizations? Who was it? It was a Christian, it was a person. In a lot of cases, Methodist did. We started a lot of things, didn't we? But it was a person whose heart was changed by Jesus, habitat free humanity, united way, salvation army, Tom's shoes. I mean, whatever it was a person whose heart was changed by Jesus and they asked the question, what can I do to make a difference in this world? I said, when we give a dollar and dig a well there, that is a beautiful thing. When we give a dollar and we transform hearts so that people want to go out and make a difference, we multiply our efforts and hundreds and thousands of new people are released into the world to figure out how they're going to make a difference. The church is the most powerful place, the most powerful cause to give a box. We have to teach people why church, so why generosity is first, then why church? Teach people this. Third question in this little why sequence is, you know, why generosity, why church, now we get to the real crux, why your church? Why should we give it to your church? And again, we make a mistake, finance team, this is why I was teasing you, because sometimes in churches we tend to think that if people just understand how badly we need it, they'll give it to us. Have you ever made that mistake? If we just get up there and explain to them how behind we are, then they'll make up the gap. Come on, we've done this, right? We've sat around the table and thought if we could just somehow explain to people how much we need their money and what's going to happen, all the awful things that are going to happen, if they don't give it, and if everybody would cut out Starbucks for the remainder of the year and up there giving by $10, you all have done this before. We've all done this, this was practice 101. When's the last time you got a letter from a great non-profit toward the end of the year that said, dear person is the holiday's approach, we want you to know how poorly we're doing this year, and how behind we are in our budget, and would you please give? Because nobody else does this, and there's a reason. Do you know what the reason is? It doesn't work. People don't give because we need it. People give because we capture them with a compelling vision of what we're going to do. Don't approach people when it comes to giving from a mindset of if we could just communicate how badly we need it, then they're going to give. No, instead communicate with them all the amazing things that God wants to do through your church. And when we get generosity right, when we get this right as people, then this is the result of it. God is able to do huge things. And I want to tell you something, do not just throw out the budget and say we need $185,000 this year and we'll be able to do basically what we did last year. Your vision ought to be something that if somebody walked into your office tomorrow and said, I want to write a million dollar check, if I write a million dollar check, what would you do with it? Do you have an answer to that question? Or would you fumble around like, that's a lot of light bills for a lot of years, the million dollars in some places. Would you know what to do with it? You have to share vision. People want to get captured up in something bigger than themselves. So why? Why generosity? Why church? And then why your church? This would be a beautiful series. I'm serious. You just tell people, we're going to go all the way back and we're going to remember why. Why generosity is such a beautiful thing and Jesus talked about it so much. Okay. I'm going to move on and get, this is a little bit more nuts and bolts. So when we teach people why, then we have to go back and we have to teach them what we want them to do. I know this sounds really obvious, but teach them what? Here's the mistake that we often make here. We actually ask new people to, to our church to do the exact opposite of what we want them to do. I see this mistake a lot. Some of us do this. I mean, I've done it before. Have you ever stood up and said something like this? Now is the time in our service where we're going to take the offering and if you're new with us, I just want you to know that we don't expect you to give that this, we don't expect you to do this, but you know, we're, for everyone else, we're going to take the offering. You don't have to raise your hand, but I've thought, there was prior times in my ministry where I thought this seemed like a good idea. Make people feel at ease. Like, you know, if you're new with us, we don't expect you to do this. And then I realized something that I've never once done an opening prayer and said, now I invite you to bow your heads and let's pray. Except if you're new with us today, we don't expect you to pray. Just, if you, if you would just stare at the ceiling or something, we're going to pray for a second and you just, now I've never stood up and and said, you know, good morning. It's good to have you here today in the sermon. We're going to be talking about new people. You don't have to listen to this crap. I mean, if you want to just, there's coffee out in the lobby, like a mass exited, you know, communion. We don't do this around communion. We do the opposite, right? We don't say, we're new people. You know, we don't expect you to do this. Why do we do it with giving? When we do it with giving, what it does is it betrays what we really think about it. And that is that it doesn't do anything for us, that it's all about us getting something out of people. You know, it's all about what we can get from people instead of what we can do for people. And it betrays something. So what we don't do that, because then inevitably, guess what you're going to have to do if they come back to your church a second time or a third time or a fourth time. At some point, you're going to have to say, okay, it's time to pay to play. I mean, your, your visitor status is over. Here's the basket. This is for you. I mean, at some point you have got to flip the script on them and tell them it's time to get in the game and start paying. No, don't do this. I mean, instead, teach from the very beginning what we want for people. You know, why we do it and what we want for people. So now we've started, it's been simple. We start every time we do the offering. So, you know, today as you come forward, we do communion every week and there's baskets that line the aisles and stuff. And I always say, you know, we invite you to give. And I want to thank some of you have made generosity part of what it means to follow Christ. And that's such an amazing thing. And, you know, because you give incredible things are happening. We usually give an example of something on the screen and I'll say if you've never given before, whether you're brand new or you've been coming a while, if you've never given before, I invite you. Maybe today's the first time that you're going to do that. I just invite you to try it because here at the gathering, we believe that giving is why we're created and does beautiful things in our lives. I just invite them to do it. Guess, guess what? There's a, somebody said this once and I can't remember who, but I read somewhere once that if you, let me see, not seek and you will ask and you will what? Receive, seek and you will knock. And can I tell you a miracle story around that scripture? When that clicked for me and I thought, you know, I used to object to the scripture. Well, I've done that before I've asked it and get it, you know, seek and I don't get everything that I want. And one, it just occurred to me once, maybe I should just try living the scripture. I should just ask people to do things that I think God wants us to do together. And I should, I should just seek things that I think God wants for our community. And I should knock and I should, and I should do this. So I'm going to tell you a miracle story, not because it's us, but because I want to tell you about sometimes what we leave on the table when we're afraid to ask. A guy came to my church and he was a first time visitor. He never been to the church before, but somebody invited him. And I happened to know who he was because he was relatively well known in St. Louis as a guy who had a lot of money. And he happened to come to church and that day I was preaching on Zacchaeus. Have you read that story, Zacchaeus? There's no getting around that. I mean, it's just, it's about money and wealth and what we do with it. And, and I mean, I just preached a hard sermon about rethinking what we do with what we have. In the next day, this guy, I get a phone call from him. It's like 1115. He calls me as a man. I want to meet you for lunch. I was in your church yesterday. I said, yeah, I know you were in my church. He was, I want to meet you for lunch. And I said, okay. And we got together for lunch and it's a longer story. I get there and I'm in, you know, I left my pressed suit at home and everybody around this table was in a suit and you know, he asked me a bunch of questions and we talked and then he dismissed people one by one and it was just he and I. And he said, Matt, I really enjoyed coming to your church yesterday. Is there anything I can do for you? I said, as a matter of fact, there is. Our dream is to build a new church. You know, we've outgrown the building we're in and you probably know that. And we just put under contract some land two blocks to the south of our building. And I have been praying about how we're going to do this in our congregation. And my understanding is you're a guy who could make a huge difference in helping us to build the church. So I would love it if you'd help us pay for the land. And he goes, well, how much is the land? And what would you like me to do? And I said, the land cost $1.25 million and if you would give that, that would be amazing. And I'm not kidding you. He said, well, I didn't give my offering on Sunday and he pulled out his personal book and wrote a check for $1.25 million and handed it to me. You should. And my first thought is this guy is off his rocker. This is going to bounce. So I had to wait seven days before I could celebrate. But the guy wrote a check for and I went back and visited him afterwards to say thank you because you should say thank you. And I mean, he said, Matt, most people tiptoe around me because I have money. And I just appreciated knowing where I could make a difference. I get excited. I get jazzed to know that I can help build a church that's going to change lives. I flash back to all the times I've hemmed and I've hawed and I've been afraid to talk about generosity because it's always seemed to me that I'm trying to get something from people. And I've forgotten that God says generosity is about what God wants to do for us, what God wants to allow us to be a part of. And we have to teach people that this is what God wants for you and not be afraid and hem and haul around it. Now, I don't share that story because to be honest, I could share nine stories when I've asked people for things and they've laughed at me. But I've learned this, that if you ask ten times and nine times they laugh at you, but one time, you know, I'm a math person. You know, when I look at that, you know what I think? I'm going to ask a thousand times because what that means is a hundred of those times miracles will happen. I've decided that I'm willing to be rejected and laughed at more than any other pastor. If that means that every once in a while you ask and you actually receive, you seek and you actually find you knock and adore that you never thought was there to be open to you. That was a game changer in the life of our church. We don't have people like that in our church as a game changer. We have to teach people what we want from them. At the gathering, what we've started to do is do this at a really early age. Our teaching kids, before they have a lot of money that they have to stress about, teach them the practices of generosity. And we've seen some really cool testimonies just from young people who begin to get this before they have a bunch of stuff that ties it up. So I thought, just check out really quickly. This is a testimony just from one of our high schoolers. Just check this out. My name is Kelly Commodus. I'm a senior at Webster Grove High School and I've grown up going to the gathering. I had been going to the gathering for a while and Matt always talks about like how going to church is so important, but then also using your hands and getting involved and making that commitment to Christ. And I thought, okay, well, I need to take that one step and get involved. I asked around and it was like, can I work in the kids ministry? And at that time I was, I don't know, middle school age. So I was kind of an assistant to a class. I feel like just because I've served there and I am a youth that I'm just really excited to see how that can grow and how those kids can have many opportunities to like test their faith out and learn about what being a Christian is. And I think that the gathering is a place where that can happen. Generosity at the gathering is definitely like taking that other next step and being more conscious of like how we spend our money. Generosity is really important to my family. And this year for Christmas, we actually like came up with the money that we spent at Christmas and gave it to the church knowing that I had like the chance and the opportunity to give that money for the safe water project. It's just really overwhelming and uplifting because I know that what my family has is so great compared to what others have. And it was just a really great moment for this Christmas service. It's just really overwhelming how much like our church is so generous and like giving to some people that like have nothing compared to what we have. It just makes you realize and opens your mind to all the possibilities that what we can be doing to help others who actually need this. So since the gathering is so grounded in creating a compelling space for young people, I definitely found my spot in the gathering community. And I think it's so important that we make it a priority to encourage young youth to come to the gathering. And there's so many different perspectives within the gathering. We're such a diverse community. And I think that's what makes it so great. I'm excited to see our church form into a better community for the youth. I'm excited for greater things. I thought it was so cool that a high schooler had the capacity to talk about giving that way but we need to teach about it from a young age. So we need to teach people why we need to teach people what. And we're coming up against the the end of time so I'm going to give you two more things to think about. We have to teach people how to give. They don't know how to give. We think that they do. Typically we've talked about giving like you either do you either tithe or you don't. And really I mean a lot of church like you tithe and if you don't tithe that doesn't count you don't. And people look at that and they get totally overwhelmed and they don't know how to get from here to there. It's like you know you either don't run ever. You don't care about your health or you run a marathon. Which one is it? And most people if you give them that choice say I'm just going to stay on the couch. We have to teach them how to do this. So something that's beautiful to develop is a pathway. How do we get from where we are to it. So really quickly I'll just put this up here. This is a pathway to giving it's on our website but it starts at beginning becoming consistent becoming intentional which is a percentage giver all the way up to tithing and then tithing is in the middle because there's stuff after tithing. We talk about what it means to go beyond a tithe and become a lifetime giver. Give people tools a pathway to follow. You know we make the mistake that people know how to do this and then finally we need to teach people impact. We need to show them the difference that they're making. So much of the time we're so concerned with what's coming up that we forget to simply celebrate what's in our past. And I'll tell you this the best time to invite people to give is when something cool is just happening in your church. This is the opposite of when we're really desperate we invite people know when things are great in your church that's when you should invite people to give because giving is how they get to be a part of it. I have another video guys we're not going to do it because I know we're up on time but I'll just end with this that my hope for you is that you really take some of this stuff seriously because if we get this right if we begin to understand why generosity is so beautiful you know if we begin to teach people why and what and how and and the impact that it makes we can absolutely transform things in our church. We spend so much time on the expense side of how much church cost and we ought to spend so much more time on the on the giving side. The beautiful things that God is able to do when we cultivate new generations of people who decide to be generous. So that's my prayer for you and as we close this time I'm going to invite you to bow your heads. Let's pray I hope something in here was useful that you can take back and finance committee people remember I I really love you let's pray. All right gracious and holy God we thank you that you were first generous to us that that Jesus gave everything so that we might have life and God I pray that you would unleash here a spirit of generosity that we would remember that this is not something we have to do or have to talk about or this is something we get to do that we get to talk about that we get to teach and I pray that you would unleash spirits of generosity throughout our congregations so that through our giving we can not only grow closer to Christ but your churches can thrive and make an impact on your people bringing about your kingdom. We pray these things in Jesus name amen thank you all very much. I feel like God is continually making me a new creation and my call to ministry has been a huge part of that. I really feel like I've been called to be with people on the outskirts of ministry or of church kind of the D church to post church a lot of those people. I'm made new by this idea of they challenge me and they grow me a lot and who I am as a Christian and a lot of times it's questions of faith that they experience feeling like they are outsiders and how can I be in ministry with those people and how can I continue to evolve and grow alongside them and with them and again how can they teach me. I had a lot of that in college where challenge my faith and really begin to question my faith a lot and I had the benefit of having a mentor through college who really helped me through that and so I just I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to now mentor and journey that that path of questions and that path of doubt with a lot of people as well and let them know that that's not a bad thing it's okay we can we can we can make it through this you're going to be okay. Well I'm an associate professor at SMU but I also have a new job. I'm the senior advisor to the provost for cultural intelligence which is our signature program in diversity and inclusion. My job is to make sure that every single Mustang coming through that door is able to communicate whether they're communicating in Dubai or South Dallas or whether they're in Detroit or they are somewhere in Australia. My job is to make sure that they are comfortable and they are flexible and they are strategic in their communication and their ability to manage complex situations culturally. So that's my new job and that's a lot of fun. It's not a headache this is a lot of fun too. I think because I work with college students and an undergraduate has four years. I get to go through that process every single year with every entering class and so I become new almost every four years in that they're pushing me they're teaching me I'm learning more about the gospel I'm learning more about the power of the story of Jesus and how it applies in their life just the life cycle of a campus forces you to be new forces you to engage people where they are and forces you to think differently than you ever have before so if I don't do that I can't be in the classroom anymore. Occasionally people will ask me Johnathan have you always had this heart for the homeless and always wanted to do homeless ministry as it's always been a call that God has put on your life and people sometimes so much to have this giant heart beats for the marginalized and for the least of these you know not at all not one bit the Johnathan grace method or desire of living life involves a lot more gym beam whiskey than most folks would be comfortable with and pretty much laying on the couch reading H.B. Lovecraft stories so that was kind of the model that I was very comfortable with the way of living my life that I was very satisfied with for a while and so God introduced me to some homeless folks and said Johnathan you need to meet these people and they need to meet you and at that moment I didn't know what was happening it was this fundamental shift in my entire in my life this transformation of my life and I was really made a new creature and brought into this new life by the Holy Spirit and by God's grace never my plan to do what I'm doing now never my idea but God offered me something and it transformed my life and I'm so thankful that it's transformed the lives of lots of people God has made me a new creation through my call to ministry because I believe that God is creating and recreating in every moment of every day and I feel that and know that especially in my call I was ordained first as a deacon and I recognize that I'm in an unusual place that most people don't go through and that I'm now coming to be ordained as an elder God is constantly calling me to a ministry of order and I love what it means to order the life of the church and I understand it in terms of the way that God orders creation I feel blessed to to know a particular calling in my life toward this ministry of order so I come to be ordained again and I give thanks for the ways that God is constantly recreating in my life by being in ministry I've had I've had opportunity to be places that I would never be before called into people's personal lives and sometimes very difficult times and sometimes even frightening periods but the Holy Spirit has been there I mean going going in and I'm and I'm telling God God you called me I don't know I got to get this right then I realized no you have to get it right through me and so I've learned to depend on God just a hundred percent of the time and getting up and preaching they uh I had never I was never a public speaker and then I got called to go into the ministry and I thought about preaching and bless the people in Archer City they put up with me those first years and just grabbing hold of the pulpit and and just hanging on and and and preaching and to where now I'm to the point where I can get out and walk out among the congregation and and it's a true joy but it's all about the power of the spirit and learning to depend on God and have that faith it's a privilege to be a co-creator with God for the church of the future and part of that is a very humbling recognition that it's it's God's church first and I just get to come alongside and be a part of that and and that's a beautiful thing everyone has the potential or capacity to be creative it's how do we tap into it and what do we do with that creativity being creative often requires taking risks and being willing to fail and I'm privileged that I have the opportunity at home park to to try things that allow me to fail and I have multiple times but they keep encouraging me to go back and figure out how to be in ministry with people on the outskirts and uh you know I again I think if we're gonna to be a relevant church and the church is going to continue we got to keep trying those things so part of my job I think as a co-creator on a college campus is allowing the blossoming of intellect of hope and most of all faith to happen to be the cultivator to teal around that soil sometimes to put a little stinky stuff there to help it blossom even more so I think my goal in being a co-creator is just being a good garden I envision being a co-creator with God in the church of the future specifically uh by being a part of people's housings journeys uh there's this movement called housing first that's growing in popularity one thing about homelessness be think about the recovery model which is do this do this get your ID do this go to AA for this long accomplish these goals get a job and at the end of that road is housing that kind of makes sense with with our our model of accomplishment however what housing first envisions is really more reliance on grace than personal ability or personal strength housing first says how's the person first and then they have the basis on which to uh bring their gifts and graces into the world you have a place to shower have a place to go to the bathroom where it's not a crime a place to sleep or you're not worried about someone coming into your tent or assaulting you a place to store your medications you can actually take it while you're supposed to do what it's supposed to do for your health I'm don't know what the future of my ministry looks like obviously but I'm so thrilled that Christ has put me in this place and the Holy Spirit has guided me into this place from a part of these stories of transformation and where my story has been transformed and redeemed by the last people you would expect being a co-creator with God is something that I believe we are all called to um through the through the gifts of our baptism and the calling of our baptism and I think that one of the ways that we're particularly in this time and place called to be co-creators with God is through the ministry of reconciliation I believe that it's important that we recognize we are created to be like the Creator which means to create ourselves and so as we go into every new place in ministry we're called to draw upon the creative gifts that God has given to every one of us to imagine what love can look like in this place and so I'm excited in a new place of ministry to walk in and imagine and create with God what love can look like in this place I love being part of this annual conference and to be able to be a co-creator with God but but also to be a co-creator with all of the clergy and lay people of this conference who have so lovingly shaped me into who I am just as we are co-creators with God we are all co-creating and shaping and forming who we are as disciples of Jesus Christ and so it is with honor and and just great privilege that I serve alongside you co-creator with God is um it's very humbling extremely humbling um really we're all co-creators with God we're all ministers um we're all called to to minister to the world but the idea of being a co-creator is the idea of making something new that that we are actually given the privilege to to work with God in the new creation and and bringing the kingdom of God to the world and bringing the love and the peace and the joy that is God to a world that really is hurting that really is stressed that really the really needs something they don't even know what they need but we get to work with God in this manner to to do this to bring this to bring forth this divine fruit to the world and it's such a humbling thought and a beautiful thought and that God thinks enough of each of us to want us to participate and it's a divine creation and it's beautiful so it's three oh four thirty uh which means three minutes and four seconds thirty once we're going to take a break for ten minutes we'll be back at three fifteen one minute yes tongue chair of spprc at st loupe community united methodist church and i simply stand to express our concern about the way that the north texas conference has addressed sexual harassment and it's a real issue and my fear personally is that we're going to be the