 Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ. I'm Owen Ross, the director for the Center for Church Development, the CCD. Today I want to talk to you about resilience. Child Development Professor Ann Mastin describes resilience as the phenomenon that occurs when in spite of serious threats to good outcomes, good outcomes still occur. The International Resilience Project defines resilience as the ability to respond in positive manners and adverse conditions. We sing this year and are we yet alive like we do every year. But this year I was quite struck by Charles Wesley's questions in the third verse. What troubles have we seen? What conflicts have we passed? Fightings without and fears within since we assembled last. We have seen many. In adverse conditions, the North Texas Conference Center for Church Development partner with the resilient people known as the United Methodists of the North Texas Conference. And here are just a few of the amazing outcomes that we have seen amidst these adverse conditions. First, gathering new faces and new spaces is our primary strategy as a conference to reach our mission fields. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, we all became exiles from our church sanctuaries. As pastors and laities, we turned on our computers, our phones. We gathered in our living rooms, in our cars, in our offices. To connect with God and connect with one another, we started streaming and zooming. And in these adverse conditions, the resilience of our churches, of our pastors, of our laities resulted in innovative discipleship, innovative evangelism and innovative worship. I still laugh thinking about the meme, just like that all pastors are tele-evangelists. That was a funny meme, but I was inspired at the seriousness of our pastors and our laity at engaging in online ministries with passion, compassion, professionalism to help reach out to a world that was increasingly isolated and increasingly frightened. While traditional new spaces like Messy Church, Dinner Church, FestiKids, they took a pause. New spaces and digital spaces began to emerge from our churches. Over a third of our North Texas Conference churches received grants from the Center for Church Development to help improve their equipment, their online presence for a total of over $60,000 of the CCD budget. Hundreds of you attended one or more of our numerous webinars that we had with experts in online and digital ministries. Now we are entering into a new season in the church and persons are hungering for community. Therefore the Center for Church Development, we have revamped our new faces and new spaces website. You can go to NTCUMC.org slash new-faces and we have the application there where you can directly answer the questions about your new space as well as receive training from some of our top practitioners of new spaces in the North Texas Conference. We have persons like Sylvia Wang, Patrick Littlefield, Ruben Alvarez and Shandyn Klein. We are also offering trainings through the Genesis cohort and through a two-day intensive New Start 101. While our Genesis cohort goes throughout the year, our intensive is this Thursday and Friday, June 17th and 18th and I know this is last minute for many of you, but we already have a great group of you already registered, but we have space for more. Second, this season has been adverse to starting new churches. However, God has made a way in the wilderness. While we all mourn the closing of any church, we also know the resilience of the gospel offers new opportunities whenever a church closes. Under the tutelage and leadership of North Central Lay Leader Kenneth Wolverton, we have revolutionized how we are using our legacy funds for new churches. We call the program ACE, which stands for Accelerated Church Expansion. We are turning closed churches into new churches faster than ever. The ACE program leverages our legacy funds so that we can purchase land quicker and we can build a first-phase building to get our churches strategically into the mission field quicker. And then these ACE churches reimburse our legacy funds through refinancing. So in theory, we should be able to accelerate new church starts with legacy funds until the Lord's return. Our first ACE church is Melissa UMC with Stacey Piacune as the pastor. Our partnering church, or the planting or senting church, is First McKinney. Through ACE, we are able to not only build Melissa's phase one building during the pandemic. This past May, Melissa UMC was able to move into their beautiful building and to launch worship. The ACE program also enabled us to purchase, for the site of Grace Avenue, Grace Chapel, a piece of property that God only knew how prime it would become. Through the leadership of pastors Courtney Schultz, Alex Williams, Millie and Laura Eccles Richter. The ACE program purchased Grace Chapel, a piece of farmland in West Prosper, East Aubrey. Within a year of purchasing this, Denton ISD came to us and asked to purchase a strip of land and we sold them a narrow strip of land across the north side of that property. Now they will be widening the road and right next to our future church will be a future middle school. Resilience is following Jeremiah's example and buying a piece of property in adverse conditions and then witnessing that piece of property become prime for the purposes of the Prince of Peace. My final topic for today is demographics. North Texas Conference we have work to do. The African American population is 15% of our mission field but only 7% of our members. That is a two-fold gap. Asian Americans are 6% of our mission field but only 2% of our congregants. That's a three-fold gap. Hispanic Latinx persons are 27% of our mission field yet only 3% of our members. That is a nine-fold gap. In response to these realities, the CCD has committed additional resources to those churches that are making disciples of Jesus Christ with these communities. First, the Black Church Matters. One of the jewels of the North Texas Conference Center for Church Development is the Black Church Initiative, BCI, from 2017 through 2020. The Reverend S. Diana Masters led BCI in the North Texas Conference. It equipped pastors and laity, strengthened preaching and leadership and invested in assessments of how our churches could be strengthened. Six BCI churches, St. Luke, Hamilton Park, St. Paul, Church of the Disciple, Warren and the Village, all invested heavily in their assessments. Now they have organized BCI teams, they have received a coach, they are working these assessments and they are assisting their congregations with their missions, ministries and outreach to live into this new season we are entering into as a church and as a world. One of these churches, the Village UMC, led by Reverend Derek Jacobs, they had been meeting in a strip center for a decade. Then the pandemic hit. With the pandemic, all of our congregations faced uncertainties, but the Village had a God-given dream. Many years ago, a generous saint had donated a piece of property to the North Texas Conference that became worth over a million dollars. The NTC granted that land to the Village to build a new church and the Village in turn reimbursed the NTC for many of the expenses related to that land. The Center for Church Development then offered a hundred thousand dollar challenge grant to the Village from the Legacy Funds from closed churches. The Village would have to raise two hundred thousand dollars and at that point they would receive the one hundred thousand dollars. The pandemic presented serious threats to raising money. However, the resilience of the Village congregation and their God-given dream resulted to them not only making that challenge grant, but in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, they broke ground, they constructed their building and they now have moved into their beautiful amazing facility on twelve acres of land on wintergreen right off I-35 into Soto, Texas. Church resilience is a generous congregation moving forward with their God-given dreams even when the world tries to tell them now is not the time. Next, to assist in reaching our Asian and Asian American mission fields, the CCD has held a number of collaborations, consultations and given a number of grants. This past March, the North Texas Conference constituted our first mission congregation. It was Emmanuel Korean with Pastor Sun Chul Kwan. We also had a church close in Fairview, Texas and the Center for Church Development worked with the Metro District, the North Central District and the Center for Connectional Resources to move first Korean, UMC and Richardson, Texas up to Fairview. Now the NTC is maintaining and expanding our presence and witness in this strategic location. Now, did you know that we have over 100,000 Asian Indians living in the bounds of the North Texas Conference? And did you know that the North Texas Conference has never had a full-time elder serving this community? This was a racial injustice that was in desperate need of correction. So the CCD reached out all the way to Cochin, India to recruit a gifted ordained Asian Indian elder named Sumesh Jacob. Then, in 2020, Reverend Jacob, first United Methodist Church of Capell, Tom Palmer Pastor and Bishop McKee made history when Bishop McKee appointed Reverend Jacob as a full-time associate pastor to First Capell. To tell you more about the demographics around First Capell, Capell ISD has become the first ISD in Texas having more Asian students than any other ethnicity. For example, Reverend Jacob's son Timothy attends an elementary school that is 85% Asian, most of whom, like the Jacob family, are from South Asia. Resilience is making history to reach new faces, even when conditions are tight, tough and adverse. Finally, in response to the nine-fold gap that we have in the underrepresentation of Hispanics Latinx in our North Texas Conference congregation, the Center for Church Development has invested additional resources in our Hispanic Latinx congregations. One of those resources is our two-year Latinx lay fellowship. Graduates include Ruben Alvarez, who is planting a new congregation out of Christ's foundry in partnership with Pleasant Mount. Eliana Rios has become an associate pastor to Rappahoe and Juan Rios an associate pastor at Casa Linda. Lovers Lane United Methodist Church and Walnut Hill Church recently hired graduate Betonese Baessa. In 2020, with the assistance and support of the CCD, the Center for Connectional Resources and the Metro District, Walnut Hill deeded all of its property to Lovers Lane United Methodist Church, and Lovers Lane adopted the still-vital Walnut Hill congregation. And Latinx intern Betonese Baessa is assisting them with reaching the diverse mission field around them. Nine out of the 17 initiatives receiving new church funding are working to reach the Hispanic Latinx mission field. One of these churches is Yahweh Rafa with Pastor George Enette Haddock. This year, in the midst of the pandemic, Yahweh Rafa moved out from underneath the comfort and the cover of first UMC Raulette and moved into a closed, non-denominational church in Balt Springs, Texas. Did you know that we had a town of 25,000 in the North Texas Conference with zero history of a United Methodist presence within its bounds? Well, that has changed. Resilience is launching a Latinx United Methodist Church in a town with no history of a United Methodist presence in the middle of a pandemic and seeing that church prosper. The staff of the CCD, Matt Temple, Jessica Vargas, Tracy Everson and I, as well as our function area teams, ask you for your prayers. The CCD has begun a new prayer ministry called the Orison. The Orison means prayer or petition to God. Each month, we present seven petitions for God to assist the North Texas Conference in reaching our mission field. Please go to ntcumc.org slash orison to see the latest petitions and to subscribe to have the petitions emailed to you each month. Charles Wesley's hymn has us ask, and are we yet alive? The answer is yes. By the grace and resilience given to us by our almighty God, North Texas Conference, we are alive.