 Who are the Sharks? They're entrepreneurial leaders in the North Texas Conference Churches with a passion for reaching new people for Christ. The Reverend Debbie Lyons serves as the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church, Winsborough. Her passion for community engagement has earned her the mayor's key to the city. Phillip Neely, a lay member at Whaley United Methodist Church in Gainesville, has more than 20 years of experience in business development. And currently serves as president and CEO of Trident Process Systems. The Reverend Sylvia Wang serves as the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church, Archer City. As chair of the conference's journey towards racial justice coordinating team, she helps develop strategies to create an equitable future for all people in the North Texas Conference. Greg Hickman, lay leader at Whitesboro United Methodist Church, is the owner and CEO of First Texas Home Health, a leading home health care system. The Reverend Dr. Andy Stoker is an interfaith leader who has served as a United Methodist pastor for more than 20 years. Today, he is chief engagement officer at the Thanksgiving Foundation. Jessica Vargas, mission coordinator in the North Texas Conference Center for Church Development, supports leaders across the conference as they identify new ways to engage their communities for Christ. Michelle Wood and the Parrish Junior College Wesley Center are the first into the spark tank, asking for the shark support of Reflection Kayaks, a ministry that will help college students commune with God in nature. When you get out onto the calm waters and you're out there with the sun basking down on you and you hear all the nature around and the wind rustling through the trees and everything it's just so calming and you're like this is what life is meant to be and you can just you know you can daydream you can you know meditate you know you can just you know play you're in the water if you want to and this just brings back I want a kid like quality also so I think that's you know just being on that water just you know kind of brings back good feeling. Good morning Sparks. My name is Michelle Stubbs Wood and this is Kodiath Stubbs Wood and I'm the director of the Wesley Center at Parrish Junior College. I'm here this morning seeking a grant for our startup Reflection Kayaks. Last spring one of the Wesley Center's college interns planned a kayaking retreat and it was deeply impactful for those who were able to attend. The impact was so profound I began thinking if there was a way that we could create a similar experience but not have to travel so far away and that would open up this experience to a lot more people in Paris. That's where Reflection Kayaks came up with. Reflection Kayaks was bored. Our church services in North America today focused heavily on our cerebral and our intellectual selves while forgetting all of our fleshy bits. There are many ancient practices that engage different aspects of people in prayer one of which is a walking labyrinth. In labyrinths people put their whole selves on the path of God. They begin to physically embody the forward motion of their prayers. Today I propose that kayaking could be used as an embodied prayer tool to meet people's spiritual needs in a new way. Kayaks physically transport us out of our day to day routines. It provides space for deeper reflection. To mark the power of embodied prayer I'd like to invite you into a space of embodied prayer with me. So we have bowls for each of the five sharks and there are some water and rocks and we would like to invite you into this time with us. As I read this poem by Mary Oliver I invite you to engage with the water in whatever way feels good for you whether that's gazing upon it or tumbling rocks through your fingers. Mornings at Blackwater by Mary Oliver. For years every morning I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also no doubt the feet of ducks and also it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past and the present is what your life is and you are capable of choosing what will be darling citizen. So come to the pond or the river of your imagination or the harbor of your longing and put your lips to the world and live for life. Who among you wants to paddle away with reflection kayaks? Thank you. The application was good I think you did a good job communicating your goal to target students outside of the normal ones that participate in the Wesley Foundation there. You know I like how you based it on an experience you already did and felt like you needed to take a next step and see how expand it. I think so and then I you know I love nature I think that's very spiritual I think it's a good way to to get out and interact with people but also to interact with God. So I relay to all that I think the challenge to me or what I would like to hear is it's kind of like when you buy a bike or something and you use it for three months and it sits in the garage forever so have you thought through how you how you keep your progress going or your momentum going once you once you the newness wears off of of your new kayaks. Right so one of the interesting things about Paris is in other cities there are many many different distractions and we have fewer of those in Paris and so I do think that this would be something that the college students would come back to. The annual liability insurance for this ministry would be $4,800 and so with thinking through that and needing to also bring in additional income as well and donations I also realized that there's a lot of people in Paris who could benefit from this ministry as well and college students could benefit from leading different meditative moments and so I'd like to open up this experience to people outside of PJC as well and yet keep it the student leaders at the focus of what we do building up student young adult student leaders in our programs and and so a person could come in and experience this yet also um transition later if they felt comfortable into leading and facilitating these groups and creating that space for others which would also build out leadership skills of our young adults. How would uh how would reflection kayak help a student or a community member grow in the way of Jesus through a pathway to discipleship? So with our students specifically we are we have a lot of de-churched students and un-churched students we have students who are not interested at all in hearing the message of the Bible or spirituality they are interested in finding community and building friendships and they're interested in social justice and morality and having conversations about life. This is a space that people could come and engage in discourse and dialogue and with that grow and challenge and sharpen one another and what they've grown up hearing and what they feel the spirit um moving within them and um beyond this space I was thinking it would be nice to also have some uh scriptural based groups and so uh having options that are open-ended for anyone to enter into and then spaces that also focus on scripture and stories of boats and walking on water and fear and waves and bringing those reflections and doing scriptural teachings in that way that introduces people to scripture maybe for the first time. Michelle I love this and I want to be the first I guess of the sharks to say I want to invest in this and want to offer any help that I have I'd like to invest $2,500 at it. I think this is something that is really really important especially for young people to connect deeply not only to one another but also to nature. What really compelled me about not only your paperwork but also your presentation was this link with mindfulness. I finished a certification in mindfulness meditation in the western buddhist tradition about two years ago and so anytime we have any kind of embodied practice that we can introduce in something that is sporting is really helpful to uh for for especially young adults to engage bodily and moving from head and heart into the fullness of who we are and experiencing their identities as confident and courageous people outside of the kayak. So Michelle I'd like to invest and offer any help I could get. Thank you. I'll jump in on that too with $2,500. I've spent my entire life outdoors. I hunt, I fish, you know and I will tell you that kayaking is addicting. I have a kayak you know and and and it is very addicting. The outdoors is addicting and I think we spend way too much time indoors. Very familiar with Paris Junior College. I'm familiar with Paris and there's not a lot around. Right. A quick story on how kayaks can actually bring people together. So my oldest son was working in Oklahoma City and he was up there by himself because he was going to school at OU as well and he bought a kayak and started fishing and he got his undergrads with an OSU so all of his friends were there. Now he's in Norman Moore area. Starts going out to this one lake. Another guy starts showing up about his age and they show up the same time three or four times in a row and a friendship kind of strikes up. They start fishing together. Friendship gets a little closer. They ended up being great friends. Cameron my son's friend introduced him to a young lady that three weeks ago, four weeks ago, my son married. Cameron was in the wedding. I mean and it just goes to show that I mean being outdoors doing things that that are not digital technology. I would also encourage you when you get on that kayak when you go on a retreat you leave your phones at home. You put them in the car. You don't have your eye watch. You don't. You just go out there and you spend time in what God gave us to really for us to enjoy. Anyway I think it's great. I think it's a great way to meet people. I think it's a great way to get to know people. Maybe somebody that you're around every day but you truly don't know who they are and this is a good way to do it because there are no other distractions. So anyway I'll throw in $2,500 or anything I can do to help. Thank you. I just appreciate that so much. I'll do $2,500 as well and tell them and I can maybe help you with the trailer as well. That would be wonderful. So are you buying the kayaks? We are searching for all new equipment. We're starting from ground zero at this stage. So any expertise that anyone here has in terms of purchasing kayaks or getting them wholesale or buying trailers we could use any of that expertise that you all have. Okay. Well I think first of all I want to thank you for being here. Thank you for putting the effort in in that application and for this wonderful presentation. It was very interactive and it just kind of gave us a glimpse of what you're trying to achieve and as you can see it works. You got three amazing sharks. You're having a ground of $7,500 in total. So congratulations and once again thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you all. Good job guys. Yeah I'm so excited for all of these different partnerships and meeting new people here in the spark tank and excited to see the ways that we can continue to work together and bring forth the kingdom of God on earth. I think this is something that's going to rejuvenate a lot of people especially after the pandemic we've been shut in for so long we've lost touch with the outside world. Next into the tank is pastor Martha Hagen Smith whose sacred table ministry will combine worship, fellowship, prayer and study with a farm-to-table experience for the community around Wadley United Methodist Church in Gainesville, Texas. Our church sits squarely in the middle of a neighborhood about 400 homes and we have a large population about 6,000 people that work at Winstar World Casino. Many of those families with the work that they do they're not able to come and worship on Sunday morning. In addition we have a large group in our community that are young but they don't necessarily connect with a traditional worship service and so they're looking for something very different and so the farm-to-table experience with worship gives them that opportunity to be together as a family. It taps into what Wadley values as intergenerational ministry and so that was the spark that that inspired what we were hoping to do with a sacred table. I'm pastor Martha Hagen Smith I'm fit at Wadley United Methodist Church this is my third year there. We are reinventing who we are as a church family. Our new Faces and Spaces idea is an opportunity for us for evangelism and discipleship to happen as a part of a new worship experience around a farm-to-table and weekly dinner experience using our outdoor spaces and we sit squarely in the middle of a neighborhood. We have about 10 acres and a half mile prayer path that goes around it and it looks like a community park for the neighbors that are around us. And so the ideas that will have this worship opportunity outside weather isn't so much a problem for us because we do have some ways that we could work around that even with the patio space that we have. The only thing that would get us would be lightning or extreme heat and so we might look at how we do that differently. But the sacred table it claims our vision to spread Christ's love through service our mission to make new disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of Gainesville the surrounding community spreading Christ's love through service and our value as we will embody our values around the table each week with this new worship and discipleship opportunity. We believe that this opportunity will be a new way to connect with new people and offer something very different for our community. Gainesville has a unique group of people and some of them don't feel comfortable with traditional worship settings and so this would provide that opportunity. In addition we have about 6,000 people who are employed at Windsor-Wall Casino and most of those were got Sunday morning. Again it creates a space for them to be able to worship in a different way. They would not be able to do that because the family on Sunday morning. And so we are proposing this as a non-traditional worship space looking for the modern fresh expression. The sacred table it will allow people of Waley to do what they do best. They love to feed people and they love to help create intentional intergenerational community outside regular Sunday morning experience. Offering community and grace around the table is a biblical and it taps into what early Christians did best. We extend radical hospitality for all in breaking a bread together, muffins, cookies and drinking. And so this allows us to do that for community. When we church friendly it has a really great gift for this hospitality and we'll tap into that gift inviting new people to come and worship, to sing, to eat, to pray, to have communion and we'll also provide some take home tools to help them grow in God's grace as a family together. The tools can be as simple as what we like to call faith five. Reading scripture together. Asking simple questions like how do you prepare during the season of Advent? What if we took time to pause at the table and watch for Jesus showing up in surprising places in a new way? Sharing highs and lows of life together. Or simply what resonated with you as the scripture was shared a few moments ago and ending with prayer and blessing for those around the table. We are reclaiming our energy and our focus to reach people right in our own backyard, not only in that housing development that our church that's squarely in but reaching out to those that wouldn't necessarily be able to worship in a traditional Sunday morning setting. We're going back to the basics, the table, grace, relationships, enjoy and proclaiming the gospel. Sacred table opens the door to a modern fresh expression of worship and discipleship using the free meal farmed to table as the hook to draw people into something new and something different. I love your your description of your new faces, new spaces, ministry as the sacred table. I appreciate the intergenerational focus. So there's a couple of questions that I thought of based on that is how well this new experience speak to newcomers and also people with perhaps no faith background as the language that we a lot of us in church are accustomed to church language. And so that's kind of mingled in with my question is intergenerational. So the discipleship at the table, it's going to speak to a variety of people at different ages and perhaps faith journey background maybe some without any kind of faith. And so could you speak a little bit more about your vision about how the sacred table might be an avenue to introduce people or reintroduce people to Jesus. So I think our hope for that is to keep it pretty simple to ask basic questions in there and allowing people to respond to those questions around the table as simple as what I asked a few minutes ago, you know, how do we prepare, how do we prepare and have people share in that and knowing that some people may have no faith background at all. And so they're going to talk about their experience of how they prepare in their way and then embracing that and speaking into that I think is important in the sharing around the table. And so I would rely on my table guides for some of that to give the information back. I've done a few of these to kind of experiment with how this could potentially work for us in our leadership. And so we've used that information to kind of it's like a holy huddle to bring it back to me and say, okay, here's what was shared. And then I try to address some of that in the wrapping up before we pray and then share a communion together. So I would probably do that the same way. The children that have experienced it, you know, they have profound responses to some of the questions, sometimes more so than the adults at the table. And the adults learn just as much as the children do in the mix of all of that. That's the beauty and the gift of inter-integration on children can see things and you can see things very differently than what we do. So I think I would use the model of keeping it really simple, asking just basic questions and that. Also giving tools to dive deeper for those that need that. So always I always give the hook at the end and closing that if you want to know more or you want to explore more about whatever it is we're doing here's where you go to do that. And I think that's important too for those that come from it from a very different perspective or background. That's how I see it. I think it'll grow and evolve as we see who's at the table. I have no way to predict from week to week who might. That's great. I appreciate your response to that. That's very thorough. Also I applaud your ability to adapt to the situation and to evaluate with your ministry leaders. I think that a powerful piece of the table is for us to also listen to each other. And so I would want if something came up at the table that we needed to address, that we would be free on F2 to speak into that. Thank you. I'm not going to be able to advance because that's my community but I wanted to give you some feedback. I'd be especially being from Gainesville but so your application is very detailed and I appreciate that. I love your passion and without passion failure is guaranteed. So I appreciate that and kind of tag team with what Sylvia said. If you're trying to reach the un-church people, Sacred Table sounds a little bit holy to me. But going along with that, are you saying that your volunteers, your table guides are going to just sit and build relationships and just ask questions? They're going to have specific questions that they're going to ask or is that going to be a go with the flow? Because you described it as worship but I don't necessarily hear any worship. So we would start with music as a way to introduce and we would have some liturgy that we incorporate into that. The way I did it, they might kind of test and try to figure out how we could make this work. We used a candle lighting ritual at the table so everybody had a candle. We lit the candle. We used some of the liturgy as an introduction to kind of what was to come. They served the meal and then from their table leaders helped with the discussion. So some of that is pre-planned and then some of that also is free-flowing of what comes out of that. So again it's both and in the mix of all of that. So I don't know that I fully answered your question because it does kind of grow and change but there is a plan and the idea is to also take some of that and tie it back Sunday and so that if they do come on Sunday morning they begin to see connections back and forth so that we can interconnect all of that together. Why did you choose Thursday night? We have a developed or developed Wednesday night program that's around music and so for us I would have to really adapt that Wednesday setting or look at another viable option. When I've done things on Thursday we've had a pretty good attendance. I also experimented with doing dining in the community and I chose Thursday for lack of a better thing and the last one that I did I did eight of them where I showed up in the community to just eat for people to ask questions, ask anything that they wanted, face in you know whatever. The last one I had we had really good turnout on Thursdays. The last one had a pet 52 people that showed up in the restaurant. Why? Just to simply just meet, dine, ask questions, discover kind of what we are. Martha I'm really inspired by your connection to community, the communal nature of all of this because I'm still recovering from many potlucks in my ministry. I'm going to go ahead and step away from anything involving food. I want to share with you that I'm very touched by your intentionality to reach out to people who are not able to come to church on Sunday mornings due to work and other commitments. I think that's definitely a segment of our communities that a lot of us do miss because we're so used to traditional Sunday worship church format and also the farm to table concept is something very close to my heart just to share over food conversations. It's a great way to build relationships and help people walk with them in their faith together to get to know Jesus and so I am willing to invest $5,000 in your church's ministry. I'd be happy to speak with you more about. I would volunteer sometime. I'd be happy to be your volunteer to taste tester. No problem with that. Anyway, but I'm going to step away. I think it's a great idea to form the table thing. I think it's great and I do think that we as a society need to get back to those dinner table discussions and talking about things that really matter. Instead of running through McDonald's and instead of, you know, just it's not the food. It's the conversation that we really need as a society. So it's a great idea. Keith, well, you got one chart who has experience in dinner church. So I think this is amazing. We appreciate in the way that you're trying to reach the community through food and prayer and connection. And well, thank you that you are here today and we look forward to see all the fruit of your labor. Thank you. Thank you. It's great. I know that she's had success with her own experience doing ministry very similar to that with worship in a restaurant. And so her expertise and advice will come in handy. We don't have a lot of resources to be able to do ministry. Most of our resources are used for infrastructure of the building and facilities. So this gives us seed money for that. We need to hire someone to help with leading worship for this particular ministry in addition to those that might help us with the cooking and other things that like providing the tools for the table, for the worship experience itself.