 Well, I'm honored to be able to introduce Sarah, because Sarah has a long history in the North Texas Conference. She served at Wesley Rankin for many years and just really expanded its programs and its ministries. Then she came as the urban strategist for the North Texas Conference, and that was under the Vision 2020 campaign, and I personally, my life was forever changed by her as she was the architect of Christ Foundry and had the idea for Christ Foundry and recruited me from the Texas Conference to serve in the North Texas Conference, and I am forever grateful for her work and having confidence in me and recruiting me into that position because my life just has been so blessed through that ministry and ministry in the North Texas Conference, and she is the one that I credit for and that you can blame for. She is now with the Institute for Discipleship and they are entering into a new chapter. Discipleship has blessed millions of lives and it is known worldwide as a means of discipleship and both for personal and in group discipleship, and they are now entering into a new chapter and I saw her at annual conference and she was telling me about it, and so I asked her if she would be willing to come and share with the North Texas Conference in this webinar format, and she has been very gracious with her time and her willingness to come and share with us, and so we thank you and let's welcome our North Texas daughter, Sarah Wilkie. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is exciting. I am really honored to be a part of this today and I am going to, I want to, I am going to hide myself for you, I thought I had, oh, I am the speaker, that is the problem. Okay, I really would love it if, can you all give me just a little show of hands, a knot of heads, have you seen our little two minute video, did you get a chance to go on the website some, okay, so you are in luck because I am going to show it to you right now, it is two minutes, and that way we will all start on the same page, and that will probably be a good thing. I need to, interesting, okay, I bombed out on that already once, Jessica, do I, how do I not show, if I want to show my screen, how do I not show the, well, we are going to try it this way, I am going to show my desktop and then I am going to, do you see the video, or do you see all of us? We see the video. Oh, sweet, we are golden then, here we go. We will encounter with scripture and community, relying on the tools that you use every day. And you have no geographic limits, fill your small group roster with friends, family, fellow church members, and mission partners from across town and around the world. The app is easy to navigate, intuitive, and designed to accommodate busy lifestyles. The Bible is built into the app, and both the daily commentary and the scripture readings can be accessed through text or audio, so you can choose to either read or listen to your assignments. You can answer all your study questions by typing or voice to text, and you can interact with your group all week through embedded discussion questions, a prayer wall, and a message board. Every week your group will gather live on Zoom or in person. The first studies are from the popular disciple series. Chapter one offers a sweeping survey of the Bible in a 24-week fast-track study. Disciple two, also a 24-week fast-track study, offers a deeper dive into four of the most foundational books in the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Luke, and Acts. We invite you to be a trailblazer with this innovative resource. We are especially looking for local church leaders to recruit and form small groups that can fully experience the power of the app. As a beta tester, you'll receive a special introductory price for putting the curriculum and software through its final paces before the official release in 2024. Simply fill out the form at beadecipleapp.com to express your interest. You will receive instructions on how to purchase the study and download the app. Then, look forward to making the Be A Disciple Study App, your destination for transformation. All right, that gets us hopefully a little bit on the same page so that you can have a taste of what we're talking about. We will, we can happily send you information after this call if you'd like, but if you go to beadecipleapp.com, you can watch that video and a lot of others to kind of get you up to speed on what we're about. So where I want to begin today is before we get into questions because some of you will have them, I want to just kind of lay the groundwork because I think there's some really critical pieces of anytime if you're a local church leader, be you a lay leader or a clergy person, you're looking at, well, what am I bringing into the conversation of my community of faith? And so I want to talk about who started this process. I'm one of four children. I'm the youngest of four. My sister, Susan Fuqua, is actually on the call somewhere hiding, but she's here. And we are all, we have two older brothers. They're all a part of this legacy that our parents created when they wrote the Disciple Bible series 35 years ago. They began to work with the United Methodist Publishing House. Well, they launched it in 35 years ago, so they probably started 37, 38 years ago. Diane Boone, I know you've taught this from early, and I think Eric, I know many of you maybe were early, how many of you all have taught or taken Disciple Bible study? Okay, okay, so you know Disciple. Well, let me tell you then, those who don't, we will not leave you out. There's going to be lots of information about Disciple as well. But I wanted to say, our father and the four of us kiddos have, we just decided to not, the church needs, the church needs us. The church needs us to not stop teaching scripture. You know, when I think of scripture, I think scripture was meant to be the plowshare, not the weapon. And it's been weaponized so much, it's time for us to continue to reintroduce it to tilling the ground of discipleship. And that's, that's really what Disciple Bible study is about. A little history, my folks were at a First United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas. My dad had this just passion for Sunday school. He wanted a thousand people in Sunday school. That was his goal in his decade of ministry there was to get a thousand people in Sunday school. And we hit that number. We hit it because of Disciple Bible study, all actually all the things that led to it. And that my folks, my dad went and started asking key laypeople, will you need to start a new Sunday school class? Would you teach it? And the lay, first layman he went to went, oh, big attorney in town. Oh, I can't teach Bible study. I can't teach Sunday school. I don't know the Bible. And you may have experienced that. You go to somebody and say, hey, we need to start a new Sunday school group or Sunday school or a new small group. And folks are skittish because they don't feel confident. And so my folks began an intensive process of saying we have to teach our laity the scripture. We have to teach our laity the scripture. And as a part of that, we have to teach people how to read scripture. How do you challenge scripture, question scripture, interpret scripture? How do you work in that world of study? And so that's where Disciple Bible Study, they then went with the United Bethes publishing house and put it together. When my folks retired, they created the Institute for Discipleship at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. So the three, and that's where our family efforts are. My brother Steve is our oldest sibling, and he leads the Institute. And we have been working to say, OK, how do we bring Disciple Bible Study back into relevance today? And so I credit my sister, Susan. She's a longtime Christian educator. She was on staff at Highland Park. She may, some of you may remember Susan, I know Eric will. But Susan began as a Christian educator working then later in adult Christian education. She was an original trainer for Disciple. So she began to say, wow, these are churches. People are not signing up for a 34 week in-home study anymore. I mean, some of those were two, two and a half hour group meetings every week for 34 weeks. And our culture just doesn't go there now. And so how do we begin to adapt? And Susan took the curriculum and created Disciple Fast Track, which brought it to 24 weeks and shortened each session. Is it the fullness of the 34 week study? Nope. But is Disciple Bible Study a seminary degree? No. We've got to take what we can and do what we can with where we are. And so we continue to take Disciple the content. And we used to tease our parents. People would say, oh, Disciple, it's so wonderful. We'd say, well, don't get too big a head. You just wrote the manual. You did not write the Bible. And so the Bible hasn't changed, but we have taken the manual and we have brought it forward. And I credit Susan with that as well as Bruce Spurch, who is the professor emeritus at Wesley Theological Seminary and has tremendous credentials in teaching. What do you all see now? Am I still on my screen? I don't need that anymore. I'm sorry. Let me stop sharing. That'd probably be great. Actually, what we were doing is changing it from everyone to where it's just you, where we can all see you. Oh, OK. Do you see me? Yes. But now you're real small. But now we're going to change it where you're focusing and then everyone else we can scroll up and down to see. OK. Well, I just wanted to try and left the video up, because that would be insane. OK. So I just want to delay a little bit of groundwork here. So it's our family, the Institute for Discipleship. The United Methodist Publishing House came on board early. We began these conversations. How do we build an app? How do we put this in the, how do we put this where in something that everyone has access to? And really, everybody has access to a phone, almost to the point that it drives us all insane. But we have it and we need it. And then we wanted to look at a couple of things. And this is the piece that I want to share before we get into Q&A and that sort of thing. This is the concept that's really attracting my attention right now. As a pastor or as a leader in your congregation, we have tried to figure out how do we get people into the church. And we've been measuring Sunday morning attendance major. We add nauseam. And I've said in many meetings where there was a struggle over, how do we, why are we only counting numbers? It was a phase we went through as a denomination where counting numbers was important. I don't know that we're still there. We need to, I think, shift off of that to focusing. And our push will be to say, we really need to see how many people we have in small group. Because we need to get people into transformational small group studies that will make, that will not only transform their personal lives, but will transform the congregation and the community around them. And so this concept of high impact, low visibility, or high visibility, low impact. When you think of the things your church does, we have lots of, we used to have fall festivals, or Halloween trick, trunk, or treat, or big concerts, and wonderful, wonderful high visibility things where we hope people will enter the doors of our church. It doesn't mean they, it doesn't, it means they might just come once a year to that concert or to that festival or to that trunk or treat. What we're hoping is what we believe, not just hoping it, we really believe it and we want to prove it out, is that through small group study, we have an opportunity to have a real, I have preached this so many times and I'm not even a preacher, but Jesus calls us by name. So if I say to you, Jessica, I am starting a small group to study scripture this year. It's a Bible study, it's all online, it's really accessible, we're gonna have one Zoom meeting a week or we're gonna gather once a week at the church or a coffee shop or in my home for an hour and 15 minutes, but I've done them on Zoom and so I'm gonna say it's on Zoom, it's easy, you can wear sweats, no one will know. Would you, Jessica, I'd love to have you in this because it would just make our group so rich to have you in our, versus all y'all come. There's no scripture I've seen where Jesus says all y'all come. Jesus calls us by name and that, I think, is one of the most powerful pieces of the small group is, yes, you wanna tell the whole congregation about it, but we're recruiting at my church right now and I walked up to people Sunday after church and I said, Debbie, I would just, I really think you'd be great in our group and we need you in this, would you think about it? And she said, I can't lead. And I said, no, no, I'm not asking you to lead it. The pastor, in this case, the pastor are gonna lead it cause he's new and he wants to get to know the congregation. Pastors, you don't need to lead this. Get your lay people to lead it. We have training modules in it, we're gonna train them, they can lead this. This isn't another thing a pastor has to put on their plate. You can lead it, but do trust that it can be lady driven so that you can be about other aspects of the ministry of the local church. High visibility, low impact versus low visibility, high impact. Every Sunday after you start these, you're not saying and the disciple group is gonna meet on Tuesday because it's already a built group and it's not a join in late. It's, you want that group to gel and so over the first two or three weeks, you really just want that group to be that group and to gel into that group. Before I just give a bigger overview, I do wanna say a couple of things. We've done a lot of research in preparation for this. We've really done a deep drill down into small group study, how it's impacting churches. We've done a lot of research into what people are wanting and meeting. We all know that post-pandemic and post just the culture wars and everything else, we know that there are fewer people in our pews. And so instead of beating ourselves up or self-flagellating, perhaps we should say, hey, what gives life back to us as people of faith? Well, the community of faith and to draw people into a small group study allows them to reconnect with that. And then hopefully, and this is what I saw happen in my group that I led last year, there's a place in disciple one where it really kind of convicts you on the need for the community of faith again. And there were at least six women in my study that said, and these were really active lay women. They said, it's been really hard to go back. And but it was kind of a tipping point of, you know what, I do need to go back. Well, so if you can put out all the coffee and donuts in the world, but if I walk in and I don't know anyone, then I'm just, I could go to Dunkin' Donuts. If I think, oh, I wanted to talk to Jane about our conversation in our class on Monday. I wanna get there a little early so I can talk to Jane. Or when I walk in, I see members of my small group that I can connect to. I mean, is this resonating with any of you? And I can't see many of your faces because I mostly see my own, but is this resonating? Are you feeling this? So we are really trying to connect to create a new vehicle. And I'll launch with this too. Our folks and the publishing house, when they created Disciple Bible Study, churches didn't have VCRs yet. Crazy. So churches started buying VCRs because it was the first video driven study that was produced. So that just, you know, so we begin with the VCR and of course went to the DVD. And now it makes perfect sense that today we would take the Disciple Fast Track and adapt it to an app. I wanna talk about the app. Let me ask some questions. I wanna break for a second. I don't wanna lose track but if we have any question around, I see some questions in the chat, anything around just what I've said so far as far as small group, trying to get more high impact, low visibility. Did that resonate for the group? Is that, and remember, I'm a preacher's kid and I'm related to a five clergy in my immediate family. I'm very sympathetic to the life of the local church pastor. It's rough out there. And so anything we can do to support that. But I wanna just do a look around and see, is there anybody who has a pressing question on what we've spoken to or should I jump into the app? Okay, it looks like we're good. Okay, so where do we go from here? We took Disciple Bible Study and we have, first it's Disciple Fast Track. So Susan took Disciple and brought it into Disciple Fast Track. Now we've taken Disciple Fast Track and we've done some things that make it even richer. The app allows you to have interaction. Okay, so you have your weekly study and you go on Tuesday nights and you pray with each other and you share and it's all good. And then in the traditional, be it Sunday school or small group, you don't see those folks for a week. The app actually gives you access to your group 24 hours a day in the sense that you can post a prayer request, you can send a message, you can be in constant communication. As you read your sections each, as you read your lessons each day, there are discussion threads that run that people are answering. I would get up on Monday morning and I'm sorry, Tuesday morning, we met on Monday nights. I'd get up on Tuesday morning and there'd be this little flurry of the early morning folks who'd read the first day's lesson and already responded to the discussion question. And you'd go, oh, this question's really deep. I have to think about this or you'd quickly weigh in. But it was interesting. Sometimes some of us, it would be, I'd put, I'm gonna have to think about that for a few days and then I'll come back and I would circle back on like Wednesday or Thursday and put my thoughts. And the richness of that interaction throughout the week took it to a whole new level for us. We were, I mean, it was exciting. Or you'd finish a lesson on a Monday night, I just a word about my group. So I had a group that was in four different time zones. We had one member in Australia. And so the only thing we didn't anticipate there was daylight savings. When we changed times, it threw off her world because her world didn't change time. So that messed us up a bit, but that was the only hiccup. We were on East Coast, Central and Mountain Time where the, and then Australia were the four areas of the world that we were in. And so we were at 6.15 on Monday night. We're gonna do it again. We're gonna do Disciple 2, 6.15 on Monday night. I have a few slots open for any women who have already done Disciple 1, come on in. But that allowed us to get in there on Monday night and then on Tuesday morning, start our week again, never losing a beat. And when people would begin it, you'd see the wheels spin. And, oh, I know, okay, sorry, had a little train of thought loss, but I've got it now. Monday night, we ended on time. These, you know, you have people in different circumstances. So you have to end at an hour and 15. And if people wanted to follow up with something, they just put it in the message board. Oh, here's the book I was talking about with my group. Some of you might be interested. It relates to this lesson for whatever reason. And it was awesome. And so I just highly, I can't talk enough about the experience of sharing that daily little thread of connection. Just a little thread, not a lot. I see this question, can the Discipleship app be integrated with our church app in church center? I don't know that. Right now, I would say it's probably just easier to just be another app on your phone. I mean, we all have 1,000 apps on our phone. We're rolling out in beta. We did a test group last year. We had about 50 people going through Disciple in five different groups. But we're probably not at the stage yet to be integrated into other apps. But you will be, as of August 1, you will be able to download it from either Google or Apple stores. And because look, the app is actually a bookstore. It's a small group Christian study bookstore. We are beginning it with Disciple 1 and Disciple 2. But it is basically a small, it's a small group Christian bookstore. And that's the goal of it. I think I'm gonna share, I'll just share this screen for a second with you. The app really just is designed to give everything you need. Are you all seeing that by any chance? Yes, okay. We're good. All right, great. The app, so you could integrate it into other apps, but truthfully, this is like going to UMPH, the United States Publishing House or Coax Bear or whatever, and purchasing Disciple Bible study materials. But let me tell you, if you've had to put together your roster and your email addresses and your phone numbers and all of that stuff for something, the beauty of the app is, it collects all of everything for you about your group. You don't have to do that anymore. It gives everybody, be it on their iPad, on their computer, on their cell phone, they have access to all the class materials. You can have members from anywhere in the world. If you have a mission group, if you have a mission partner somewhere, and now they're only in English right now, I'm just gonna say that. We very much hope to go into other languages. It's the actual technology is ready for any language. But we started, obviously we started with English because that's what we have. We are working to hopefully get some grants to help us put it. We'd like to be in Spanish. We'd like to be in Chinese. We're talking with folks who are very interested in working in Africa and trying to determine, well, that's a lot of languages. We'll have to decide where to go in that. But those are, this was not an inexpensive proposition, friends, we have a million dollars in this app already just to throw the dollars out there. This is, every time you add or change anything, it's just technology. So we very much want to be in other languages and we built the platform to receive that, but we're just not there yet. You can read and listen to assignments. So we have audio. If you're a walker and you wanna put your earbuds in and walk and listen to the commentary, listen to the scripture, listen to the whole lesson. If you're a commuter, if you have a long drive or even, well, it's not even 30 minutes. It's 30 minutes of audio listening a day or so. If you wanna sit and read your own Bible because you love to touch it and because it's sacred and beautiful, that's okay too. I found myself doing both. I found myself listening and reading because I tend to, I have just enough of a distractibility that sometimes it's good to just hold myself accountable and listen and read together. We have everything, the videos are there. We have new videos to help draw people into theological perspectives from around the world. So we have 24 theologians offering a little piece each week that's from a different cultural context which I think is exciting and important. We did all new videos to answer that question. We did not use any of the originals. There's some awesome ones in the originals but they were meant to be seen together and they're much longer. These are five minute. Remember this is Disciple Fast Track. It's really designed for that introductory survey course, Disciple One especially, is really designed to be an introductory survey course that allows people to experience the Bible often for the first time, really at any in depth level. Thank you for these questions, happy to answer them. And we do have a wonderful training in there. We're growing and learning, but we do have a lot of expertise in just the pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy of learning through the app and we're putting everything to the test. I'm running fast because I know you think, oh, it's an hour, that's nothing. But I do want to answer questions and I don't see anything else in the chat. So if I'm missing something, please let me know and I will answer that. I can keep telling you about the app as much as you want to hear, but I do want to answer any questions you have. And I don't really see you. So if you have thoughts, I'm even, you can even just speak them if you want to. Oh, here comes the chat. Oh, thanks, Wally. How are you? Let's see what you're... Ah, so, okay, so the link, it should, did you try over the weekend? No, no, no. I've been paying close attention and tried to sign up as you were talking. Oh! I got too far as to clicking on becoming a study leader, but it only opens up a window of a video. It doesn't get me beyond that point. Stay around that. And let's just see what's happening there. When you scroll down, it should bring you to a registration piece. But, and I love that I had you, hello, you're a good egg. But what we really, I should just put this out there. We are looking to have 300 leaders this year. We have about a hundred. I have to give credit to my sister. She does have a big church, but she did recruit 23 leaders out of their church. They're gonna go big because I think, I think they have 60% of their congregation worshiping online. They just aren't getting them back in the pews. I don't think that's, they happen to be a big church in Indianapolis. I think that's, I know my church. And let me say a word about my congregation. Because that was one of my passions for this. In 2020, we had a tornado go through Nashville, and I attend a historic, gorgeous, beautiful historic church in East Nashville. And, you know, you think run inside that church, because it's been there for 150 years, nothing could blow that down. That tornado literally destroyed our church to the point we had to scrape the whole property. Nothing, we saved as much as we could, but basically it was a total loss. It's going to be five years before we are back in a building. Then our pastor, total pastor turned over twice in these last years. So we have new clergy leadership, no building. We're worshiping in an elementary school. We tried other churches that were, we were trying to worship in other churches. And, you know, how sad it is that that just never works. So anyway, here we are in an elementary school, and we are, and then COVID was a month after the tornado, or two weeks after the tornado, we had COVID. So even in these pastor turnovers, we had one pastor that I never even met, because COVID, and by the time we were ready to reenter the world, we'd already turned over again. We desperately need something that draws those folks back. We also had a tremendous amount of gentrification in the neighborhood of our church. And so we had people who, you know, if you had a young family, you could sell your property for a lot and move further out. They want to come back to our church, but they don't live nearby. So getting them to come more than on Sunday morning is really hard. So we're going to start, and I am going to co-lead with my pastor because he said, Sarah, I don't know our congregation yet either. So can I do that with you? I said, well, absolutely. I was trying to take something off your plate, but if getting to know people is on your plate, then you should definitely do this. Pastors, you don't need to do this, but if you are in that boat, then yay, that's great. I mean, there's nothing wrong with pastors leading disciple Bible study. I'm just sensitive to the fact that there's a lot on your plate. So Wally, try the link again. Susan's saying that the button on the top right at the red bar that says register is your friend when you land on the Be A Disciple app site. Oh, choose the app. So does that, are you finding that button, Wally? I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. So I've gotten to that. It says Brow studies is the page that it's opened up. So don't click the thing that says more about the studies. Click the actual study itself, the color of the books, whichever one you want. Well, one and two. Then you're home free. Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. Yay. Let me involve everybody in my. No. Yeah. It's good because. Yeah. Hopefully everybody's going to do that today. And that would be just awesome. I want to, I want to invite you all to help us with something. This is beta. Just to be clear, we're in beta. We have tested it twice. We tested it without being in the app. We tested it in the app. And now we're really, we need, we need 300 groups of people really pushing this. Because this is the best way to do it. For the church to use with lots of small group studies. We're already in conversation with the publishing house and some, and the upper room books to look at. Are there some small group studies we can adapt to the app that are six weeks? Because that's not been a question that was thrown at me, but I've. On this call, but I've gotten it a lot. Well, 24 weeks. Oddly enough. Once people are in the groove. It's any, it's like any other muscle memory. They just go with it. But it is sometimes hard to get people to make that full commitment. And we do want to have some six week studies. But our true goal up front right now with where we are as a denomination. And where we are as a people of faith. Is. We really need to reconnect to the scripture and reconnect to one another. We really need that. Sense of community again. And so 24 weeks is, is a. Wonderful way to jail. My group had I. Had we, if we had it been after we were. 14 weeks in our group would have happily gone the full 34, but they wouldn't have signed up for 34. You know, we're funny as people on what we can and cannot do. And to be honest, there's a, there's six of the women from my group last year. I had 14. Who really can't do it. And they really want to, but they can't do it again this time. But we have eight who are coming back. And. Yes, something like that. And we're ready to go back in now and do disciple two together. So if you. I want to answer any questions you all have, but I do want you to know that we've built out the. Be a disciple app. Dot com space to have FAQs. It introduces the who, the what, the when, the where, the how. The biggest thing that I think. And I think North Texas is going to be a huge piece of this. I think it's the ability to learn this year. What's working. What's not working. How do we make it better? And I mean, you already know, I'm, I love the North Texas conference, but mostly because it's a, it's an innovative conference. It's a conference that's never been afraid to innovate. And it fits in our. Kind of same mindset of, well, let's try it. Let's go for it. Let's go big. And make it work. And then we're going to figure out how do we adapt, adapt it. In the future. What do we do different? Do we, do we need more shorter? Do we need more short studies or wow, should we throw our focus into disciple three, disciple four other long-term studies? I will tell you. We're already working on disciple three. That will roll next year. So we're going to keep with the long-term studies, but we're also in conversation with some short-term studies. What, what. What questions y'all have. You've listened to me for a long time. I want to answer questions. We have a question on the shot here from Richard stored. He was asking about the cost. What is the cost? So it's a, the leader cost is $75 to be the leader. And with that, you get your, that you get the professional zoom account. The potential. So we're going to keep with the long-term studies, but we're also in conversation with some short-term studies. You get the professional zoom account. The participant fee is $45. And with the, the leader, I will say something clergy. Guess what we found out about the professional zoom account. It's, you know, all of our churches have one and they pass it around. Yeah. We were going to do a little bit of that on this. And we found out from zoom that that's really not, you can't really do that. So I'm not going to tell y'all what to do, but in our case, we ended up having to buy, we buy every leader, their own pro zoom account. And hopefully you'll, you'll work that account for leading these, these groups and other groups. I mean, it's no, you can, you can use it beyond the, the, be a disciple. I mean, the disciple Bible class. So that's kind of an added benefit to the leader account, but it allows you to do the breakout groups that are, allows you to set the timer. Oh, friends, if you've ever, I know you have, you've all led small groups a million times, but leading a small group with a zoom pro account where you can set the timer to close that small group breakout session down and you don't have to be the bad guy. It is the greatest thing ever invented because you can say, and our script will tell you this conversation should take 15 minutes and here's the material each breakout group is to cover. And you just put that into the timer and it's telling them and it, and it makes people self monitor their own talk, their own comment, you know, I want to tell a story. Oh, there's only three minutes left. I've already told a story. I should let someone else tell a story. So that those, but those are the pricing structure. This is our beta pricing structure. And, and we really want people to go to be a disciple.com to purchase. Because when the app store does open, you can buy it through the app store, but they, they do a 15% upcharge. And so we're pushing people to go first to be a disciple.com, buy it there. And then you can go in, you'll get the code and you'll go in from there. Yeah. Denise, can a group be only participants without a designated leader? No, you really couldn't. It's, it's, this is a disciple is a very rigorous comprehensive Bible study. You really want a leader who's done their homework first because there is a, there is a leader role. And you really do want to, you do want to follow up with that and stay true to that. I guess my real question was, if you don't need the zoom account, can the leader do a $45 participant account? No, no, because there's a whole nother function for the leader. The leader has different materials, curriculums, things that are helping them be prepared for that meeting. Yeah. I have a question from Monica Fraser. She says, is there a video group meetings component like zoom or is it message board discussion only? I think you answered the question with the, when you talked about having the zoom professional account, but I just want to make sure that, that your question was answered. So the groups can be, if I'm hearing correctly, the groups can be held in two ways. You can have a meeting in your local church or in your home or in a coffee shop. You can do that. If people want to meet live. Great. If your congregation is still at a place where they will gather live and hunger for that, then you, you should definitely do that. Or you would host the meeting on zoom. And, and the benefit of zoom is it allows people to not have to be commuter traffic or, or return, you know, drive across town or it allows you to include people who haven't always been able to be included. You know, if you needed elder care or childcare or, or had an illness, we had people who were able to come on the zoom calls that were under the weather, but they weren't contagious through zoom. And they were able to continue to participate. Especially if it was like, you know, a twisted ankle or, you know, if they felt good enough to be on the call, they could be on the call and that's kind of a nice, you know, you don't want to nowadays we don't, oh, there you go. Thank you. Yes. I see that. Ouch. So sorry. But is that a, is that a wounded wrist? That's there. Yes. Zoom pro access definitely comes with the leader package. You do not have to purchase anything. Everything including the CEB Bible is in the app. Oh, and a piece of the zoom call that I will lift up. In your app. There's no having to remind people of the code or how to get in. It's a link in the app to your meeting time. There's a reminder of when it meets. Literally everything they need is in the app. And your roster is in the app. They're, they're all their con all their dial in information. There is, I mean, they just click on the join my meeting. And they're in there. All their notes are there. Everything we have tried to make it incredibly accessible. So that I don't know if you know this, but when they did disciple Bible study, they actually sold book bags for people to carry their manual and their Bible and every, did any of you all have those? They, because there was so much to lug around, right? And now it's all here. There's literally nothing that won't be on your iPad or your cell phone or your computer or all three, however you want to do it. Oh, so. If you're reading the chats, you can see my sister weighing in. There is a strong leader training in the app. Along with specific leader guides. A leader does not need to know the Bible. They must be a good facilitator. They, their job is not to answer the questions of the group. And you all know this. Many of you have led disciple a million times. It's, it's better to let the, the group. Think. Wesley, Wesley was all about us using our minds when we read the scripture. And, and so we definitely want, if people learn anything from this, it's that you can question and challenge and learn and, and push it around in your small group. That's the beauty of this. Does the app include the extra resources recommended for outside study in disciple to, and my sister is answering that we have integrated in much of, we have integrated in much of the many of the extra resources. So I guess that's a yes. In many ways. Disciple to. We'll have those resources integrated into them. So we are baiting disciple to as well. Who wrote that. Denise, are you going to lead a disciple to group? I lead groups. We lead groups all the time. And so, but we just haven't done the short course because the old short course. Material wasn't. What are. Participants were looking for. So we're interested in seeing if the new short course material would be a better fit. Well, if you, if you'd like to connect with my sister, Susan, are you going to weigh in? I was just going to say. Yes, that's it. Then a difficult thing. What happened with disciple to is Bruce Birch. Yeah. We took a group through and we, we significantly. Added to the commentary, much of that information and the maps in, but we still, we did not. They do not have all of those resources. So I don't know if your group would be. Excited or not. But what I will to. You is the videos are much, much stronger now and the maps and the, the commentary is so upgraded with today's language and with a lot more contextual information, just a whole lot more. So I guess it'd be something to try with a group and get their opinion. We, we had a lot more. Last year of several pastors in Texas were in my group, believe it or not. And California, I had a nationwide group. And we had terrific responses. So I don't know, but there's nothing wrong with doing any, any of the disciple studies, the, the book, the fast track or this, they still are reading tons of the Bible. People are reading the Bible. And they're discussing in small groups. So. Well, I'm just thrilled y'all updated the videos when, when your classes up spending 10 minutes laughing at what people are wearing instead of the, the content, you know, there's a problem. In the disciple one, the videos. You can go on the website and scroll under about this study and let us know. And you can see the 24 new scholars from all around the world. And we're really trying to make this be much more global. So even the scholarship is more global. The language. And lots more understanding about the context of a patriarchal world. Lots more information on women. And we're really trying to make this be much more global. And we're trying to make this be much more global. Lots more information on women. And just a lot of things that trip people up. And we also, any passages that are really different, difficult in the Bible. Sometimes they were not discussed in disciple one. Or two, they weren't discussed in the group, even though people read it. And that was mostly because when dad wrote it, he was staying to the theme. But we've had so many people say, yeah, but what about this passage? I mean, I think that the passages that are extremely difficult, we have hit straight on. We've had the scholar talk about it. We put a paragraph in, we have a question for discussion. So even though it may vary a little away from the theme, we have made sure that we've really hit it hard. Things like why all the violence in the times of the judges. I mean, we have hit that hard to help give the best understanding there is issues of some of the passages on. Just really trying to help people understand how to read the Bible, how to understand context, the importance of that. And I think most, I think all United Methodist will continue to be very, very happy with the study. I will say that we, we kept true to disciple to where people are led. They are led to the scriptures to read and to each other to think and process. It is still not a question, answer of, it is not a spitback. What do you think it is? Definitely helping people develop their own thoughts, their own theology with each other in a grace filled setting. And that is the power of disciple. And that power has not been changed at all. We've just updated the language, made it more modern to help people today. That's really the main difference. And I just, I want to, I want to answer some of these quick questions that are on the board real fast. You can, there are places on the webpage to preview materials. You can go and look on there. There's a sample session. I think if it isn't up, it's getting up. It's up. So there's a whole, Laura, there's a whole sample session on there. I think it's session for just to kind of give you a complete overview. So if you're looking for a website that you're looking at, you look at a whole session, Wally, that may answer your question as well. You can go to all that trouble, or you can just really dig into the website. And I think you'll see enough to go forward with it. You could do three or four start three or four weeks in, and then start over again. There'd be nothing to keep you from doing that. It's not as hard as we're making it sound. It's really just. It really, it really isn't. It's just that if you're co-leading, you don't need to both sign up with the leadership package. Sarah, that's not true. You do. Oh, well, sorry, sibling moment. Okay. Sorry. I mean, it depends how you're going to co-lead, but there's a whole training module on it in the training. And to co-lead to truly co-lead, you need to both go through training, both have understanding of the whole thing, and then determine how you're going to divide it up. Now, if you don't want to truly co-lead and you want one person to be the caregiver or the attendance taker or kind of your assistant, then that's different. But if you're actually going to both be leaders, you need to fully understand the whole thing. So it's, it's kind of true, Sarah, or kind of not true. It depends how you, if you're going to co-lead to where one of you leads part of it, you've got to both have the leader guide. You got to both know what you're doing. So I think if you're going to co-lead, you've got to have the leader guide. You've got to both know what you're doing. So I guess it depends on what your style of co-leadership is. I would say you can, a lot of this you can shoot us. There's an FAQ on the, on the website, but there's also a place for you to email us questions or you can always email me or Susan anywhere. I will, I'll make sure that my contact information is available to you, but it's, we're happy to answer your questions. Or you can call, there's Susan's email. If you want to go straight to the source of the curriculum developer, Susan Fuquay at yahoo.com. If you want to reach out to me, it's Sarah.Wilke, W-I-L-K-E at s-c-k-a-n-s.edu. And I'll put that up as well. And I guess since we're recording those will be accessible. I'm going to make sure answered all the questions. Keep them coming. You can ask them if you don't have time to type fast enough, because I'm watching our time and I want to honor it. I'm what we, we would ask you to please, if you're, if you're feeling this is useful and valuable, and you go and you look at the website, spread the word. Tell other people about it. And that would be awesome if you could do that. It would make a big difference for us. If more people can contact us. What Bible version was used? Was it the common English version? It's all built around the common English Bible. The publishing house had us do. The common English Bible had us, I mean, the United States publishing house had, had us write the fast track version with the common English Bible. Okay. Thank you. What are your thoughts? I see a message here. Let's. Oh, yeah. Yes. The United Methodist publishing house owns disciple Bible study. So we are working obviously with them and they're supporting us in this. Let's see. Your church can still purchase your, your leader package for you if you'd like. You can, you can, you're not, I don't think zoom is going to come after us, but you can hand that host code off to someone else in your group. If you need to, if something happens or if you, I had a situation where I was out of the country. And there was going to be one night when I was in the air and could not fly and lead the group. And I was able to give the host code. I was able to do that. I was able to do that. And have two other people in our group lead that week. I also highly recommend recruiting someone. It doesn't have to be another leader, but someone that will help you manage the. The, just the time. I found doing it alone was really hard. So I enlisted a friend to help. So that one person could be managing the. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the groups and the logistical stuff. While I was taking people through the curriculum, or if you do have a true co-leader, it's lovely to break it up. Cause you like, just right now you've listened to my voice for. An hour. Sarah. One thing that might give people confidence is that we have a very, very gracious return policy. And if people have been in your group. You can still get a refund of everything. So I feel like that should give you a lot of confidence on. And even the leader package, if you don't fill a group and you can, we have, we have ways. You need, you have to have a minimum of six, but if you get six people, but you wish you had a few more, you can make it an open group and you can grab people from all over the country. If you want, that's your choice. You can, they can sign up for your group. At what we're finding at St. Luke's is a lot of people didn't think this way. They didn't think, Oh, I can invite my sister that lives in Oregon to be in our group. I'd love that. Helping people see the bigger picture. Yes, it might just have eight from our congregation in it, but what if it has three or four more? They, that aren't their church has nothing to offer them like this, or they always wanted to do a Bible study with their sister or their sister or their friend. So, so if you're a little more open to, and so there's a way once you go in there for all the training, it asks you, do you want to be an open group or not? And you can change that at any time. If you start with a closed group and then you fill it to 13 and you say, I wish I had two more people. Well, you can open it and get two more. If, if people pick your, they, they choose by picking your time. And you're, but you know, you don't know what you're going to get. I don't know what you're going to get, but you don't know that no matter what. Hey, I know it's 230. I'm aware it's now 231. It clicked over. I'm happy to stay around, but I also want to respect that a lot of people signed up for one hour and we need to respect that. Oh, and please, on behalf of me and my sister, I really do appreciate the opportunity to be with people I love and care about and to share this great adventure with you. We are accessible at all times. Please put it out on your social networks. Help people know that this is out there and help us get the word out because it's, it's really good. I think it could be a game changer again. I think this has a chance to make a difference again. So appreciate you so much.