 On behalf of the Center for Church Development, Owen Ross, our director and Reverend Masters, Liliana and myself, just welcome you all and thanks for being here. And I would like to invite Estayana if you would be able to lead us in prayer this morning. Hope you're on mute though. All right, let us pray. Dear God, we thank you so very much for this opportunity for us to come together as colleagues and just learn and study your word. We thank you for the presence of your Holy Spirit on the Zoom call with us today. Give us the strength and courage to follow your leading of the Holy Spirit. Have your way, oh God, because everything we think, say and do is done for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So I'm gonna ask if you're able to do it, have everyone mute so we don't have a lot of background noise. And then as you have questions while our presenters are presenting, you can put those in the chat room on the side if you open the chat room and then Liliana will keep track of those and we'll try to make sure that we are able to track those and come back to them. So feel free throughout to ask questions and we'll sort of keep an eye on those so we know that we don't miss any. The purpose of this particular call and really all of the calls that we've been doing here since we've been in quarantine is really more than anything to leverage our ability to bring folks together, to share some ideas of what's happening for us to create an opportunity for conversation to develop some synergy within the conference through sharing ideas. And ultimately, what we want is to just give people hope that this is a time for innovation. I think I mentioned this at our last call. I've been telling our church planters, like this is the first and maybe only time in your ministry life where metrics aren't as important or at least the classic metrics that we've cared about in the previous years. And so we have this sort of slate to innovate from that is sort of a unique opportunity for us. And so trying some new things and developing new ministry and figuring out new ways to reach people, which is why we're here this morning. And I think as we kind of look at our current reality that we're in, I tend to break things down into developmental stages or phases. And so when I step back and look, I think the first phase of this experience for a lot of us was sort of like, we're just trying to react and pivot and just sort of catch our bearing in the midst of all of the changes that really came at us pretty fast, fast and furious. And then the second phase was kind of, okay, we've kind of got a sense of where we're at and we're sort of refining and rethinking about how to engage our people and doing it, trying to do it better and better each week. And now I feel like we're sort of moving into this stage of reshaping our ministry for our current reality. I think we would all agree that the reality of ministry now is unlike anything we've ever experienced and whatever normal was before this, we probably aren't gonna ever go back to that. Whatever normal, the new normal looks like we don't really know yet, but we're having to really sort of rethink and reshape our ministry for the times that we live in and being contextual and making the necessary changes. And really that's why we're here today, in particular to ask the questions of how do we reach new people in our quarantine reality? How do we then sort of collect data and connect with those folks? And then how do we connect those folks to our faith community and engage them in ways that disciple them? And so those are really the questions we're wanting to grapple with this morning. And then as I sort of step back and look even further down the road, I think that there's a thinking that we need to be doing as leaders as well. And maybe we'll come to this at some point in one of our webinars of what does it look like to relaunch? Every pastor in the United Methodist Church right now is a church planter because you're at some point you're gonna be relaunching your church, right? And so you're gonna have this opportunity to maybe change some things that you've been wanting to change for a long time but just didn't have the leadership capital to do it or have some new innovative ideas coming out of this season. And so how can we help you think entrepreneurially about relaunching your church because you are now all church planters, believe it or not. And so how can we resource you to do that and do it well? And so basically an overview of our agenda this morning we have four presenters and just a moment I'm gonna ask each of them to just briefly introduce themselves in about a two minute introduction. And then we'll kind of come back and I'll go through with each of them and have them ask them to sort of share with us what they're doing currently, particularly to engage new people, how they're collecting information, how they're connecting those people to their church and engaging them in discipleship. Once our presenters have finished, Liliana is going to share with you all and walk you through the process for our new grants for new faces in digital spaces where you can apply for grants for equipment or whatever you need for reaching new folks with your ideas. And then we'll open it up for some Q&A. So that's basically the agenda that we're gonna go with. So to get started, I'll ask each of our presenters to just introduce yourself really briefly to the group and we'll start with you Dr. Quick since you're probably the least familiar face to most of the people here. I met Marty in South Carolina working with Path One doing a workshop there and really enjoyed my time getting to know him and really excited that you're here with us. So Marty, why don't you introduce yourself? All right, thanks Matt, pleasure being here today. My name is Reverend Dr. Martin Quick and I'm currently serving as the Associate Pastry journey United Methodist Church from the South Carolina Conference. We are a 12 year old church plant which we're not a plant anymore but we were. And so I'm also honored to have one of my mentors and also the person that does our congregational work for us, Reverend James Friday who's also on the call. So we just wanna bring you greetings from the South Carolina Conference. And I did do my doctoral work around social media evangelism and I call it E hyphen evangelism using social media for outreach. Hmm, awesome, awesome, thank you. Brenda, are you on the call? Is she here? There we are, yes, hi. Hi everyone, I'm Miranda Furman. I am certified candidate for ordination on the elder track and also appointed as a local pastor at Union Coffee. So clergy in full connection coming to ministry from community development, community engagement and a foremost sociology professor. So really looking at how identities and communities are formed and how they have to change in urban environments. And so I am planting a new coffee shop in South Dallas or planting a new worshiping community in South Dallas. And luckily since I'm appointed at Union it is indeed going to be a coffee shop. It took a little while for us to figure out what the community needed but we're excited to be there and planting. Awesome, thank you. Richie Butler, are you on the call? Are you there? He's, yes I am. There he is. How you doing, Matt? Glad to be with you guys, good to see you. My name is Richie Butler and I'm the senior pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas. So glad to be a part of this conversation. Awesome, and then finally Jonathan Perry, are you on here, Jonathan? I am, hi Matt, hi everyone. It's great to be with you today. Jonathan Perry, I pastor a community called Open, Open Worship at First United Methodist Church of Tenton and our community at Open is three years old today. Today is our birthday. And so I love the thought of us being church planners because our work began with building community and began by building community in home meetings just like we are all doing from our homes and in the places where we are right now we're at this place where we're building and rebuilding and maintaining those connections of the people who are gonna be our launch team, someday when we step back out into face-to-face meetings but also building that team that's really going, that is being the church and is being the community right now in ministry and the places where they are and the connections that they have to. And so glad to be with y'all. Amidst, we've been having a big birthday celebration all day long today, so I may take a break for cake at some point but glad to be with you. That's awesome. Well, fantastic. So let's start with you, Dr. Quick and you are sort of our resident expert because you're literally writing the book on this. So share with us for about 10 minutes some of the stuff you're experimenting with, how you're reaching new people sort of in our current reality and what you're doing to connect them to the church and discipleship. Okay, first thing, thanks, Matt. First thing I wanna do is I want us to pause for just a second and we're going to have a eulogy for the church that we used to know. So the sunrise was 1 BC, sunset March 22nd, 2020. That's the day when the church changed forever. And as someone said earlier that we're not going back to Egypt. So it's up to us to start to have a biblical imagination about how we can get back to Matthew 28 and 19 and the church has to go back to our going identity. Especially us as Methodist in which our founder, John Wesley was very creative in how we did evangelism. Now we just have a different mission field and that mission field now is online. So my first thing that I need everybody to do is just shift your mind toward returning to our evangelism roots, returning to our going identity. So now we just can't sit back in our churches and just wait for people to come. They no longer do that. We have to go out there and we have to go where the people are. So my first encouragement is for us to get on board with all the different kinds of social media platforms that are available. If you're just starting, I would suggest that do one well and work your way into the other platforms, but make sure you have at least one platform that you're using in order to reach people. So we pretty much have all the platforms. We haven't launched them all formally like TikTok. We haven't really launched that, but we are on TikTok and we're just working to see whenever we can work that in. So the first thing we're doing here is we're able to change our mindsets and return to our going identity. The second thing that I think is really important for us is to realize that this is real community. One of the arguments against my thesis that we could use a social media for going online is I met a lot of resistance to it being authentic of real community. And I believe in my heart and I've witnessed that this is real community. And we have to treat it as such. We have to be authentic and knowing that we're gathering online with people and present ourselves the same way we would present ourselves in church. So that's what we really emphasize in our ministry here at Journey is this is real community. Don't short change anybody because they're online. Treat them the same way when they come in your doors. For an example, we have our greeters who are used to working every Sunday. They are bored to death. So I came up with this whole platform for them to be online greeters. And we tried it last night for Bible study just to kind of get them on board but they're excited about Sunday. And I said, look, when people come on the same way you would greet them if they came in the journey if they come online and any of our platforms you welcome them and you help facilitate and navigate as they navigate through our given apps or as they navigate through if they wanna join a prayer request. And so they're really excited. So again, we have to treat it as real community. The next thing that we're doing here is we take very serious the fact that we have access to these people. So in other words, this is the new mission field. I mean, you literally can go around the world and connect with people online. So just last week, just to give you an idea of some of the people that came on live stream there was a person from Australia, a couple of people from Germany. There were some people that were right down the street. So there was a bunch of different people who were able to gather with us. And it's just amazing to see that. And not only are they gathering that we're also on one accord with one another. So I would emphasize that it's really important for us to be aware of the access that we have through social media. And the next thing I wanna emphasize is the contact and follow-up system. Now, once you engage these people online, you're gonna have to come up with a system, a system that allows you to touch people like to be high tech, but also be high touch that allows you the opportunity to engage people. So you need to follow up with somebody. So our system works this way. So everybody who came in as a guest, we hope that they will fill out the guest cards that we have. And so if they fill out the guest cards, this is what we would normally do in our sanctuary if somebody came in as a guest, we would have them fill out this connect card and I'm responsible for calling them and say, hey, thank you for watching me with us on a journey. And so we asked them, did you enjoy the service? What could we have done to improve? So we asked those questions because we want them to know that we really wanna hear from them in terms of what they have to say and as they experience us from online. So I would just, if you're not engaging folks and asking them those types of questions, I think that you're missing some low hanging fruit. So come up with a system in which you follow up. For the last two weeks, we've had four families actually that actually join us via online. Like last week we had two families, a week before we had two families. So during our invitation to the discipleship, we placed the text lineup if you desire to join, if you desire prayer, let us know. And it's been amazing, I'll be honest with you, I actually was a preacher last week. I actually cried when I saw people join online because this is what I had been telling folks from 2014. And again, I felt like no upbuilding the art and nobody was like, this day is never gonna come. And just to see that someone actually joined that church. So make sure you had a good contact and follow up system is very important. The last thing that you do have to be invitational. So you have to send out the evites. And you can do this through, if you create an event for your online worship, you got the opportunity to invite all your friends and all other people's friends as well to your fan page. And also encourage if you're doing live stream. If you're doing live stream, encourage people to share and do watch parties so that you can get your engagements up. Because it's not just being on social media. What I'm trying to get churches to realize that we have to dominate social media, meaning that it's just not enough for us to just be there. We have to make sure that we engage people and that we're not just there to talk about our church. Remember it's called quote unquote social media. So 80% of your posts, 80% of our posts are posts that are more inspiration than information. So if all you ever doing going on social just to say, hey, come join us for Bible study, come join us for our service, then you're not gonna get the engagement that you think you will because people want you to know that they actually care. I'll give you an example. This is what I posted this morning. This is every morning since the quarantine started, I post some type of self-care or some type of quarantine wellness check-in. And so I posted this and I said, hey, if anybody, let me know if anybody out there has gotten bingo. Now my wife let me know that this is not, you can't get bingo diagonally, so. But anyway, it's a way to get people engaged in early this morning. And the best time to post, I'm on Easter time, it was about eight o'clock in the morning. And so we're already getting a bunch of people who are sharing, hey, I got bingo. Or somebody's like, I got three out of the four. Another one of the, let me show another one of these things. You gotta show people that you really care about them at this particular time. So another popular thing is, let's see. So I do these quarantine checks every day as well. And I changed the color so you wanna mix it up. And so people will post hearts. So when we talk about eCare, right? So if somebody gets a yellow or below, I'm usually gonna send them a message via, and this is on Facebook. Let me just emphasize, this is on Facebook. So I'm gonna send them a wellness check. Hey, how are you doing? And get that back. Now, if I get anything from a black, then that's when a black or red, I'm usually gonna call them. And what I've realized or what I've been finding out is that there are people who are not members of Journey that have been reaching out. Like I had somebody that posted a black last week. And so here's a person that's not a member of Journey. And so I'll be honest. And I was talking to Pastor Ashwin. I was like, well, how far do we go with somebody and the person was sitting there who were depressed? So I was, you know, and I didn't have a number, but I tried to engage. So you need to have some type of policy when it comes to, when it comes to pastoral care online. But that's primarily how I do my pastoral care. Everyone, all our lay shepherds who have certain groups, certain people in their groups, we send out daily wellness checks. And we try to do as many as we can. We have over a thousand members. So it was really hard. I tried to do 20, 25 a day. That's about all the emotional bricks that I have in a day. So your personal self-care is really important. But you will get some of the most honest dialogue ever. Right now, people are being honest. They're not saying, hey, I was glad when they said to me, let's go in the house of the Lord. They're saying, look, Reverend, I'm struggling right now. So those... Can I interject one second? Could you share your screen one more time for that wellness check? We didn't quite see it. Okay, sorry about that. Okay, which one, the bingo or the... The wellness check. I guess you don't know which one it was because you couldn't see it, okay. We saw the bingo, I believe. Okay. And if you get to see the wellness check, I feel that... Okay, so let me get that up for you. Okay, here we go. So can you see it? Let me know if you can see it. It takes a little time to connect. So if you want to leave it up there and then just kind of... I'll slow it down a little bit. Oh, it's okay, no problem. Thank you so much. No problem. Let me know. Okay. We got it now. All right, so I change the color every day of the background color. And so did you hear me about how we do the hearts every somebody? Did you hear that part? How we do the hearts for everyone? Clearly, it was wonderful. We just couldn't see what you were referring to. Okay, so yeah, so when people drop the hearts, make sure that even if it's a green or blue heart, make sure that you engage them with a like that they were seeing because a part of pastoral care, a part of helping people, being present with people is having them to be seen. And so that's the social part, right? We're on social media. A lot of times people will post things back and the young man that posted the black heart, several of our members sent him encouraging messages and they do that with one another. If somebody is yellow or below, you'll see other people that also will reach out to those people who were presenting how they feel on that particular day. So it's important to ask people how they're feeling as opposed to how you're doing. And that comes from my background as a chaplain. I know that I would ask patients all the time, I would when I first started or how are you doing, I'd get pretty much a default answer. But when I said, how are you feeling or how are you managing today, I would get a different response. But this is a great opportunity for us to really engage folk and show them that we truly care. And just because we're not together does not mean that we can't still engage. So one of our hashtags is journey separated but together, church wherever you are. Of course, you've heard the popular one behind the four walls and those types of things are really, really, truly important. And also one last thing before I now finish up, I wanna be expecting everybody's time. There are several things that you can do additionally like we started a YouTube channel for our children's ministry where you can download an activity and a lesson. And so you can just prerecord those and start your children's YouTube channel and make it available on your website. And you can send a link out as well and allow. And so what we did was we use, pretty much all of our servant leaders have children. And so the children are actually reading the scripture and engage with the parents. So some of the kids get to see their leader and also one of their fellow members that's their age. And we also did an Instagram youth group where the youth are coming together as well. So this is the time that we could be really creative. A lot of times some of our best inventions come out of necessity. I know during the recession in 2009, I mean, yeah, 2009 we got Uber because people couldn't afford cabs and people couldn't afford hotels. So we got Airbnb. So this is the time for the church. And it's my prayer that as United Methodist Church that we could actually lead the charge in terms of e-hyphen evangelism and reaching out to people with this means of grace is what we call social meaning. If you notice that all the, and I'll share this with you guys that all the things that I said, they come together and they come together and you put all the words and they spell out and they spell grace. So I think that's really important that we are able to use this means of grace. That's awesome. Thank you so much. That's fantastic. And we'll let, well, I know we have some people that have some questions. So we'll come to those. One of them was in terms of the emotional check-in, one of the questions was does it go on your church page or on your personal page? Well, I do both, right? And the best thing to do is gonna depend on your team. And that was the last point that I actually, I just forgot to mention that create, you know, form a team. There are people that would love to have something to do. And of course they have to have the gift and grace to be able to provide pastoral care, but you need to definitely have people, enough people to facilitate. If you don't, I wouldn't share it beyond my church's page. Now, me personally, I shared on my personal page because, you know, I have people that, a team of people that will help facilitate that. Because here it is, here's an evangelism opportunity because I'm having comments of people like, wow, your church does this. Like, you know, I've never seen any church that really reaches out. You know, so if you got the staff and you got the volunteers, absolutely. So they see the share that I've shared from Journey Church's page. So whatever goes on my page, it actually still is connected to Journey. So it's connected to a church versus me doing it personally. Well, as a pastor, a lot of people know that I'm a pastor, but I'm saying that they also know that we're connected to Journey Church. Nice, nice. Before we move to Miranda, could you email me or upload your PowerPoint to the chat room? Or you can email it to me and I'll upload it either way. I'll do that, I'll do that. Because I pretty much did screenshots and I'll just upload them. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, I'll do that for you. Awesome, thanks man. Miranda, so you've been doing some experimenting with some online yoga and ways of sort of connecting with folks that way and getting their information, even shifting to where they register on a Google form so that you get their information so that you can follow up with them. So share a little bit about what that experience has been like, how are you connecting with new people? How is this opening up opportunities for you and how are you connecting those folks to the church and to discipleship? So I'm, thanks Matt. I'm gonna share, I'm just gonna put the link to the Google form because it's really simple in the chat so folks can just sort of almost copy and paste if they want. So I want to, so thank you Dr. Quik for all that you shared. Dr. Quik's definitely the expert when it comes to this. Much of what he shared, you guys would have to pay like $129 to take the online workshop and so I really appreciated a lot of those reminders and a lot of those new perspectives as it pertains to the church. I am possibly on the complete other end of the spectrum and so our plant was very much in person we were a brunch church, we were all about conversations at the tables, we didn't even livestream even though the other worship gatherings from our partner church did do all of the, do gatherings, share them on Facebook Live, share them on Instagram and those kinds of things. We promoted on social media but we did not engage with any of our worship activities or discussions or small groups, any of that online. It was very intimate, encouraging vulnerability and so I actually was very reluctant to do the yoga worship flow online, to bring it onto Facebook Live. I initially, so we started a yoga worship series during the length. So it started with Ash Wednesday and then as many of you know, two weeks later we began to hear encouragement to limit social interactions publicly. I'm health compromised, I have asthma and other underlying issues. I also, I house share with another single mom. We had two kids which they could be asymptomatic carriers. So I took that very seriously and two weeks after Lent started and went to doing this virtually. And so I initially been doing it, we co-work in our planting context. So Union coffee, the coffee shop is in Oakland and we're planting, intending to plant and open the new coffee shop in South Dallas. So I was in a co-working space in the intended neighborhood. And that was of course to create the third space, right? Rather than I'd be floating around to some coffee shops that were within two and a half miles, but you all know in an urban setting, a mile to two and a half miles is very different than your context. So I had found a co-working space in that area and began to do the Wednesday afternoon yoga worship series in our workout area. And it worked out really well. I was meeting lots of folks, folks that wanted to be able to take communion, folks that were building a business and hadn't really been in church for a while. And so we're really glad to be able to connect and then shift quickly. So initially I just wanted to do it on Zoom. And so initially I just changed all of the social media promotion to include a Zoom link. And but something just kept tugging on me to just somewhat actually a friend of mine who had been trying to push me to do yoga professionally. I had just sort of been doing it within communities and as a means of creating third space and connecting with new folks. So at their request at the last minute, I had my iPad on one side to do Zoom and I don't have Facebook on my iPad. And so then I had, I propped up my laptop in our house. We've got two moms, two kids, two guineas, two dogs and two bunnies. And so I propped up my laptop on the bunny cage and hoped that the bunnies didn't knock over the laptop and really engaged the people that were on Zoom and just sort of passively had it running on Facebook Live while I was doing it. And that created two things that turned out to be really important in creating this as a fresh space for connection and creating the opportunity for discipleship and meeting new people when we can't leave the house. And what that was is because I was passively doing Facebook Live and engaging the folks on Zoom, I had to go back into Facebook and see what was going on. I couldn't, you know, there were comments and people joining in. And so I engaged those people after the fact. So this would be the equivalent of like taking a connect card or asking, hey, so and so I saw you invited someone who was that, you know, can you introduce me to them if you didn't get a chance to touch them? And so I went back to the Facebook Live feed and sort of checked in on who had stayed, who had come in, who had come in and come back and who had left comments. And that coming back to the comments is a very important thing. Whether you use Facebook Live or Instagram or whatever social media or even in Zoom, a lot of times in time, it will be lovely one day when our plant is 12 years old and we have 1,000 folks and 100 servant leaders. But right now it's like three of us and all of us have kids at home. And so we don't always get to the comments. We don't have designated greeters per se. We have some cut and paste messages of hello, leave your comments. Here's how to connect with us later that we sort of cut and paste in time to come in at certain times or to come in afterward. And so going back to whatever live streaming feed on social media that you use, sometimes I do that later on that evening. If I don't have my kid, if my little one's with his dad that week, if I don't, if I have the kid, I usually can't get right back on and get to those comments because the kid's like, mom, I left you alone. Like he's literally hovering right outside the camera shot, if he didn't hop on me while I was doing yoga. And so I go and re-engage my family and then come back the next morning or sometime that night. I will say this as a caution. If it is just you or if it is a small team, one of the things that I have been careful to do is not to rush back if I can't. So if I have to tend to the kid right after we finish yoga worship, I don't then say, oh, I need to go after he goes to bed and at 10 o'clock at night, begin to respond to people. Because then it is a connection point. It is a community. You're setting a pattern. That boundary of going in at 10 o'clock at night and then expecting you to be on it 10 o'clock at night is not a healthy one, at least not for me. And so I just set my, I asked Siri or I asked Alexa. Alexa, remind me in the morning, at 8.30, remind me after breakfast. Sorry, Alexa thought I was talking to her. And so I will say as a caution, be mindful of your own patterns because that is the pattern just like in our, right, they know on Wednesdays if they come in in the afternoon that you're there sort of for open hours, right? They know on Fridays that you're, that you'll take a phone call if it's an emergency, but that's usually your off day, right? Set those same patterns. And so as Matt was saying, we're now in this reshaping and refining, you kind of know when you'll be on and when your kids are gonna think it's too much. And so pay attention to those patterns for creating engagement. As Dr. Quick said, it is actual engagement and connection. And so connected to that point, I learned something. I've met probably two new people a week, which is crazy because we're not leaving our house. And so I was doing probably about three or four one-to-ones a week and two of them being with brand new people. So people that were in the community that I was planting and to be now sheltered in place and still having a one-to-one each week with two new people is, I didn't expect it, not at all. When should I remind you? Sorry, Alexa, stop. She's still trying to get me to remind her. I'm not sure what went wrong. To remind her of something. And so what I realized is I was connecting by going back in the comments, but those of you, you may not have been planters in a while, but when it comes to like data, if you don't have a phone number or email address, it really kind of doesn't help you in the long run. And so I found that in connecting, I would have to go back into Messenger. I couldn't use some of my tools to schedule emails and connections that I was using. And so I would need to work at 10 o'clock at night, but I didn't want to be in my Messenger at 10 o'clock at night. And so how could I do that? So one of the people that I met, a person who runs a nonprofit in South Dallas who I hadn't had a chance to connect with, I'd heard of the nonprofit before, they do wonderful work. And he had been on a health journey and had been really interested in yoga, but kind of wondered how that went. You know, all the things that, all the myths and misunderstandings about what yoga is and all of that and how can it align. And so he had commented and said, thank you. He had initially been attracted because of the song flow, the worship flow that I had along with the yoga practice and then came back to it and had left a comment. So we had a one-to-one, I'd never met him before. And then he invited me to, you know, to his social media pages and to, through his social media pages and through his invitation, he invited me to sort of another virtual chat meetup. And then through that, so when I go to go to the virtual chat meetup, said it was gonna be via Zoom. And so I clicked the link thinking it's gonna put it in my calendar and it actually took me to a Google form. And so in the Google form was just information about the event. They just asked for some quick information about me. And then there was an auto reply because I know how Google forms work. There was an auto reply with the Zoom link in it that then came back to me. And I realized data capture. And so even with just myself or with a small staff or with trying something new, you wanna try to capture that data. And so to Dr. Quicks' point, it is an actual connection. You wanna make sure that you're connecting. So go back up and follow up in those comments even days later. So I might follow up once and then if it was something like, oh, I'm gonna try this. I'll try this tonight when the kids go to bed. I'll circle back a couple of days later and say, how did it go? And so it's a real connection. Make sure you're in the comments, following up with people even days later or hours later if you have to. Be sure that you're creating a pattern that's sustainable and healthy for you in doing that. Don't feel like the pressure of doing it right now in social media. And then the third thing that I will say is, make sure you're finding ways to capture that data. There's tons of tools and in Facebook but then also using that Google form, you can cut and paste like I sort of like I did with the link that I left in the comments. Awesome, thank you, Branda. Richie, tell us a little bit what's happened at St. Paul and particularly how you're engaging new folks through your virtual happy hour. Thank you. First of all, let me say I have to jump onto another Zoom at 11. So I don't know what time this is scheduled to end but appreciate the opportunity and I'll keep my remarks brief. First of all, I just wanna give some context about St. Paul, church will be 150 years old in three years, rich, long legacy and also I'll give some further context. I have been trying to get our team for four years to move us online. I mean, I literally say, hey, guys, we need to do my worship experience online. Not necessarily if we could do that by streaming live or at least recording and just putting it up and never got any, we couldn't get any traction for whatever reason and then the coronavirus happens and on a Thursday is clear that we're not gonna have worship on that Sunday and somehow we activate it. And so I think within all of our churches, when we're called to step up, we definitely can do that and our team is risen to the task at hand. And so I will also say that one of the things I think is critical is around communications. That is also to, and I'm just putting our business all out in the streets, but one of our challenges has been communications. And so we figured out how to ramp up and do a better job of communicating because I think we took for granted people showing up on Sunday and we could be sort of lazy around communications. You have to be intentional now with communication so we are focused on over, right now we've been over communicating and now we're moving into what I call a rhythm of communications. And so hitting a regular routine of getting information out to our people and to those who are connected with us. And I am not the most, I know social media but I'm not really, have not been fully engaged with social media. So I've actually, and I think those of us who have to learn, they say, can you teach an old dog new tricks? Well, I think we gotta learn some new tricks. And I'm an entrepreneur, so this is not a time where I'm fearful, definitely excited. I told our church that we're either gonna be challenged by this opportunity or defeated by the problem. And so I think we're calling people to be challenged to rise up and seek out new ways to do things. But what I wanted to say around adding on to that notion of communications, realizing that we're now online and we're completely social, we're an online congregation and with that reality, wanting to make sure that we recognize how we reach new faces in that regard. And one of the things we know that there is a lot of worship surfing taking place. And so what we've decided to do is how do we make sure that we get people coming back and engaging in our worship and then from there, digging and creating further connections with those individuals. And we now know that, and I think many churches probably have had an uptick in people, especially if you're online, an uptick in people. We have more people watching us online than we did who came to church. And so the reality is in this year at St. Paul, our theme is a next level time. And I'm now about to couch that this is what I call our next level normal. Don't know what that looks like, but we're moving into a next level normal for our church and we're not going back. Even if we had an option to go back, we're not going back. And I'm so grateful God has made it clear. You're not gonna be able to do ministry the way you have done it in the past. And so with this notion of worship surfing, how do we retain people to get them to come back to experience our worship? And one of the things I will say to us is I think we gotta think of worship different than we've done it. So for example, our worship experience used to be about an hour and a half. Our worship experience online is around 40 minutes. And so I grew up black Baptist, I'm now Methodist, but I'm still African-American. And we like to, you know, worship long and strong. But I think recognizing that people, you need to think of your worship experience. If they're surfing, then that means just like when you surf on the TV, you tune in and you tune out. And so you wanna make sure that you're really focused on the meat of the matter. And so, you know, we're focused, we think of our true worship like we would a Siacom show. I mean, most of us are, when we think of TV or viewing something, it is really compartmentalized like you would be watching a Siacom. And so providing that substance in that setting. So just wanted to provide that. One other thing we've introduced, and that is we've created what we call a virtual happy hour. And so it's a chat with the pastor. And so we invite people to sign up. We have guests as well as members of our church who are suicide up and we do it through Zoom. And so we spend, it's set for 30 minutes. And first thing I ask is, what are you drinking? And people are typically honest. They'll show, you know, raise their glass, their wine, or, and one member said on this, and we do it every Tuesday and Thursday from six to seven. And you know, one member said, we stay on any longer path, so I'm gonna get drunk. And that's not in the Holy Spirit. So I said, well, we better tune off. But we've used that as a way of connecting with our people because I think also new faces, but we've got to figure out, especially for church in our context, a number of our members were not engaged online. So we've got to bring them along and make sure that we retain and transition and retain what we have as well. And so that's an important point I think you just want to recognize. And the last thing I will say is, you know, we are still doing ministry. We're just doing it virtually, whether that is the Bible studies or at St. Paul, we are engaged in a lot of social justice work, which you may be aware of, I mean, we're on race relations and specifically as it relates to like the coronavirus, as many of you know, it is impacting the African community in a disproportionate way. And so we have taken a proactive position in effort. And so a lot of that is being led online in terms of campaigning and efforts and to make sure that people know that our church is out leading. And that is also drawing people to our church. I was actually did an interview with a reporter who now is, you know, attending our worship experience virtually because we met through our effort around this coronavirus issued as specifically impact in African-American community. And the last thing I'll say a couple of just other neat ideas that we're rolling out, we're going to do a virtual house party next week. And so we will, we have a DJ setup and we'll do line dancing and a host of other, you know, things for people. And we will market that through our social media. And the other thing I'll say is you have your social media, but you need to identify what I call social media ambassadors who from your church have, who are influencers who have following and to get them to get the word out about what you're doing and the ministerial opportunities that exist within your congregation because they will drive, they can drive a lot of people to you and you'd be surprised who at your church, you know, have thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who may be following them through social media. And I'll leave it there. Thank you so much. That's awesome. Every time you share, I just love it, Richie. Jonathan, you guys have been doing some awesome stuff with your Sunday morning experience and some of your small groups. Talk to us a little bit about how you're sort of connecting with new people and trying to engage them in discipleship and with the church. Absolutely. Thanks, Matt. And thank you, Dr. Quick and Dr. Furman and Reverend Butler. And thank you to all of you. I've learned a lot already and that's been the story of this whole process. I'm so grateful to be part of this shared learning community inspired by you and supported by you. And so I just wanted to share a couple of the things that really I've learned from all of us as we've been gathering together and some of the things that we've been trying to put into place and grow into at open. Some of these things are as much as one week old and so they're very tried and true and tested. We're all kind of flying, you know, building the airplane as we go, as they say. And none of us have done this before. We are all figuring this out and just want to say, like, y'all are doing great. And the facts that we are here shows that we've already glensed that even in this time, God is working in and through and with our communities for good. And we want to be a part of that. And so this is a challenging time, but like every challenge, there's a chance to kind of rise to it in love and at times being a community of support and solidarity and compassion and connection and faith and hope and love. And so what we're talking about today is really how to do that and to invite new people into that process. So much of what we talk about today is about technology. And so I appreciate everyone who's mentioned that for some folks because of access, because of technological barriers, it's hard for them to connect and so remember them and look for ways outside of perhaps this conversation to stay in connection, to stay into ministry with them. But at the same time, this offers a chance for new people to connect and for our people to connect in new ways. And one of the things that we've seen is that it really, in some ways, levels the playing field between those who typically are able or have that emotional ability to come to church and those for whom coming into a church space is a difficult journey. And so in this time, church is accessible and safe in a new way, but it's also needed in a deep way. And so now is a real chance to be the church in our communities in a wider way. And because of the questions that folks are asking right now to be the church in a deeper way too. And so new faces are definitely coming to your spaces right now looking for those things that God has called each of us to be and they're looking for the church. And so it's our opportunity to be it. For that task, we need all of us in that. And so I love the social media ambassadors and the way that we're talking about kind of spreading this out. This is an incredible time to spread out the leadership, the voice, the evangelism that's happening and the connection in the ministry and equipping your people to do that. Because when we talk about reaching new people, so much of it is just organic. It happens through all of us, through folks inviting their folks. There's ways to do it that you've heard about on Facebook of watch parties, inviting friends, sharing the service before or during or after the service. There's some cool ways if you're gonna be going live on Facebook to schedule that post about an hour ahead of time so that people on before, whenever your community meets for a gathering that they can begin spreading the word and inviting their people to come join them in this time. And what we're seeing is that the people are seeking that. And so if you make it meaningful and authentic, if you make it something that helps people connect with God in this time, they're going to share this with people. And in particular, if you encourage them and help them see how important that is. It's also a chance when we're online to include the community of your church in new and powerful and important ways. Because we're doing a lot of this on video, you can connect people into the worship experience and invite them to share their videos and to make them a part. And it's really important, I feel like we need to see each other in these ways. And so we've been going, trying to think every week of what's something that we can do where we can ask people to submit videos. And so just on Easter, it was just to get people to say happy Easter or Christ's risen as individuals or as friends or family groups and then sharing those videos throughout the worship. And it's just so encouraging to see each other and in this time in which so much is so heavy and so real for us to see smiling faces even in the midst of this storm. And so looking for opportunities to do that can be really important in that too. Some of the things that we've done outside of the worship experience is also just afterwards cutting out some of the clips of neat things that happened and sharing those individually. And that lets people, we had a Palm Sunday kind of virtual parade, we had a virtual choir songs from the band that were particularly meaningful, some written out of our community or prayers or spoken word offerings. You're cutting those pieces out and allowing people to share something to them during the worship experience kind of helps it live on and continue to minister to people as time goes on. One of the cool things about this time too has been the opportunity to reconnect with people. A lot of folks may have been busy for a season or they might have been some of the slip in the back folks. Sometimes those are healthcare workers that are the slip in the back folks. They can't make it every week because of their schedules or they come in late and tired. It's precious time with their people and with their families. And so it's a real chance to connect on a more personal level with people that you might not have been able to. And so I just wanna encourage you to check in with your people to reach out in a personal kind of way. And in particular, just try to track down as many healthcare workers or people serving in some of those fields as possible using the community's collective knowledge. And who do you know and making sure that we stay in connection and support and praying for each other in this time. We've tried to, in addition to worship stuff, we've tried to offer things during the week that could be helpful for people. In addition to discipleship opportunities and Bible study type things, we've offered a self-care panel discussion via Zoom. We have each week what we call lunchtime lectures that are just people from our community that are interested in something or know something about something that offer a lecture to the community. We've had online art shows where we've invited people to submit what they're creating in the midst of this season. Doing other things like celebrating local businesses and nonprofits who are doing important work as well. But I think most of all, one of the things that we can use social media for as well is to help people connect with opportunities to serve. In this time, people are looking for ways to be together and to be for each other in this time. And so finding those things that are easy and available and accessible and connecting people with projects either that your community is working on or things that are happening in your city, you can really be an avenue for people to know about those things and connect. And so we've made just a real easy webpage at OpenDTX.com slash serve. And so if you're interested in doing something, it's just kind of a list of some opportunities and put a check box on one and we'll help you connect with a group that's doing that. And just as folks see it, a church that's really trying to be, even in the midst of the limitations and what we can do, still trying to be connected with their community and serve can be really inspiring, but it also leads to other opportunities. We just, we're invited by the hospital to come and invite our people to come talk the sidewalks outside of the hospital and in their healing garden where a lot of families come to wave to their loved ones that are in the hospital right now. And it's because our people have been showing up and trying to be the church in the midst of this time. We're also offering, continuing to offer small groups as place to connect. Those are real meaningful and particularly those that are, that are invitational that we can point people to when we meet new people as well. And I'll talk a little bit more about some of those in the midst of this, but you know, some of those, like we have a mom's group that's been just a very invitational community of people who are who gather together and invite new people and it's a great place to point people for connection and support and resource when you meet new people, having places that they can go to connect deeper is important. And so on Sunday morning, one of the things that in our, you know, our worship time, we're inviting folks, you know, like a lot of you are to say hello. We have a greeting time where they greet each other, let us know you're here, you know, let us know if this is your first time as a question that sometimes people respond to. And the cool thing is, as Brenda and others have mentioned, is that that info then is there in the comments afterwards that you can go back and stay connected with folks. You can reply to their comments, you can send a message to them. If you're, you know, if you're not friends, you need to let them know to look for it because it might show up in a different place and messages, but you can follow up directly with people. And it's just like regular Sunday on church, it's very important that you talk to your folks about making sure that you're being friendly, not just to each other, but to everyone who comes in that way. And so that's a great opportunity. We have a lot of interaction that's happening on Sunday mornings. We try to style what we talk about in worship to invite people. We ask questions that we want people to respond to, invite comments, of course, have opportunities to have community prayer stuff as well and just interact with folks. And I'll tell you on Easter, when I asked people to share ways that they've seen Christ alive in our world and this time, it was the most encouraging thing. It was this nonstop flow of responses for folks that really just flooded the comments. It was incredible. And so be watching as you're able on social media to see friends or members. It'll say, this person is watching with you, many people you haven't in a long time. And so just reach out and say, hey, just wanted to check on you. Saw you on Sunday. We also have a separate sign in page that we invite people to go to that is, you have to go there specifically outside of Facebook, but it's our sign in page. And that is where people can submit email and phone number and stuff, as well as helps us get an idea of who's watching too. And then that connects them or regular communication. They also, particularly if it's a new person, get an email from me at that point. If they leave a phone number, they'll be reached out to you by either me or someone on our team as well too. And so those opportunities are great to just kind of capture that thing. One of the important things that we've empowered the community to do is just having hosts for our live stream, people who see kind of as their opportunity to serve to be a host in the live thing. And so if we're open right now, we're all doing it from our homes. And so we're able to be present in the live stream a little bit more than you might be if you're sitting in a sanctuary, but you can still do that too. And so, but you might wanna ask someone who's really gifted for that kind of hospitality outside of the regular Sunday morning flow to be a part of that. And Crystal Stroud, who's our worship and community leader at Open and Director of Communications for the larger church, wrote some best practices for kind of that hosting and interaction on social media, put together a paper for that. And so I wanna share that with you. I'm gonna put a Dropbox link in the chat that she's put together. It's been taken and made beautiful by our friends at Art Communication too. And so you can see that sheet and it might be something helpful to share with your folks. One of the things that you'll see on that sheet as well is that Art Communication is offering a online secret shopper as kind of a way of serving the churches in this time. And so if you're interested in having someone kind of take a look, surf your church's service and give you some ideas and some strategies about how to do it. You can connect with them and they'll offer that as well. We've been trying to do some ways of connecting and also like we've had what we call a Zoom after party to approximate that four year or that Narthex is the Methodist word experience of hanging out before and after the service. And so we'll just invite people to hop on Zoom afterwards and had great turnout of people just wanting to see each other's faces and say hello. And so that's been a cool way to stay connected in this time too. We do the follow-up stuff just like just like Dr. Quick was saying, like these are real connections. And so do the follow-up stuff just like we would do on a regular week, connecting with those first-time folks, making contact in whatever communication avenue you can find to connect with them. Right now, people are appreciating phone calls like they never have before just to get a chance to talk to each other and all that. And so if they leave a phone number, give them a call and say hello and check in and see how folks are doing. And then having these ongoing discipleship groups, one of the things that we saw right from the beginning is how important this was gonna be. And so just reached out to our small group leaders and tried to empower them to keep going. We got a couple of Zoom accounts on the pro level which cost some money, but it's certainly an important investment in this time if you're able to do that and made sure that they were equipped to continue meeting. And that's been really important because and also equipped to welcome new people because as we meet people pointing them in those directions of specific groups that we feel like they could connect with. Not everybody can pull off extra Zoom stuff right now but some folks can. And so we have this mix of things that we're posting on Facebook as well as opportunities to connect in Zoom. Discipleship stuff, community stuff, outward facing practical things like I mentioned. We have a pub theology night, some Q&A night, some practical seminars. We have daily devotions that are going out. Those outward facing lunchtime lectures. Then we also just have fun stuff. We have a game night that we invite folks to where we play some games together over Zoom and scavenger hunts, just kind of ways to just smile together which is important in this time too. One of the groups that has been important is we have a group called GLO which is a LGBTQIA led community within the larger open community. And that's been important both in a meeting kind of way and in just relational kind of way because you're young adults and your college kids that are a part of your community are sometimes they're back home. They're not always in the places where they've been able to live into your church communities and into your spot. And they're looking for connection. But there's also some who can't right now. Their parents are choosing where they go to church on Sunday morning and all of that. And so it's a very vulnerable thing to even with the door closed to participate in your church or in something like that. And so just think through the people that you're seeing and that you're connecting with and think of those that you're not and do your best to reach out to those in particular that you're not seeing right now. And making sure that they know that you're thinking about them, you're praying for them, you're here for them in this time too. And so just remember all of those different kind of constituents and folks that are in our larger community. The connection point is so incredibly important right now. And it's a chance for us to be the church in a brand new way. And so when you do this kind of work outside of connecting and really the pasturing work in the midst of the week, it can make Sunday feel like this celebration, like this homecoming for us to all bring our honest authentic lives right now and find this tenacious hope that we find in God and in each other that is growing our faith that's shaping our lives and is helping us make it through this and be the church together in the midst of this time. It's kind of the basic stuff, but I'm happy to engage with whatever questions you all have as well when we get to the community. Thanks. Cool, cool. Yeah, I appreciate all of our presenters. I just want to hand it over to Liliana quick if you want to kind of take us through our grant application and the new faces in digital spaces grant opportunity for people in North Texas. Oh, you're on mute. You're muted. I'm that person, right? The person that's always muted. Hi everybody, are you guys still awake? Don't fall asleep please, okay? We're in the end. Thank you guys for continuing to be with us. I'm gonna run through with you guys really quickly. I want to share with you one, the purpose of the grant, the purpose of why as the center we thought it would be a good idea to give a grant out, who can apply for the grants and walk you through the application process, okay? So some of you may be asking, who is this grant for? You know, can I apply for it? What is it? So yes, the grant is for any church in the North Texas conference, small, medium, any size church, okay? Any size church can apply for this grant and the purpose of this grant is our center really wanted to help offset the expenses that you guys have been having and during this time to be able to launch and enhance your online spaces. So we understand that right now, they're living in really difficult times. So we're trying, that's the purpose. We're trying to help you guys offset the cost of some of those expenses. Our desire really, like Dr. Quick said, our desire is that if you haven't already done so, the purpose of this grant is really for you to connect with the new people that are visiting your online spaces. Now, I understand that this is gonna, this grant or what we're gonna provide you will help you enhance your capabilities or your internet or whatever it may be to be able to also give a better product to your members but our desire, our true desire is that you use this as well to be able to connect with new persons that are visiting your online spaces and to find ways, new ways, innovative ways to disciple them. So not just do that, okay? So those are a quick thing. I'm gonna share my screen with you really quickly and walk you through the application process. So if you look right here on the NTC website, can everybody see my screen? Just say a little thumbs up if y'all can see my screen. Okay, good, great. Alrighty, so here on the NTC website, gonna go on here, and you're going to see on the top, kind of on the right-hand side, NTC centers. And we are the Center for Church Development, the center that beats all centers, most amazing center. I'm a little biased, but yes, we are here at the very, the first option. So again, you're gonna go to the website, NTC centers, you're gonna scroll down Church Development. You're gonna go there and you're gonna see kind of our intro information here. On the right-hand side, you're gonna see new faces online grants, okay? So you're gonna go there. Okay, I'm gonna explain again. NTC website, NTC centers, Church Development. Once you click Church Development, you're gonna go here and you're gonna see here on the top, on the tab on the right, you're going to see new faces grant. So you're gonna click that. And here is the application. You can read the information that we wrote on there, kind of gives you a detailed information of what we want and how we want to share this grant with you and kind of the focus of this grant. Now, you can fill out, it's pretty simple. It's about five questions. And obviously here's a tab, excuse me, where you can fill out all of the information. Please don't leave anything blank. Fill everything out as you can. And this link will go directly to me. So I will be, and including my team, we will all be together looking at the applications that have come in and we will be able to give you a response soon. So I have a couple of questions for you that I had thought about. So you're probably asking yourself, what is the turnaround time? You know, when am I gonna get my check, Liliana, right? Everybody wants their check. The turnaround time is about, I'm gonna, my hope and my desire is two weeks maximum. Our hope is that we wanna get you this money quick because we understand that right now, you guys have a lot of costs with trying to get this up and going or just costing in general. So we wanna make sure that we get this. Another thing is that it's a $500 maximum. So usually our New Faces, New Spaces grant is $1,000. We lowered it so we can be able to expand to more of our churches. So we're hoping to really help out as many churches as possible. So turnaround time is about two weeks. From the moment you send in your application to the moment that you get your check in the mail. One of the things that I do wanna share with you again is our center, the conference office is closed and most of you know this. The ladies are going once a week just to cut checks and usually checks get cut on Thursday. So that kind of pushes our dates a little bit but if, for example, if you fill in your application on Friday and I look at it, just know that it's gonna take some time because they don't cut the checks until Thursday. So that's just kind of a little tidbit for you as well. Another question that I thought about is, can we get reimbursement for funds that we have already spent? Yes, so we will send you the check and you will utilize the funds as you see fit. Don't send me your receipt saying, hey, I spent this, you know, a month ago. Just fill the application out, let us know. If it's for reimbursement, you can let us know there and we will send you the check and then you will utilize your funds as you see fit, okay? Another question that I thought is restrictions. Are there any restrictions to this application? One grant per church. So we are going to try and get, again, as many church houses as possible. So we wanna make sure that we get as many church houses, just one application per church and you're probably asking, oh, well, I've already applied for a new faces, new spaces grant. Can I get another one? Yes, and we will see. Yes, our hope is that we can definitely help you if you have already received a new faces, new spaces grant. It just, it may vary. We will have to kind of look at that and see how many people we're getting in, okay? So I believe also, so I'm available to you guys again. I've told you this before. I'm gonna go back on my screen here. We're gonna go to our staff director here and you're gonna see our wonderful, beautiful faces right here. So here is my phone number. You can call me anytime that phone is currently linked to my cell phone. So you can call me if I don't answer, please leave a message and feel free to contact me if you have questions or you have any doubts about this application. But our hope is that you really, really apply for it. Our hope is that we will help you during this time and be able to utilize the funds that we have that we had originally allocated to help you during this time. So I'm also gonna leave in my email address right there for you guys. If you need to contact me, please feel free to contact me. All right, let me look at the chat here for a second. Are there any questions about the application process or anything, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen so I can look. Are there any questions for me in particular about the grant application or in general? I know, Matt, we had a couple of questions for our presenter but since I'm on here, are there any other questions as far as application it goes? Going in, applying for your grant. Good, are we good? Liliana, I put it in the chat. I don't know if it's showing up yet but for this case, our planting churches and their partner churches consider different churches or does one negate the other? They're going to be different. So if you're, if you have a partner church, you guys, we understand that it's kind of separate because you still do your separate ministries. So we understand that the need is probably very different. So yes, you will be separate. Any other questions as far as grant application goes? Please share this with any churches that you feel also may be in need of applying. Again, we are hopeful in our desire. I'm sorry, go ahead. Mary has, Mary Merchie has a, can you unmute her? She's trying to talk but she's muted. Mary Merchie. There you go, go ahead, Mary. Yeah, I wanted to ask Liliana if my need is bigger than $500, how do you deal with that issue? So currently, thank you. That's a great question, Mary. Yes, we understand that some of your needs may be a little bit above $500, but currently that is what we are willing, we are able to offer based on the funds that we allocated currently. It, you know, maybe that we can have a conversation about it, but to be able to help as many churches as possible because we really want you to go in, apply and get accepted and for us to go ahead and send you the funds. So it may be something that we can talk about, but for right now, the 500 is the top tier of the grants. Thank you. Liliana, there was another question from Kyle asking about just in addition to financial needs that just the needs for technical consultation to plan and choose what new equipment. And I would just say, Kyle, if you wanna email me or Liliana or really anyone in our center, we will do our networking to connect you with the people that can find the answers for you and give you that consulting. So we're happy to partner with you all and just sort of the intellectual capital as well. Yeah, I did see that one of our pastors as well asked for, you know, saying, well, I know some of the technology, but not very much. So we're figuring out that there is a need. So we will be able to, thinking of for me, maybe a little group of people that are really tech savvy that can really get one-on-one with you and try and give you some of that coaching that you may need. So I have that on my notes currently and we will try and see how best we can support our churches that may not be as technologically savvy as possible. And in that's the case, please email me, say, hey, Liliana, I'm one of those churches that really needs help. And don't be ashamed, you know, everybody knows about technology. And let me know and we will get you connected as well as be able, write it in your grants. If you feel like that's something that you need, we can definitely support you. If you don't let me know what your needs are, then it's tough for me to kind of understand and kind of figure out what we're gonna do as a center. And okay, I wanna respond to that also. Kyle, we have one of our district superintendents that has hired a person that has made access to us just for that particular need. So let us know and we can connect you also to that person that would be willing and that's just for anybody that can help you get started with that. Awesome, I know there was a couple of questions and I saw some conversation happening in the chat room around how to engage folks who are more age-experienced, also known as elderly, in terms of their digital ability or savvy and how to connect with that particular demographic. So I just wanna throw that question out there. Any of our presenters or any of you all that have feel like you've done some important work and good work in engaging people in your congregation who may be older and not know their way around the technology as well. How are you doing follow-up there in pastoral care? I'll just say it briefly because I put it in the comments but we're actually mailing things. So we don't have as many older members but we do have a lot of older partners and donors that support the ministry. So there's lots of art being made by the kids with our younger families at home and we don't have a place for all that art. So we started mailing those along with thank you notes and then we make little videos. The little kids like to put them in the mailbox and put the flag up. We make little videos. It's just me and like one other person so we can only do a few a week but we send out the videos and post them online and folks kind of like to see who's gonna get the mail this week and they know it'll come around. So no one's really been hurt that it wasn't in this week but so that's been a way that we've been using sort of the asynchronous. Everyone isn't gonna engage the online or the social media or the video at the same time as a way to stay connected. Yeah, mailing is awesome. We're also doing phone calling. We made a list of everyone who began making a list of everyone who doesn't have an email address as a way of identifying some of those who might be isolated from technology in this time and then beyond that expanded that to some of our more isolated folks in care facilities and just partnered everyone up with some people in our church who volunteered to make phone calls. And so once a week we've got a team of about 40 folks who are calling 200 people and making connections that way. And we've given them kind of a script but they've taken it and run with it into friendship at this point. And so there may be, you can help people, you can guide them through some basics of how to use Zoom or how to connect on Facebook but there's other ways to stay connected and those are valuable and important in this time too. And also there's a calling feature on Zoom that they can dial in to Zoom calls. They can't see it, but they can hear it. And you can also connect the Zoom with Facebook live stream so they can still hear the service if they can't see it. It's very, well, let me not say it's very simple because that will mean that I'm not taking it seriously to everybody else but there's instructions of how to do it and how to marry those two together and allow the older congregants to be able to be involved. And like they said, phone calls work. The first thing I did was take a list of all our 65 and older people. Those are the first people I called doing the quarantine. Okay, I'm one of those 65 or olders and one of the things that I'm concerned about I'm pretty tech savvy, but as we get older, we don't have the ability to multitask and look at so many different things at once. So when we have our Zoom group chat over to the right and then I'm looking at who's talking and then I'm looking at other people in the group it becomes very confusing. We have used Zoom with our 65 and older group here where we're living with a men's group and that works really well for those that are tech savvy. We had a couple that just got so frustrated between inoperative hearing devices and going between a phone and a pad and so forth so on that they have basically fallen out of the group. And so I think it's something that we need to be mindful that even though the normal is definitely being changed we need to be careful of the people that are gonna fall through the cracks because of the technology and a lot of those folks are the ones who support the majority of our churches that they're big givers. And so it's real important to be proactive to teach them not to technology but to teach them the rationale behind it and how it's becoming ministry and it's not just spending money, so to speak. Jack, I like that point it's something that I hadn't brought up before. So I know budgets are tight but one of the things that I sort of said right off the bat to our partner church, to our executive director is that I still needed, I didn't, even though I didn't expect to have one-to-ones per se, that I still needed my budget for that, my coffee budget. And so I've been sending through email gift cards for coffee for them to order something on coffee. My seminary actually also did this for us. We would normally be gathering. They send us like a $10 Grubhub gift certificate because we would be sitting. And then I send a note and say I'd love to sit down and chat with you while you have a, right? And so they get that. And in doing that, in connecting and bridging it gives the opportunity to sort of bring down that stress from the frustration and just check in on them and sort of bake in some of the reasoning behind why we're doing what we're doing. That is a great idea, Mariana. I'm thankful for what you're doing there. One other thing that I wanted to say is is that what has always been for me anyway in helping people to connect online like we're doing now is I've had my older folks somehow work it out with people in the church or with relatives that they have this iPad or they have their computer and they work with that individual for them to see their grandkids live. Once your older folks see their grandkids and their great grandkids live, they are sold on the technology as far as I'm concerned. That's been my experience. Hey, Jack, you make a great point and I appreciate the things that you were able to lift up. I think that as a part of our pastoral care for our older members is this change is real grief. It is a transition, it's real grief. Honor that grief, honor that pain, honor that transition, be patient with them and understand that their perspectives are different than some of ours. Like my mother was 70, my mother-in-law was 72 and they were rejecting getting on social media, as you said, until they realized that if you wanna see your grandkids, their own social media, we don't post anymore. We don't send, I mean, we post, we don't send pictures. And so after both, and both of my mom and her mother and my mother-in-law lost their spouses and that was our way of connecting with them when they were going through the stage group depression. And now they're, as it took them a while, now they post, like I tell my mom, don't say anything about me when we're live streaming. She'll just say, hey son. So I'm always like, mom, don't send stuff, they go live, but in order, we have to be patient with them and just kind of guide them on. And I think that's the same way with our members. Ageism is real, especially in this COVID-19 climate that we're in, I've seen so many people, older folk, that have posted how they're feeling. So let's make sure we honor them and have as much patience as we can. So thank you for lifting that up. So we have a lot of people that are older, that don't have computers. I have a 100 year old aunt who for 15 years we tried to get on it in no way. So for people like that and anybody who is on my guest list right now, I make sure that if they're that age or older, and not older than 100, but if they're like in their mid-70s on app, and they don't have, they don't do Facebook, they don't do online anything. They barely, they won't even watch the church service on the website. We're dropping off CD players if they don't have that and we're going old school and copying it. And we have been for years copying the sermon and stuff the service on CDs and we mail them to them. And now we're adding to that list of the people who can't. I know it's old school, but that's what they are. So. No, that's meeting people where they are. I think, what was I got? Jesus did that, absolutely. Yeah, that's great, absolutely. The thing that I did wanna share with you guys on the website, there is a zoom that we did a couple of weeks back about technology and Zach at Howell shared with us a device that he also sent his people that are not that tech and it's a small device. I don't know how to explain it, but it's a tiny device. All you gotta do is press play and they load it where they put their sermons on there and they would deliver them and then back and forth. So if you go on that on our website where the COVID-19 link is, you look for it and the devices there, we actually went in, we gave you links and everything to be able to, if you need to, and again, you can use the grant money to buy those devices and be able to connect with those that are in need that maybe are not that technologically savvy as well. Wanted to let you guys know, there's a lot of stuff in that particular webinar about technology. Yeah, one friend that I have, if you're thinking about ways to do outreach, one friend that I have has, they've adopted a retirement community home and basically asked the home to let them know whenever there's a birthday and one of the people on the team will go and stand outside the window. So they're outside of the window where the person lives with balloons and will sing happy birthday to them and just sort of have a conversation. So just finding ways to just be that presence of grace and that presence of love for people in this time that feel isolated and lonely. I think we can get creative and there's just so many opportunities for a gospel people to make an impact. So. We've also worked with the chaplain at some of the facilities and the social coordinator to make FaceTime calls on their phone to talk to some of the people at the care facilities too. And so the chaplain will go around to rings and use their phone to do FaceTime. That's amazing. Well, I wanna honor everyone's time but is there any other questions that are pressing out there that you feel like that this week won't be complete if you don't ask it? Yeah, Matt, doing this quarantine, how do you keep your beard so neat, man? I'm struggling here. I hear all these people complaining about not being able to get a haircut. I don't even know what they're talking about. I'm headed your way, brother. I'm headed that way because I'm struggling here, like, you know, I have no say in my game at all. That's awesome. Well, hey, Grace in peace to you all. It is truly our privilege and honor to serve you. You all are on the front lines doing the real work of ministry and we so appreciate the work that you do. And if there's anything, any way you think we might be able to help support, please reach out, we want to, we're here for you. And it's always a joy. So have a great rest of your Thursday. All right, take care. Blessings. Hey, you all be blessed. Bye. All right. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Bye.