 I'm going to just throw myself on everyone's mercy right up front. My office computer died first thing this morning, and so I'm in a backup situation. So if there are any difficulties, I apologize in advance, but you know, we just do our best. So my name is Jessica Wright. I'm associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Allen. I'm also a trained and certified facilitator with the Good Neighbor experiment. I completed that training with the neighboring movement last fall. Thanks, Jessica. And I'm Paige Christian. I'm an associate pastor at Christ United in Plano, currently serving as the pastor of off-campus ministries. And this initiative we're talking about today is part of that role. And so I'm just excited to share it with you and partner with Jessica. Let me open us in prayer and then we will begin. Let's pray. Loving and gracious God, we come to you today. Thankful. Thankful for all that you were doing in ministry. Alongside us, we are grateful that you lead the way and have really led us to this point of not only launching something that is meaningful and will make a difference in our communities for the rest of our lives, but also for the rest of our lives. And I'm so excited to be part of that first Allen and Christ United that we, Jessica and I are just so excited to share this with the other churches in our conference. And I just pray that you will speak in and through us so that we can help them to see what you have been doing in our midst. We pray that you will move in their communities as well. Make a difference, make a difference in our Metroplex in our conference. We pray that you will be with those who couldn't be with us and we just are thankful for this technology that we have that we can come together, even though we can't be together in person so we know that we'll be able to share this beyond just this hour. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for giving us the energy to be your hands and feet. We pray these things in your son's holy and precious name. Amen. Before we start, if you have any questions, there is a Q&A section and there's a raise your hand to also. We can ask questions and we can relay them or you can raise your hand and I'll open the mic and be able to ask questions directly. So don't don't keep any questions that you have. Just feel free to. Okay. Thank you. Thanks Jessica and feel free to interrupt me because I like most of you only see the shared screen and so I may not see a raised hand or a chat but Jessica Vargas is watching out for that as well as feel free to interrupt. So I wanted to get started. As Jessica I'm going to say Jessica Vargas because we always also have Jessica right. We Jessica right and I came together and presented for spark tank which is was a grant opportunity where we could receive grant dollars for making new faces and new spaces you may have heard of that initiative that the conference has going on and so we Jessica and I got together we felt like we had the same ideas and thoughts and passions around our neighbors and creating community and so we came together and presented spark tank and received a grant and now we want to spread. What we have learned and what we're doing in our respective churches with the rest of the conference so we're glad you're here. We are calling this initiative north Texas neighbors and hoping that as a conference we will gather together but also we have an opportunity for those logos this logo here to be used in your respective local church and I'll show an example of that here in a few minutes. So as we dive in. I don't know if I can get it to let me go to just wanting to dance. Right so I'm going to do it in this mode. I've had a few glitches with my PowerPoint this morning. Okay. And you guys see that. Yes we see the slides on one side and a primary slide in the middle. Okay, so there we go. Okay. And so, as we look at this initiative, we have two phases we have phase one which is equipping our churches to go out and connect with the community. As they're connecting within their own neighborhoods they are creating that community, and then we move into phase two as those relationships are built in community is formed in those respective neighborhoods. We move into a discipleship phase phase two. And so, Jessica talked about phase one the equipping phase and she's going to give you a high level overview of that here in a minute and then I'll move into phase two which is the discipleship phase and give you an example of what we've been doing at Christ United. So phase one again is where we are connecting with our neighbors and creating community. And with that, I will ask Rebecca to, I mean, Rebecca asked Jessica to tell us a little bit about the last webinar and what is happening around the good neighbor experiment. That sounds great. I have some visuals. If I could share those with the share so you can do that. Right. And so everyone, if you can forgive me, the computer I'm using doesn't have Adobe and it doesn't have PowerPoint, but it has a web browser. So here it is in this format. So the tool that we're using for equipping our churches is called the good neighbor experiment. It's something that comes out of the neighboring movement. And yes, this is going to be really quick fly through. There's so much more information. We did a whole hour long webinar just about this piece. But the purpose is to move the culture within ourselves and within our churches from program to relationship from scarcity to abundance and from inauthenticity to joy. Adam Barlow Thomas has a great story. He tells about the annual turkey dinner that no one wants to do, but they can't seem to stop doing because it's a tradition. And it's so hard to move away from some of those programs that are just become a part of what we're doing. And can you all see my screen? Okay, Paige, will you give me a, okay, good. So we do this in a nine month program. There's a kickoff. Let me go down to, I think this one helps me. I don't like that one. Okay, well, so there's, you start with workshop one. This will be on April 30. And then the folks who are in a core neighboring team. So this is four to 10 people within a church. The pastor should be on the bus but not driving it because we all know that sometimes we move. And so we want this to be a thing that out. I want it to be something that outlives my tenure at first Alan. So I want to make sure I've got lay people who are excited about this. So we'll go and we'll attend the workshop together. And then we do these two labs. So the labs are basically six week curriculum pieces. So lab one focuses on the ingredients of neighboring, which are relationship abundance and joy. And then in lab two, we move on to the eight front doors challenge, which is getting to know the people in behind the closest eight front doors to your own front door. And there's Bible based study, their practical skills and challenges that are a part of all of these curriculum pieces. And then at the Midway Point, you attend workshop two. This is a cohort wide thing so you bring your neighboring team and you meet with all the other churches who are participating this in at North Texas at that time, which I always think is such of such value because I know I don't have every good idea. And I'm so grateful when I hear other perspectives or something that is working for other churches so this is shifting from neighboring where you live to neighboring as a church. This is basically asset based community development if you're familiar with that so in lab two you got to know your neighbors in lab three you get to you have these learning conversations to hear where their gifts are what they're good at and this can be within your church. This can be right around your church this can be in your actual neighborhood, but basically you're building this map of all of these gifts that play into lab four so lab four is called the recycle. And this is where the church participates in group discernment celebrating and telling the stories of everything they've learned for the past three labs, and then trying to figure out where there are way openings and way closings. So if we thought we were going to that the turkey dinner was going to be a great evangelism tool and we just needed to come up with a new recipe. But no one has energy for that we may discern that there is a way closing there and we do not need to put any more energy there. Meanwhile, we found 10 people through our conversations that play guitar and would love to play the old hymns and have a little hymns sing on their front porch or the front porch of the church. And wouldn't that be fun and we see a way opening there. So those are some and then workshop three is the very end where we celebrate we come together as a cohort we celebrate what God has been doing in and through us. And there are lots of other resources that can go alongside this whole experiment. There are sermon series there Sunday School curriculum there's youth Sunday School curriculum there's a weekly podcast they put out. There are they're working on intra church materials because we realized that through the pandemic a lot of folks have. You might not know the people in your own church it might look very different here two years in then it looked at the beginning of 2020. So here's the lovely overview that I think is so helpful so right now. A lot of churches are in this month zero to three right we're recruiting we're seeing if this is something our church is interested in. We're seeing if we have this team of four to 10 people, then April 30 will be this workshop one, then the labs one and two, then so you can see how this this flows. At the bottom of this slide you can also see what the cost will be. When churches register the expectation is that there's a $500 registration fee and then we see how many churches want to participate and the scale slides accordingly. Also there are funding resources available. The neighboring movement has Lily grant money that they have earned. They are working with United Methodist discipleship so they're there are resources out there even beyond our conference although as page mentioned we also have money from the spark tank to help churches who want to participate. So, here is some more information about highlighting those workshops so you can see kind of the timeline. So that is kind of a quick overview of the good neighbor experiment it's a way to give, because I know if I know, you know, if my experience in Methodist churches is a good example. When you say the word a lot of times people get very scared. They've experienced the evangelism as other churches do it which looks like fear based looks like, you know, do you know where you're going to go for eternity and it's, and it's very heavy and it's frightening and it's it's not something that most folks that I've met in Methodist churches feel comfortable with. So our methodology here really focuses on relationship building first and living out our call to love God and love neighbor. So this will equip us with those practical skills as well as giving us a biblically a biblical foundation for the work that we're doing. And then we can move into this discipleship phase so I'll turn. Right. So can you guys see my screen. My. Okay, I'm going to kind of show it like this since I can't exactly do it what I want to do with it. So, Jessica showed a timeline for good neighbor experiment and that is where you see on this timeline I'm not going to go through all this detail but we'll certainly share the PowerPoint with you as well as the recording. But it just gives you an idea of the steps to take as you go along and implement this within your local church. So starting January is when we really started when Jessica had that first webinar, we're moving into having churches commit to starting the good neighbor experiment and then we'll move into promoting that with our local church. So I'm going to show you some examples of how we did that at Christ United, and then April 30, as Jessica said kicks off the first workshop. So, let's look at phase two, which is the community and discipleship piece, and I can show you some examples of again what we've done specifically around Christ United. The logo is Christ specific to Christ United, and Jessica and I thought it would be fun to use the same graphic that is at the top of that with our respective church names underneath, because we could see a sea of these yard signs in different neighborhoods because we know we cross over different neighborhoods as our local churches with our congregants and so it would just be super fun to come together even within our own neighborhoods as a Connectional Church. So I'll explain how how you can get that as well. So I'm going to show a video and again, this is a little cumbersome because of the way that the webinar is working so I'm going to share a different screen. And show this video really quick. So this is a video that we did for Christ United, we started a pilot program last June or end of May, and got the word out that we were doing this through our church, and our congregants some of them came forward we had a pilot group and we started and we worked through the end of December to just experiment with some things and see what worked and what didn't and we would come together and talk about those and then we would go back out into our own neighborhoods. Then in January, this last month, we actually did a formal launch with Christ United with our congregation and this is the launch video that we showed to encourage people to sign up. Okay, so here is the video. I want to make sure you guys can see it. Can you guys see a black screen. Yes, we can. Okay, and hopefully you can hear that can you see everything. My name is Paige Christian. I am the pastor of off campus ministries and my role here at Christ United is to connect people, whether that be online or at off campus gatherings. My hope is to create community for you right where you are. We sheltered in place in March of 2020. I remember sitting at home and thinking, okay, feel, or at least I felt very disconnected from my church and really started praying and asking God for the service on how do we stay connected with each other in our church family. And then how do we care for those in our own neighborhoods who may not have the support system for the church that we have. And so Christ United neighbors was born. This new ministry centered around the idea that Christ like community can happen not only in our church building but really anywhere. And the first step in creating a Christ like community for each of us is to reach out introduce ourselves and connect with people right in our very own neighborhoods. I spent the last year locating introducing meeting connecting and growing our Christ United neighbors community through a pilot group of zone leaders who are now established in their own neighborhoods. And these amazing people have been the first to host events and they're now exploring small group opportunities and beginning to reach out to welcome those who've just moved into their neighborhoods. So far it's been a truly rewarding experience with so many great stories and memories being created. In fact, most of us had no idea how many Christ United families live in our neighborhoods. I was surprised even to find out that there are 31 Christ United families in my own neighborhood. And most of those people, I didn't even know one couple with no children connected with another couple who have young children and no family in town and now they celebrate birthdays and holidays together. While others are discovering they grew up in the same area where they have the same interests, and even those who live alone now have someone checking in on them each week. We hope you'll join us as we connect and foster community in neighborhoods across the Metroplex. By joining our community of Christ United neighbors, you too can begin to form lifelong relationships, engage in common interests and activities, hopefully grow spiritually through connection to the church, and overall have a meaningful impact in your neighborhood. We provide everything you need to get your neighborhood started. All you need to do is sign up. So it's very easy to get started. You can come to the atrium will have a table there for the next three Sundays. We'll have more information at the table and an opportunity for you to express interest and just give us your name so that we can contact you and get you. You can also sign up online and that is at see.com and just fill out the form there for Christ United neighbors. So can you see my PowerPoint again. So that gives you an idea of course you don't have to have a video to launch within your congregation you can do whatever works best for you guys. But I just wanted to give you an example of how we launched it churchwide in January. So the way that we started our pilot group was to look at the various neighborhoods through Mission Insight, and Mission Insight is the tool through the conference if you haven't used it before and you can upload your member list or member prospect list that you can upload that into this mapping software Mission Insight and it will actually plot them on a map, and then you can see where your congregants are. And instead of dividing those by specific neighborhoods throughout we have primarily Plano within our congregation but instead of dividing by specific neighborhood. I actually looked at zones because they were cleaner lines than the actual neighborhood lines are so if you think about a zone, it means a block of major intersections so for example I live in the zone of at independence and legacy custer and hedge coax. So you can see that it is a block that I'm would be a zone leader for. So in our pilot we had 10 people come forward in individual neighborhoods all different neighborhoods and they wanted to participate and so we have been meeting again every six weeks. So they have an event or a gathering of some sort to their choosing whatever they think will work for their neighborhood, and they host that gathering and then I attend when I can. And they let me know how many people and who came and and all of that so our first step was to meet the other Christ United people within our own neighborhood within our own zone, and then we moved into meeting people outside of that we felt like starting with Christ United would help our church to feel smaller, it would also help our congregants to have that common connection with each other when meeting in their neighborhood. And then we are encouraging them to go outside of that and invite other people that they know in the neighborhood. And those activities that happen, we encourage once a month. We asked them to come and meet as a committee so that we can share best practices and talk about what's working and what isn't. I love about the good neighbor experiment which is where Jessica and I have joined together is, I'm having our committee take a step back and really go through this more formal process through the good neighbor experiment curriculum so that we can have even more resources and more best practices shared and all of that knowledge to go out and continue the work that we're doing. I'm excited that we'll be a part of that as well, even though we're a little bit further down the path as Jessica mentioned will what we encourage is relationship first. I'm not going to my neighbor or someone in my neighborhood as page Christian the pastor at Christ United. I'm going as page who lives two streets over, and I think that's really critical is starting with the relationship. And really creating that community, and letting the Holy Spirit guide us into what is next, because I think it will be different for every neighborhood. We're hoping that interest groups will be formed you may have heard of fresh expressions where people may have a common interest, and they come together with that common interest, whatever that may be, and eventually it moves into relationship components. It may be a study it may be worship it may be music as Jessica mentioned it may be prayer and devotion. It doesn't have to be the vision of a small church or a home church it could that would be wonderful. We want to just at least start with relationships and just see where the Holy Spirit guides us in those relationships and in those communities. So we have again the committee we have the zone leads and the co leads some neighborhoods are larger than others and so we have two people who will participate and help start gatherings in their neighborhood. And then we hope as we get to interest groups we will have activity leads who are actually leading those activities. So this is completely a lay led initiative. It is also one that doesn't land on one lay member for the whole entire neighborhood we're hoping that they will get to know others and spread that out so that other people can lead and start groups of their own. So that's kind of how we done it again it may work differently for different neighborhoods. This is an example of our church and where we are and I'll blow this well like if someone blow that up a little bit keeps going back to that one slide. So that's what we have done at Christ United this is mission insight so you can see where Christ UMC is the larger church icon on there, and it also locates it, or puts on the map it plots are surrounding United Methodist churches which is great as well. So that's represent the committee members, those who are now part of our Christ United neighbors initiative. And so we can see the neighborhoods that they're representing or the zones that they're representing, and I can align our congregants to that. The third piece of this that is also talked about in the timeline is getting new neighbors those people who have just moved into your neighborhood, and reaching out and just introducing yourself and welcome them to the neighborhood. We have purchased through mission inside as well, and so you can get a list of addresses of those and plot those on the map as well and I'll show you an example of what we did with that. We had again 10 pilot neighborhoods or 10 pilot zones over the summer through December. And then when we launched with the video that you saw in January, we now have 30 participants who represent 27 neighborhoods. So there is a tremendous amount of interest of lay members wanting to be a part and doing things in their neighborhood. One of the things that was eye opening for us at Christ United is when we were able to come back from the pandemic in person. We know that some people weren't coming back. We know that there are some who won't be able to come back for a multitude of reasons and we wanted to make sure that we were still able to keep them connected to our church family. And I think this is allowing us to do that, and people are responding positively to that. Any questions so far. Okay, so this is an example of what I give my zone leaders. I remember some but it's not and we go through it and I help them understand who the neighbors are and where they're located the little teal dots represent those Christ United congregants in their zone. This here this larger dot teardrop represents the zone leader. In a way she knows really where her neighbors are. Now you could make this smaller if your zone leader didn't want that large of an area or she could go this is Linda she could go and actually get someone else on this list to work with her which is what she's done. I have several neighborhoods who have done that. This is the remission inside it gives you the information, but you have to take your church data, whether you shall be your arena or some other database and upload that into mission insight and then you can get this information. This is the same map, but it also shows the new neighbors so we have those plotted in purple, and you can see where the new neighbors are in relation to the Christ United congregants. So this is a great way to go out and meet those new neighbors one of the things we've talked about doing is taking a my favorite things basket or bag and having whatever a few of your favorite things in it so mine had Plano flavored popcorn from Crave, and it had a mud leaf frequent buyers card from mud leaf coffee which is local to Plano, and it had our Christ United seasonal postcard. So they could see my favorite things are cream popcorn mud leaf coffee and of course Christ United. So you could do that in all different ways every neighborhood will have different ways they want to do that and they will also have different favorite things than what I have so we thought that would be a fun way to put some make it personable. So if you look at resources, lots of resources for you guys to get started and Jessica right and I have talked about our willingness to meet with you all one on one to really get you started and to answer questions that you may have. So she had the webinar in January and we're having this one today will send out Jessica Vargas will send out the links to those videos to the recording so you'll have those and I will give her this PowerPoint as well so you'll have that. The good neighbor experiment again is that first step of just getting signed up for that we will provide the logo artwork for you, we will provide mission insight training along the way so that you are ready to go once you are at the point of really reaching out within your neighborhoods that you'll have your data ready to go through mission insight. We also have lots of samples and templates that we've used as you saw in the video Christ United has a t shirt we have yard signs we actually have a toolkit that we provide every zone leader. And in that kit, it gives them an overview of the program so they know how to explain it to others that they meet. We also include samples of invitations of things that you can give for the new neighbors in the neighborhood, we include gift card the little tag that you can use to write the information your phone number and name for those new neighbors as well. So lots of different templates and ideas, and then we also have in there I think a survey. One group did a survey with their gathering where people could say would you like to get together for dinners would you like to get together for Bible study so it was just trying to understand their interests, and then they started creating gatherings around those interests so that was fun. Also, I wanted to go ahead. Well, Paige, it looks like we have a question over in the chat. So if I didn't know if you wanted to take that one now or do this after your thought here. Go ahead, Jessica. Can you read it. I can so Karen is asking, she says this program seems geared toward large churches, which I get right like 1st Allen and Christ Plano, like we have certain reputations. Do you have a program that practically addresses the needs of a small inner city church. So, just to speak to this from a good neighbor experiment side of the house. They tell a lot of stories because this is something that they've rolled out in the from the neighboring movement in the past two years. Right when COVID hit. And so they've had a variety of churches and a variety of contexts use this material. The smallest church I've heard about is a church in Kansas that does not have an appointed clergy person there because they are so small. There are 12 members of that church. And so they don't have a regular preacher. So what they decided to do was engage the good neighbor experiment and use that as their Sunday guidance. And so a different member of the church would bring the kind of lead the lesson and they would talk about it. And so rather than seeing because I also served at Crum United Methodist. And the season I was there was a hard season when we were realizing how much debt we were carrying and how few members we had and whether or not that church would be able to continue to have a full time clergy person. And so I have some different experiences in my pocket. So when I'm thinking about engaging this I'm thinking of those churches as well. And so it can be really easy when I think it's really easy for a lot of us what regardless of our context to kind of have that scarcity mindset. I know we face that I face that at every church I've served. We don't have enough people. We don't have enough money. It's not working. We're trying to do the things we've done. We're trying to do new things. Nothing seems to be working. People aren't coming. Are we going to have to shut the doors and it becomes the future becomes scary. And one of the stories that they tell about this 12 member church is that they were they were feeling scared to the building was paid off but they were still having to pay their ordinary bills. And through this process in the recycle what they figured out was maybe let's just have a picnic on the grounds because the church was well located. And so they brought their own grills and they made hot dogs which are pretty cheap and neighbors came and they're starting to see that Ford momentum, even being a 12 member lay led church in a in a community that's changing. There are some opportunities here so I think what I appreciate about the good neighbor experiment that seems that it could fit any church in any place is that it's going to ask the folks who are engaging in it. To talk to their actual neighbors and find the gifts that are already there. And the gifts in inner city Wichita, which is where this was born, are going to look very different than suburban Allen, Texas are going to look very different than Electra or Bonham or anywhere else in our conference. So it's finding the giftedness in the neighbors where you are and then figuring out what God's calling you to do with those where the Holy Spirit is moving. And then the other part of your question was do you have Spanish language resources I'll have to ask the neighboring movement. The training I went through we were all English as a first language folks so I can ask them that page would you speak to any other portion like the discipling portion and how it could work for a smaller church. So, I have been like Jessica, I have been appointed at both small rural churches, as well as large churches and so again she and I are available to help walk you through the process and really think about what might work best in your congregation and in their neighborhoods. It will look different, obviously, and you may not have access or budget for the resources that we do, but we can certainly work with you to talk through what you do have and help you make it the best it can be in your respective area. That would be good. Yeah, so happy to do that anytime. The other thing to that is great is the conference has grants through the Center for church development. So, if we have an ongoing or regular gatherings that have a discipleship component and have new faces and new spaces because that is really what we would like to see, then we can apply for a grant. It's a micro grant that they're providing $500 for those respective churches. Now, even a micro grant would be pretty big for us. Yes, right. Absolutely. And so that's the thing, but that may be further down the line when you have a discipleship component. Yeah, and to that end, you go through the process and you decide to open your space in your church. You're more than welcome to fill out that application because we do still have those micro grants available. And I can also send you the link, the information on how to apply for those. So once you have that space set up and assigned, you can apply for those micro grants and they can help you also in the process as well. Of course, one of the big obstacles I'm seeing is this $2,400 price tag. I mean, that puts you to the core of the moon. Yeah, Jessica can speak to that. I can. I was just putting it in the chat, but I can say it out loud instead. Yes. Even, I mean, I'm looking at my budgets this year. That's a big number. As the angels said to Mary, do not be afraid. If you have, I would say as the person who's trying to coordinate this cohort. If you have the people because, okay, so in my ministry life, one of my colleagues asked me after I had a couple of different ministry experiences, she said, okay, now you've been in a place where you had no people and tons of money. You've been in a place where you had tons of people and no money, which would you take? And I would take the people every day because with people like the sky's the limit. I can, I can throw money at things all day, but if there are no people, I'm just wasting it. So I would say don't let the money get in the way. You know, as Paige mentioned, we won this grant from the spark for the spark tank and the idea was to help for me to help resource churches. I mean, that this might be a big bite. There are also funds available through, I know the Center for Missionary Outreach has talked about that they have some funds available. They sponsored some churches going through the Good Neighbor experiment in South Dallas a few years back. We can, we will find it. You know, to me, it's like the ram in the bush, right? If this is what God is calling you and your church to in this season, we will find a way. So also the great thing too is the more churches we get involved, the lower that price tag becomes. And so if there are 12 churches, that cost becomes 1200 and that's a much better bite. So for me, part of my strategy has been trying to get some of my sister churches nearby to do this with me, because then that makes it more manageable for all of us. Absolutely. So I would say, and Jessica and I've talked about this, if you have a need for grant money, just email us and let us know and we can work through that once we know how many churches are participating. So once we get through the, this three pronged approach crush United using crush United as an example. We've gone out and connected with our church family in our own neighborhoods, we have created relationships and community. And the next phase, as I said earlier will look different for every neighborhood and even within each neighborhood, where interest groups can be formed and spiritual growth can begin to happen. So once that we get to that phase. Good neighbor experiment has some curriculum and tools and resources that we can use and be equipped for implementing discipleship or a discipleship path within our neighborhoods, as well as we have some other resources that we can connect you to get you started, it will just depend on what you're looking for specifically around discipleship but Jessica and I can help you find the resources that you need to get started. Any other questions. So you can see the link here to sign up for the good neighbor experiment that's really the first step. And you can go out and sign up and just check Jessica can clarify this but just check the North Texas Conference cohort, and that will put you in Jessica's group, and I, they don't ask for any money up front. And so if you want to go ahead and just do that at least we'll know how many churches are going to participate and then we can work individually with churches on grant money. So I think that everyone will sign up through this link by February 28, and that way we can make sure that we have everything ready come April 30 to get started with the first workshop. Anything else Jessica that you wanted to add. I'm also seeing Jessica Vargas rephrasing the question. Part of our questions how do you reach your neighbors when the housing surrounding your church is mostly apartments how do you reach them. Yeah, that's a great question. I've talked a little bit and I think in the first webinar about first Alan is in a quirky neighborhood. So, on one side we have like an estate with staples that just sold recently for millions of dollars. I'd love to get to know them. I don't know them right now. On the other side we have apartments on another side we have a preschool across the street we have and then on one side of us we have another church, and then across the street we have an assisted living facility. We have a few neighbor folks, you know I also served at flower mound and that church was much more in a neighborhood where it makes more sense. So this is part of what will happen through lab three in those learning conversations because the learning conversations are kind of intentionally with people who live around the church and ideally by that point people feel equipped and empowered that it doesn't feel so awkward. And it can be great for discernment and visioning talking about asking them about what they love and what their passions are, and who knows. I know for one of my stories. It's, I went to a local coffee shop to work on my sermon. Because you know, and I was interested in getting to know the people who came there the customers but what ended up happening was that the coffee house adopted me as their chaplain for their staff. Because the staff are overworked and underpaid and most of them are in their early 20s, and this is a transitional job. And they have a lot of stresses, and not very many resources to provide support. So it was kind of interesting because the thing I thought I was going there to do. It ended up not being that at all. And so I feel like through these labs and through these conversations and through these relationships. Some of the work ahead can become clear, which is really exciting. I'd also point out I put my email in the chat. I also know sometimes it's helpful I personally pitch this to our administrative council here. And I know sometimes it helps to have someone talk about it. So if you have a leadership team meeting or you would love to have folks have. I'm available is what I'm trying to say I'm available to talk to any people that it would be helpful for me to talk to you if, if that would serve you well in casting this as a vision for your congregation. And we can certainly I'm available as well and we can certainly share the presentations that we provided with through Jessica's webinar, and then through this one. Just so you have that in case you want to do it in that format. But certainly happy to do that. The other thing I would say also for those who are in apartment like settings like those are within your your areas is typically now even neighborhoods have a community director. You can always connect with the community director or someone who is in charge of community activities at the apartment complex or within that neighborhood and partner with them to see if you can start doing some things, having some gatherings, or enter into the community that they're already having, and invite your church people to join into that and then start meeting new people so that's another way that I've worked within neighborhoods in smaller church settings. Any other questions. Anything else in the chat Jessica. I don't see anything. If you have questions throw them in there, or email us afterward. Would you mind adding my email to the chat. We remind me would. Oh, okay, I'll go find it. Hold on. It's page at CUMC.com. CUMC.com. Correct. It is specified with just. Yeah. So now I'm out of screen sharing so I can see some of that team. Okay. Any last questions. Anything that they want to add any ideas. I want to suggest. If I want to suggest to this process. We'll appreciate. I think, you know, the only other thing I would, I was thinking about while you're presenting pages that. When our church was, okay, early on in the pandemic, we had a very similar idea. Oh, Rebecca, we'll get to you. I see your hand. And we, instead of using some major roads, we use school zones because that seemed to work like elementary school zoning. I would just say that everybody, you're, you're going to know your context best and you'll know best kind of how it naturally divides up so. But school zoning was kind of a neat way to do it because then one of those first conversations could be, Oh, do you have any kids that go to XYZ elementary. And that was, that was a good icebreaker. So, okay, Rebecca, I see your hand. I'm going to get to the largest. Her email also. Oh, I just want to make sure I got it right. Yeah. And I would say to one of the things. Thanks Jessica. One of the things that has been the most successful in the gatherings that we tried is meeting at the park on a Saturday morning and just providing coffee and donuts. And so it's not really out of their way to stop at the park and say hello because most, at least for us, all of the areas that we have someone who is leading this effort. There's a park nearby. And so it worked really well. We had one group that actually people who weren't part of Christ United were stopping and having a donut and coffee and so they were already meeting other people which was really fun. So there really are no limits. That's what I love about this is there's no right or wrong. It's all experimenting for what is work going to work in your neighborhoods. Yeah, we have, we have a space that was created here in the North Texas conference. And what they did and how they started is that they connected with the community center, and they asked permission to do some activities for the kids. And it would be Saturday afternoon and then they'll have one of the pastors, you know, put on a clown face and they have music and it started with like five kids, 10 kids 15 kids and to the point that they were at the community was asking, you know, me, and just the medium but it was also the discipleship component as well. Yeah that's great. Yeah, and so you may be at a point we have encouraged and I know Jessica right has encouraged starting this as a relationship and not necessarily a church effort, because we just want people to get to know their neighbors. I know when, when, when we were sheltered in place I created a map just for my street and put all my neighbors names and everybody's phone numbers and then put it in their mailboxes so that if anybody needed anything, they knew who they could call they knew who was right there on their street, and who they could call. And so for us it worked. It worked great to start as a relationship, and then move into once we build that trust and that relationship and we feel like we are part of a community to then add a discipleship component. There may be other areas that are just ready let's just do you know a Bible study or let's do something for the kids, whatever that is, there is no right or wrong in the process. And that's what I love about this is it's really whatever works best for your area and just let the Holy Spirit move it has been amazing to watch. So fun. Any last comments or questions. Alright Jessica right can I put you on the spot to close this in prayer. Before closing the plane I just want to say of course didn't our founder say we always needed to be. Yes, thank you. Before we close and play. I just want to say thank you to everybody who has been part of this webinar if you have any questions anything that you forgot to ask. If you are there was the recording is set and ready. We will make it available both parts parts one and part two. So thank you very much and Jessica. Thank you. All right, let us pray. God we thank you for your presence with us that we are called to follow you to come and see what you are already up to in our communities and in our neighbors lives. We know that you say that the, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few and you're ready to send laborers out so that we might build relationship and we might introduce people to the transforming work that you are about in their lives. So be with us as we continue to have these conversations as we figure out who those people are that we need to talk to in our congregations to see if this might be the thing that you are calling us to in this season. Bless our efforts. Remind us that we can be bold in trying things and that sometimes we will fail, but that all we do is an opportunity to learn and grow and love you more. So bless us as we leave from this time together that we might be strengthened as your people in the world shining forth your love in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you. Thanks so much everybody thank you Jessica in the Center for church development for hosting us today. It has been great to share this with you and I hope that you all will participate with us.