 At the beginning of this journey, I had the distinct privilege of meeting with Tom Graves. He was my district superintendent. He was in the process of retiring as I was coming into the system. And he sat back in his chair and smiled, and he said, in all of his years of ministry, he had come to the realization that the lay people in the Methodist Church are the finest people he's ever met. He said, honor that. And I held onto those words. Those came back to me several times throughout my ministry. As y'all, as most conference folks know, I was fortunate to direct Crossroads Community Services really from the beginning. The low-income families that worked with their faith, their appreciation of the blessings they have, and some of them don't have a whole lot of blessings compared to so many of us in the North Texas Conference. No, not all people. I mean, we have a broad mix under our umbrella as a church. Clearly, the local churches that I've served, the members of those churches have just been great and my love for the ministry that we do in the local church is what's been most important to me. Well, I think it's a tremendous time to create new and innovative ministries. And it's a critical time, I think, for those of us who affirm Wesleyan theology. So, you know, in my own ministry, we've always emphasized service and missions for others. And I just see that still, the passion that United Methodists, laypeople and people have when they're really serving others and they know they're serving and loving God as well. So I don't know that we've done the best job of looking at pretty simple opportunities to reach out and serve. We've got the right idea of mentoring and tutoring programs in our schools and lots of other things. But I think we can do much more. And a real reaching out, serving others ministry will set a church on fire and it'll set the laypeople on fire as well. Words, well, when I was at prior church, really didn't usually work well. My experience was that to get out in the community and get to know people and get to know what's going on in that community is how you learn what is needed in that community. I served in two suburban areas and two semi-rural areas and they were all so different. I found that asking the district superintendent at the schools was a wealth of information of what's going on, what's needed and how we could be the hands and feet of Christ in that community. And that we didn't have to do anything like everyone else. We needed to do what God was calling us to do in that community. I'm preaching to the choir, to everybody watching this video. Methodists are known for their work in the community. So I'd say keep that up. And not a mold of Crossroads, but generate more Crossroads-type organizations because people get engaged, they get their heads and hearts engaged helping others. And that makes the one commandment that I understand, love God and love our neighbors, come to life in real tangible ways in people's lives. The tricky part is how do you do that? How do you make the church relevant in the 21st century? And I personally am counting on the new ordinance to do that. And there's no quick answers in a video like this to do that. They have to get in the congregations, meet people where they are, learn, build the relationships because when it push comes to shove, church is all about relationship and valuing, again to me value is a synonym for love, valuing people, the community in which they are doing ministry and doing church. So when we meet people where we are, I've heard over the decades, church can move at a glacial pace, which we've seen with some issues in the church over the years and centuries. And I smile because it's, yes, we got to move at a pace that works, but glaciers, we don't want to become relevant by the time that the glacier evaporated. So I throw that out there as a sincere challenge with the optimism that I'm trusting, hoping, praying, counting on them to do that. The advice that I give everybody is to, and this is new in the last few years, is to as you grow in your ministry, just be curious, really, really curious. The pastors that I admire and have been the most effective I think through the years have been pastors that are always curious. I don't know of anybody more curious than Adam Hamilton, especially in his early days. He asks, all he did was ask questions. And I'm a person who believes that there's such a thing as best practices, and we have to learn those. We don't just know them. It requires learning. We all need mentors and coaches. And so in terms of career advice, advice, that's what I would say is just continue to be curious and grow and know that there's a lot to learn and learning is very, very satisfying and rewarding, fulfilling. The two best pieces of advice that I think I ever received were from laypeople. In my first church, a woman on my SPR approached me and she said, whatever you do, do not mess with the schedules of children and old people. So to some degree you need to mess with schedules at times, but I always held that and treasure that and tried my best to pay attention. And as I took care of my parents in their final years, I began to realize even with far more acuity as to why that's so important. The second piece of advice does not need a lot of explaining, but it was another one that I treasured a great deal. My lay leader at one of my churches made the comment that he said, you know, sermons are like biscuits. They both taste better with a little bit of shortening.