 I want to thank y'all for taking the time to connect for a Zoom meeting oriented around a made-up word. We are prosponding today because we've been amazed at how our pastors have just responded and stepped up and taken action during this time. But as we're starting to shift at looking forward, how are we going to move back in? Kami Gaston is soon going to be coming out with a checklist that is going to be oriented around logistics. What do you need to do to open up? Of course, we're getting directions from state and local leaders, as y'all are as well, and that is going to be guiding a lot of our work. And that is not the topic of this meeting. What the topic of this meeting is, how do we think missionally about opening up? I was inspired by an article that I've shared written by John Thornberg, our first presenter, that talks about this second level courage. And so I'm inspired and thankful for all of you in joining us today as we seek to help lead our churches into what is next and utilizing this liminal space to prepare for these seasons that are yet to come. I know this is a tough season for many, and I know that our going back is going to be a difficult season for many of us and definitely for many of our parishioners. And so with that, I'm going to ask our pastors if they will gather us in prayer as we get ready to engage in the work of postponing. Reverend Masters? Thank you, Owen. Yeah, thank you, Owen. Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this time, and I ask you to join me in prayer. Dear God, we come thanking you first for the opportunity of having life. We thank you, oh God, that you have made it possible for us to be on this Zoom call. We thank you for the technology. We thank you that you have just given us another day, and we love you, oh God, we worship you, and we adore you. We acknowledge the pain that many are experiencing right now. The pain of not being able to gather back in our sanctuaries and pass the peace and just give everybody a hug and maybe a kiss on the cheek. The pain of not being able to go to our Sunday school classes. Lord, we acknowledge the pain that so many people are experiencing because they may have to pre-register when they get ready to go to worship service because they're usually having 300 in worship and not all the people can come at the same time because we need to spread out. Lord, we just ask that your presence be there. We know that you are an omnipresent God and we celebrate that. Oh God, we know that nothing is too hard for you. We know that you got this, but we also acknowledge that there's so much pain, so much fear, so much anxiety. So Lord, we ask you to show up and show out. We ask you to, oh God, to let us feel the leading of your Holy Spirit with us on our Zoom calls when we're doing worship, on the Zoom calls when we're meeting with friends and family and calls like we have today. We thank you for our presenters today for John Thornberg and for Mark Meyer. Lord, we ask you to guide them as they are guiding us. Continue to be in charge, oh God. Continue to lead us and we will continue to live our life giving you all the glory, all the honor, and all the power because we do it all for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray knowing that nothing is too hard for you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Reverend Masters. Well, we have a real gift today. We have two national church leaders, people who are involved in conversations nationwide, speak with multiple churches in multiple contexts, multiple settings about how are we going to move forward, how are we going to move our congregations forward, how are we moving forward in the future of the church. And I am just so thankful that the Lord arranged for a time for us all to be together and that both of them are able to be together on this same Zoom call. So be prepared to be blessed, be prepared to take some notes because they're going to be bringing in some resources and some ideas that are going to help our churches as our churches are starting to look forward. Again, we have just been inspired about how our churches have responded to the present needs that have been just thrown upon them. But as we're starting to move into this season of looking forward and past the immediate present crisis, we are going to be able to have some great resources and some great conversations with some national leaders. And so without further ado, I am going to turn it over to one of our own, the Reverend John Thornberg. And so John, with that, I will turn it over to you. Oh, and thanks so much. Greetings, brothers and sisters. It's really, it's an honor. It's a blessing to be with you today. I bring greetings from Tom Locke, the president of TMF, the Methodist Foundation of Texas in New Mexico, and from our entire staff. We know this is a really bewildering time for you and we want you to know that the whole staff is praying for you and want to help in any way we can. I do want to mention some of the things that we're attempting to do on your behalf. On the finance side, our loan department is kind of burning the midnight oil to bring relief to the nearly 200 churches to date who have requested some kind of renegotiation of their loan. We've just announced a million dollar micro lending program for churches that need a cash flow boost. We'll be announcing a micro lending initiative from our grads department on May 8th that will allow a nonprofit that will now, nonprofit helping agencies to actually get a loan for a new initiative they may be dreaming of in the midst of also coping with COVID-19. And last week we released a million and a half dollars in unrestricted grants. I know Carol Montgomery is on the call. She's your representative in North Texas. She loves you and your congregations and she's good at what she does. And so I hope you'll feel free to call on her or on me. But at TMF we're not just doing banking. So that's what brings me here today. We're also eager to help churches and their leaders find footholds on the cliffs where we seem to be walking now. In his book, Mission at the Margins, Roman Catholic Missiologist Anthony Gittins provides a fascinating way of talking about what people face when they accept a missionary assignment that takes them to another culture. He says that in this life of ours, we can take a trip. We can take a vacation. We can even take a sabbatical. But he says, as it concerns the life of the Christian, God takes us on the journey of life. He says, Gittins, that we begin the journey in what's called homeland, the place where we come from, where our values are formed, as well as our biases and our assumptions, our practices and our values. But then God takes us by the hand and leads us to what Gittins calls wonderland. We're like the sensible story of Alice by Louis Carroll. We're led down a rabbit hole to a place in which everything is new and strange, where everything is called by a different name, where the doors are different sizes and none of the keys work. While in wonderland, he says, the challenge is to decide whether we're going to learn the new language that's used there, learn the new and strange customs, and learn where the doors lead. But that's not the end of the journey, because there's yet one more destination to which God wants to take it in, but Gittins calls it newfound land. The truth is that newfound land is geographically identical to homeland, except that having emerged from the wonderland experience, we have new eyes to see everything that formed us and everything to which we had formerly come. Well, friends, welcome to wonderland. We all fell down the rabbit hole around March 12th. And by March 15th, you had to be masters of Facebook Live. And you sucked it up and heroically got it done. And I thank God for that. That was level one courage. And then you started to tackle online giving and you learned Zoom at warp speed. It was a case of the overwhelmed caring for the overwhelmed. So just a show of hands. Who's enjoying being in wonderland? There are some I mean, there are some who are I just I just wanted to pose the question. So here's a piece of news I'm a little scared to deliver. It is possible that being in newfound land may be even more challenging than being in wonderland. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it will be. And it appears that newfound land is where we're destined to be for at least 18 to 24 months, if not longer. When it is safe to return to our buildings, we'll have brand new eyes to see those sanctuaries and gathering spaces in classrooms. When we see the looks on the faces of people, we will have brand new eyes to look at them. And they'll have new eyes too. It is possible that you and they may say the hell with these eyes. My old ones were fun. I think I'll use them. I just want to do what I know how to do in the place I know how to do it with the people I know how to be with. In other words, Egypt is looking reasonably good. So we're standing at a crucial place. It's a moment in which we're leading where there's an ocean of unknowns in front of us. The Susan Beaumont puts it, we're leading when we don't know where we're going. That disorientation caused by sheltering in place has caused a whole lot of people to ask deeper questions about themselves and their ministries. The pastor of a healthy multi-site church in Louisiana said, this crisis is helping me to see what's bogus about our ministry. Another San Antonio pastor said, why do we spend so much time and money trying to get all the people in the same room for the same hour on the same day? So in six weeks, we've gone from wondering how many separate explosions and implosions might happen in Minneapolis to asking really basic questions about what constitutes the essence of the church, what's truly essential in worship, and how this crisis is forcing us to examine what we really mean by loving neighbor. Now I'm humbled and haunted by something that happened just before shelter in place started. I was working with a team of seven laymen and women and their pastor in a church in the Austin suburbs. We were in the midst of the strategic discernment process. We use a TMF called Holy Conversations. The team was a remarkable group, 35 to 80 years old, mainly white color professionals. They were facing big stuff, bravely. They sensed that they had plenty of members, but few disciples. I'm using their words. They sensed, oh they used the dreaded word country club to describe the ethos of the church. They knew that they expected people to come to them. They knew that their mission work was largely a series of transactions in which commodities were delivered to people they would never know. But it took a particular question, that was wonderful work, but it took a particular question to get them out of their heads and into their guts. My colleague Tom Stanton and I decided to ask what are you learning about yourselves by doing this discernment work? What are you learning about yourselves? After a few quiet moments, the eldest member of the team, a wise, graceful, retired school teacher, said, I'm learning that my discipleship is a mile wide and an inch deep. And the reason I know it is, is that the conversation we've been having is way deeper than an inch. I've never been in a conversation like this, she said. Now the conversation she had never experienced before was the conversation in which the subject was discerning God's will, discerning the difference God was calling the congregation to make, and discerning her part in it. She felt the simultaneous thrill and terror of realizing that she was in wonderland. Friends, as we return to whatever our existence will look like after the virus retreats, we'll have a profound opportunity to help people have conversations they may never have experienced. As leaders, we have the remarkable opportunity to ask our people individually the question, what are you learning about yourself in wonderland? And to ask the leaders of the church, how can we use our new eyes as we become first church newfound land? Here's some things I hope will become part of your internal conversation or the conversation you have with leaders. Most all the people that we've talked to in the last month testify that in many ways it's been easier to be a leader during shelter in place because many of the choices about how to proceed, even if really immediate and somewhat hard, were really obvious. Some testified, for example, the decisions about the purchase of AV equipment that might have been contentious or even tedious prior to March 15th became much easier. But the Facebook stream that's going on right now in North Texas about the issues of reopening shows that as choice returns, so will resistance. Maybe a conversation to have with leaders starts with the question, what has God been doing among us? And how does that inform the way we proceed? See, that's a very, very different thing than saying what should we do. Let's ask about what God has been doing rather than about what we want. Second, it's clear that the church's best position to emerge strong from the crisis is the ones that had the clearest sense of purpose before the crisis started. Some congregations may have to painfully admit that they cannot name the purpose of their church's ministry. So the question is, what are the resources of the Bible and the church's tradition to which we can turn when our congregational narrative is one of aimlessness or scarcity? I would add parenthetically that it's amazing how congregations can take a story of God's super abundant generosity and turn it into a scarcity story. I've seen congregational terms teams turn the feeding of the 5,000 into a scarcity story. We're doing the best we can with the tiny amount we've got. Third, the overwhelming fatigue of so many clergy has lots of causes. But one of the most prominent, that is what people are telling us, is the feeling of many clergy that they carry a substantial weight, amount of the weight of the church's vision and mission by themselves. So a question that may be helpful is, God, what is it about me that makes it hard for me to be the Empowerer you are calling me to be? Then I have founded my work over the over the last several years that the question, who is our neighbor, is a question to which the answers are usually cliche-ish and axiomatic. I'm sorry it took me so long to figure that out. So as human need continues to grow, as the effects of the virus spread into all aspects of human community, it's possible that there's a prior question and that is, how are we defining neighbor? That was the very question that sparked the deepest thinking from the retired school teacher that I mentioned previously. That was new for her. Finally friends, I urge you to consider conversations with leaders which begin with, what must be true about us? So what must be true about us to avoid throwing ourselves back into problem solving so that we don't have to face the more fundamental work of discerning the difference God is calling our congregation to me? What'll have to be true about us to lead our people on the journey through grief and loss rather than around it? Everything in our culture tells us that there is a pill or a show or a snack that can pep us up when we're down. You know God has the ability to lead us through this. Then what'll have to be true about us to elevate the voices of those who struggle all the time so that we can walk alongside them, learn from them and forge a new and just future with them? What'll have to be true about us to break out of the captivity of spending such a vast amount of money and energy gathering like-minded people in one place for one hour on Sunday? Friends, I just have to say to you again I am in awe of your courage and your fortitude in the face of this. So be of good courage when the type A's in your congregations or organizations say that there's no time for these questions, that there's no time for contemplation. We just have to do something. Remind them that prior to his Galilee and ministry Jesus spent 40 days doing it and it sure appears that it did him some good. So thanks so much. No, well thank you John. These are very powerful questions that can help guide our churches. Let me start with a question. What advice would you give to the persons that are on here that would watch us in the future? The best way to utilize these questions or to propose these questions to their to their congregations or to their church leaders or to whom and what means? I think certainly in small groups and I think one of a really good strategy is to start with a small core of very trusted leaders, people with whom you would with whom you trust your life and say I need your help. I wonder what the power of conversation would be in our congregation and I wonder if we could start that here and see what we learn about ourselves as individuals and leaders and then at the end of that conversation say what has God been doing amongst us? What does it appear is possible for us now? Is there is there will to expand the circle of this conversation? So a possible next step would be for you know the leaders that are here to develop their most trusted leaders in a Zoom conversation and that slide that is available to all it's going to be on the resources page on the North Texas Conference website as well as you know on this but they could gather and begin that conversation and if they want to go into more in-depth Carol is available to assist with that. So both of those kind of options are possibilities. We know that every church is unique and that addressing the best way to unfold a holy conversation will look different and so that's why we want to be available both Carol and I to anyone who wants to talk about what let me tell you about my place let me tell you about what we're facing what what my conversation look like here. Thank you well thank you again for sharing Lilliana just put that PowerPoint slide on the on the chat so any of you in this moment can can download that and Scott pointed out grief is the long tunnel and there's no way out but through it there are those of us who are almost seven on the Enneagram so I'm very future oriented but there are lots of those in our church that are past oriented and this is going to be a very challenging uh season and challenging conversation but I'm glad the people of TMF are are sharing resources to help us walk through it and I'm actually um we're in my TNF shirt today TMF stewarding potential and so thank you so much John that was that was fantastic and very helpful. We'll now move to our next speaker and we'll have time to come back possibly and have questions at the end and but our next speaker is Mark Meyer who's been working with churches for many years across our nation and has been involved in many conversations about the present present situation of the church and the future situation of the church and so I've recently gotten in relationship with him and the Center for Church Development has partnered with the Unstuck Group and they're doing some work with us with our GAL UMC and I'm looking forward to future partnerships with them and I thought this would be a great opportunity for the North Texas Conference to get exposed to Mark to the Unstuck Group and also ask him to help us start thinking about the future and to help us respond together so with that I want to turn it over to to Mark Meyer and welcome him to North Texas Conference and thank you for being here with us. I appreciate it and John just thank you for just your thoughts and words those were great and I love the encouragement that so I mean what you've all had to do and adapt on the fly just to dump the boat and then I remember that week it was like the emails that I was sending out like March 9th looked so much different than they did like on March 16th and just the change that was happening in such a pretty period of time was just crazy and so on our perspective and what we've been working through is that we've had to jump on crisis coaching calls with churches so even this morning I was on a call with the United Methodist Church in the Florida area and you know just what do we do and how do we dump into this and so there's just a few things that have been helpful but think about and even if you think about what are some of the what were some of the trends that we saw before all of this that were already happening in our culture you know you think about the trends that were happening beforehand whether it's with online shopping groceries you know if I would have thought that in January someone would say hey Mark we're going to have somebody buy groceries for you go to the grocery store you're not going to have to do that stuff and it's going to actually be delivered to your home for you I'd be like what is your what are you talking about why in the world would I have someone else do my grocery shopping now yep it's happening and it's a regular occurrence the you know so the trends that we were seeing before any of this happened have only been accelerated what was maybe abnormal or things that we weren't comfortable before this process like online shopping like groceries being delivered to your home those trends were accelerating so what were some of the church trends that we saw beforehand well the reality is that 80 percent of the churches that we work with were either plateaued or in decline and depending on where you were at in that life cycle that's if you were in that mode sadly this is a challenging time for you that those trends did not change mainline denominations over the last 10 years you know the average attendance decline has been 18 to 25 percent and there's good news in this so I'm just trying to give you some a few things so I'm not trying to start with some negative but this is just a reality in the last 10 years the average Sunday attendance has been in decline the average amount of times that weekend attenders I'm full you know I'm a full attender of the church I love this I'm part of the church how many times do you show up on a Sunday ah it's about 1.8 times right so average Sunday attendance even if for those who say that they are all in I'm part of this church that was already in decline and diminishing so some of those trends that were already happening accessibility online online banking being able to move funds around online that was already happening so the trends that were happening prior to COVID-19 whatever was happening beforehand has only been accelerated both in our culture and also in our churches so we just need to be mindful for that and with what those trends are so there's a few things there there's two responses that seem to be happening one we've seen seen churches respond in the way of we just want to get back John I love your analogy of Egypt right can we just go back to Egypt you know it wasn't necessarily awesome you know we had our challenges there's some things that we were struggling with but can we just go back and I can't wait until we can open the doors we can be around our church family it's going to be a great thing and there's this sense that all we want to be thinking about is when can we get back and that's one response that churches have had a second response is our reality has changed what we're going back to is not what it was before and it will change and so there are churches that are looking at this time and thinking in this new season as John was talking about where how can we actually gain ground in this season can we actually do that where can we take steps in our mission and then those who are trying to reach that we can actually gain ground in this time and in this season so there's been two responses that we see over and over again with the different churches we connected with can we just go back or how do we take steps and move forward so I want to give you I'm going to just submit to you that this interruption has been a great thing in a lot of respects and while there is a lot of when I am not in the context of the suffering that's going on in but I'm just talking about in the context of church and what it means for this time out and we've been given the gift of pause that we have not been able to have before you've been worried about running to Sunday to Sunday to Sunday and interruption is not a bad thing it's a matter of as John was big you know talking about of being able to take some time and breathe and think what is it that God what do you have for us in our church without this interruption many of us would have been continued to run the same place that we have always been running and the the challenges that we were facing would have continued to to face us and this is a it really is an opportunity for us to be rethinking some things so I want to submit to you about seven different ships that we've been talking about with our team for churches to consider one is moving from analog to digital and just like you've all been jumping into Facebook live and you've been jumping into Zoom calls I don't know about y'all but I have some serious Zoom fatigue and I'm probably on Zoom it feels like six to eight hours a day but you have an opportunity to move to digital so there are things that you've been starting in the last six weeks and I would encourage you finish what you're starting what you're spinning up and you're thinking about what you're learning in this digital space and what is online I would encourage you to embrace it and give it a big rare hug and say that we can actually have some of this stick and it's not this add-on it's not this other thing it's not this band-aid that we've had for this short season that you know thank goodness they really have to keep doing this allow yourself to step into this and say no digital state and we'll come back to this but I'm much like the trends beforehand uh we want to get back I think the key reason why we want to get back is because we're going to get back to the people that we know and the people that we love and the people we care about it's our congregation these are your insiders these are the people that get it what about the people that you're trying to reach prior to COVID-19 in January and February who is your mission field you know who wasn't that you're hoping that if you could hand pick the next 50 people that walk through the doors of your church who were they what do they look like where are they coming from and you think about that the mission that we have this greatest mission that we have on the planet to invite and connect with people that was hard in January and February it was hard enough to say hey let's go actually meet some people and love people and you know talk to our neighbors and connect with our friends and talk to the people in our sports fields that we're going to invite them to church well uh what do you think it's going to be like in July is it going to be easier for you to invite somebody uh that's in your community now that you can say hey come to our church it's going to be awesome uh it's kind of like uh BYOM bring your own mask uh you know you're going to have that opportunity uh if you want to bring some gloves it's great you're going to come to the front doors and you might be greeted with somebody that may have a mask on and drop your kids off in this children's area that uh well you don't know anybody this is your first time here but it's going to be great we're going to dump you in a room with other kids that you have no idea you know who they've been hanging out with is it is it really going to be easier for our guests to show up to our church in July or August so when you think about this digital space this is a fantastic opportunity for to allow this to be the front door of your church for your guests they may not show up physically but the work that you've started and the connection and being able to lean into this digital space uh i would argue that they were already there before covid uh they were connected to technology they expect things accessible all the time they want to be able to watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it and it could be a real extension of your ministry to be thinking about hey let's finish the things that we're starting and let's think about great opportunities for people to get little bites of this great message of hope that we have in ways that's going to connect with the people that we want to reach for Jesus we want to move from teaching to equipping so again uh similar i think it was kind of kind of the conversation around looking in the eye of our own discipleship and how we're doing that that we're not going to have the large groups potentially for us to be teaching to you and it's going to be us uh being able to lead and facilitate this and with what we're used to but uh the leadership and equipping leaders whether it's in home settings uh in small groups and what they're doing online and continuing to be able to do that uh that will be a pivotal shift is to move from teaching and how do we best equip leaders so that we can decentralize ministry that it's actually happening in households and not just in what used to be a big event on a sunday uh it's going to be moving from gathering to connecting in that same respect uh you know rather than the big grouping events what's the win you know when i listen to a guy like john i have great hopes that if i can get my friend or my neighbor in somehow some way i can get them to hang out with john for a few hours and then they get to experience them for a few weeks and just to uh meet him connect with him uh get to know him john gets to get to know them i like my odds there that my friend or my neighbor is going to somehow in some way start seeing jesus and john and growing in their faith journey and so in this season of to be focused on rather than we need to get this whole big large group together how do we how do we get people connected to people and the analogy of the neighbors i think is great my world i know in my community is it's it got small really really fast not only are we cooped up in our homes but i am in a situation where you know what i can't do much our family can't do much but we got three to five neighbors that we can kind of tiptoe and maybe drop some things off on their porch we've got some at-risk people that are really close to us that are you know legitimate neighbors of ours that we've been able to connect with we've got a little food pantry that's right in our neighborhood that we've been able to go there and drop some things off and have things available our our community got really really small in a hurry but it allows us to have connections with people that hey when they're not running off the baseball fields and they're not running off to the soccer fields on sundays and all week long and they're stuck in their homes it's a unique time that we've been able to connect with people and i think that equipping people and encouraging that one-on-one connection in people's lives is really really helpful i think the this is a little controversial so i'm going to say i'll tiptoe into the conversation but it just gets around the idea of missions with the churches that we work with over and over again and i'm sure it's not true of any of the churches that you have but missions often is this financial silo in many many churches it's like we have a line item in our budget and do not touch this line item we know we handle this it's our it's our money and we have our way of distributing that and uh there's been a lot of tradition in churches that they have a list of the same groups that they've supported over the years and not that those things are bad things but i would offer and suggest that it is a lot harder to be a great neighbor to the people that are really really close to us two doors down and in some respects compared to connected with people that are a couple thousand miles away and shifting our focus from global to local in our mission strategy in a time like this i think is a great opportunity for us to be thinking about that so from a funding how is it that we can respond quickly to the needs in our neighborhood how is it that we could be offering help to the doctors and nurses that are in our community what is it that we could be agile and ready for and having uh missional funds available for what we can get our hands and feet connected to here really soon if we're not already doing that and to shift global funds into local and that may come with some controversy but i think that would be a pivot that would be strongly looking at in this next season so john mentioned this a bit as well but you know we tend to do a lot of stuff in our churches and we add programs and we think more activity equals more well more of its sticks and so if we just do more things at church it's a win well actually less is more and the less things that we can do and actually do it well versus uh kind of the shotgun approach of just doing a lot of different things my hope is that in this season that you've had a chance to see what are the essentials you know and john alluded to that a bit but at the end of the day when you take it all away it's like not all this stuff needs to come back what are the essential things that really help us connect people to jesus what is it that we see that our neighbors and uh the connection points that we can have when you when you take away what has always been what are those few things that we need to bring back and i would bring things back slowly just because you can meet doesn't mean you should just because you can meet as a full group doesn't mean that you need to and you're going to face some pressure i'm sure to come back quickly and bring back everything exactly the way it was and i would slow roll that you know give yourself that four to six weeks and it may end up being eight to twelve weeks or a few months but you don't need to bring back everything right away and allow yourself to prune some things that are not going to be needed and so identify the things that are have been essential in this time uh the reality i think of our economy and uh with what we just see in trends the churches that we're working with right now i would say as an average the giving has been about 65 to 70 percent of what had been normal it is higher in some cases lower in others but if i were just to take a number that given is maybe been running about two thirds and if it has and i would want to watch that trend and see what continues to happen over the next eight to twelve weeks but i would be looking at how do we lean things out there's been a lot of a lot of the talk that we'll have in our conversations with churches is like how do we talk about money and how do we talk about giving and i want to know that my church has done everything it can to tighten its own belt because as families we've had to do that certainly and you know part of that communication is what are the steps that we're doing that are being good stewards and managers of the resources that we have and being prepared for a season where financially things could get tougher uh and then in the months ahead so uh with unemployment and giving i think it's just going to be one of those things to be prepared for and that could be something that sticks for a longer period of time as well so just be mindful of that and uh the other thing to think about are how do we measure engagement or how do we measure connection in this season ahead a view which is awesome so some of you in your churches you're pretty excited because you're seeing these online views and facebook views or people that are connecting uh it's great there's some new things that we could be measuring in this new season and how people are connecting and engaging our content but the wind still ultimately is how do we get people to move from a view into some type of hey i'm mark and i just uh was watching online and moving me then from hey you can take another step and ultimately engaging in taking steps in the life of the church so this may sound absolutely crazy but it's being done and there are churches right now that are scrambling and trying to think this way but i uh it is possible that someone can watch what you're doing online uh take an initial step in connection and actually take another step and actually be serving in some way shape or form in your church they could be connecting relationally they could be doing some help with the local service project and never have stepped foot physically in your church and that could be happening over the next two three four five six months and i think a great story problem to have is that how do we create that engagement where people can actually take steps in their faith journey online in the season ahead with social media and the tools that are available what's great is that this in many respects has become a great equalizer that uh it doesn't matter what size your church is you can do this with 25 people and immediately have some accessibility and it's leveled the playing field in a lot of respects that uh maybe smaller churches didn't have that advantage that the perception that these larger churches have so those are some seven key areas that we could be looking at as we look ahead in this season and hopefully some of that's helpful uh and i'd be happy to you know jump in some questions oh and forget them hey thank you so much mark um yeah and lilliana's going to share a little bit more about unstuck in a minute and how your church can take advantage of their resources but let me throw out a few questions real quick first one was from kary sumpersmith to john john what are your thoughts about congregational singing bringing on some of your other expertise what are your thoughts about congregational singing as we look to inviting people back to the sanctuary some folks are talking about banning choirs until worship and branding choirs and worship until there is a vaccine what are your thoughts john it was really hard to hear those those recent reports about how dangerous singing might be well you know our vocal cords aren't the only part of our body um that can give praise to god and and so um you know i i i type back to kary um clapping um i take my hand and someone is playing maybe someone is playing the piano or the guitar is playing and we're keeping the pulse with our hands we're swaying we're addressing the ground with our feet we're so i think that there's a wonderful opportunity to think about our bodies as instruments and we've been skittish about that in the west white people have and so i think there's some really wonderful discoveries there thanks john uh synthia asks about what are what about the large portions of our congregations and communities that are not computer skilled or perhaps do not have internet access i will share that next week we're going to the center for church development is going to be having a technology 102 and some of that is well maybe get zacklandis to share how those who do not have access to internet how he's getting their service to them out in how texas um so you'd be prepared for that but to our presenters what recommendations do you have for ministering to those who do not have uh access to to technology or not are not comfortable with it yeah i can jump in on that a couple things one old school still works so uh if you haven't done this already i think that uh this is about a high touch meaning high contact with those who are in the life of our church and if we haven't been on the call pick up the phone and call everyone in our church over the last two weeks or four weeks there's a regular call rotation that's happened in a lot of churches which i think is great just to be able to connect how are you doing and for those who don't have technology old school still works and i would be having a few volunteers and connecting with them just to see how they're doing and how the you could be praying for them so that's step one here's another cool story that i've heard is that what a great opportunity for youth right now i don't know what it's like for you so i've got a couple of college age kids and uh and my parents are still in the area and they're in their 80s uh allowing your youth there's been examples where the youth have actually helped uh the older generation with a simple device of how to actually get them connected and have coached and trained them in this time of how to get connected to technology which i think is really really cool as far as just a way to do that the third thing that i would just uh remind and i love the care for that and we can get them connected and for some that they're never going to connect with the technology but the third piece is that uh it's it is part of your mission field when i think about our culture in our country and so uh it's a both and of embracing technology but then also helping hold the hands for those that don't have it and that you can do that in some fun unique ways thanks mark um Joshua Manning has a uh asked a question but basically it's a long question but then summon is what do you see in the future is the the role of facilities as we are moving back in that's a great question um a few things one you know if i was in the middle of the building project right now that would be a real head scratcher right uh and i would if you were early in the process that's certainly hitting the pause on that i think that uh the time of large group gatherings could be really challenged depending on how our culture responds reacts and i think uh thinking of our building as a community center a resource and rethinking and opening it up to other and many different uses i would be wrapping my brain around that for our facilities many churches are doing that really well already um where smaller groups are using it and leveraging that but um you know we always say this is a cliche church is not a building and if there's ever but it's out of that's true uh it's now john you may have some other thoughts on that as well yeah um i'm too old the thought left me i'll come back thanks um the fourth the last question before we move into this next uh part where lily on is going to share some more of the unstuck resources is what recommendation recommendations would you give to someone starting at a church this july and i'm uh take first shot at that and say well first thing is we're going to be having the passing the baton amade uh covid-19 workshop with jim ozier at the end of may and so the last week in may you can be looking for those announcements for both for the laity group as well as the new pastors and how can we make these pastoral transitions most effective during this season jim's been doing our passing the baton for the last few years and it's been it's been tweaked for uh to be contextual in this season but i'll also ask our two presenters if they have recommendations for uh persons who are going to be moving in this season oh and i did remember um one of the one of the assets of being a denominational church is also now seemingly our our liability i mean we are if powerfully unified connectionally an extraordinary delivery system but that would unfortunately if you're going to be an extraordinary delivery system you have to have a you have to have a product that people agree on and you have to have mutual decision-making and so um so the way to make the church into a delivery system will also have to be more profoundly local i think yeah well with that i'm gonna ask liana run hell to um to share her screen and bring up some of the unstuck resources we are also in a in a kind of a an odd space from where we were you know immediately engaging in that first level courage that that that john's article taught uh but there was also a thought how might this be a good season to help churches look forward in a season where some of your your congregants who are used to traveling for uh for work or having long commutes may have a little more time on their hands to be able to engage and and and looking forward and exploring who do we want to be when we return and so john the source that that john shared is a great way to start that that conversation the center for church development has partnered with unstuck to get access to their online courses to help churches in both um well two courses one being the helping the churches get unstuck and and going through mission vision values and your your processes and so forth as well as looking at going multi-site so i'm asked liana to to share her screen with everyone and share that website and then we will uh she'll share a bit more of how you can access that resource okay um thank you for continuing and i'm gonna ask mark to kind of jump in and kind of help me here because he is the expert in this area um here we have the website where you will see the unstuck resources there are various sessions and um as the center we decided that we would use mark and his resource to be able to help our churches during um i mean we did this we planned it before but now we can also utilize this resource during this time that we're facing i'm going to share with you just a few topics here there's uh a lot of sessions here session was is gathering and organizing clarity clarity and you know there's different steps to this reading components there's a video components this is very thought well thought out a program that you can do mark can you share with us a little bit about how your churches are utilizing this and what are some ways that you feel would be helpful during this time for our churches to maybe take advantage of this resource that we are providing for them yeah so uh one thing is there's no shortage of great content available to you whether it's unstuck resources or resources that are out there all over the place and so uh one of the challenges with content is that others so much of it and you've got a basically the essence of a uh almost like a college course here available to resources and it includes 13 sessions total there's a bonus session that's there we zoomed out as a team we've done strategic planning and we've gotten underneath the hood of you know scores of churches all over the country and there's uh themes that have come up over and over and over again and so there's 12 core sessions and a 13th one on leading change that really are these are foundational building blocks of the best practices and strategies and the biggest challenges that churches had if you can get these core building blocks in place uh it's a huge win for you and so everything from uh volunteers to discipleship to creating vision and uh leading change and scores of other topics are going to be really helpful for you so this is uh just this course that you're looking at here we have online it might be on special right now for something but it's around a five hundred dollar course and uh you know your conference is making this available to you as part of the relationship which is which is great I would recommend thinking of this as a 12 month process going through a lesson the lessons are really pretty easy and there's great resources there's a short video that you can take but allow yourself a period of time to get through them if you want to like be the uh fast paced learner you literally could watch and zip through all the lessons just to kind of get a lay at the land but uh so to watch a session bring it with your team some of your key volunteers in in process step by step over a 12 month process would be great and again uh it's a great resource for just the core foundational things that if you can do these things well it will help you take great steps toward being a healthier church and congregation it really will can you tell us a little bit about I know that someone shared with us online um the ability for people to get on how uh can we provide these resources for someone that may be um it's it's difficult for them to get online but they really want to take and take this church their church through this yeah if the online is difficult there's some pdfs that could be downloaded that are uh some of the talking points that are available there that we can walk through and make sure that the conference is uh able to do that okay and then one last question um how have you seen churches that have taken this what have you seen in the life of the church that has really enhanced it or what high opening things that you feel like going through this with a congregation has helped them oh there are so many things let's just talk about a couple of uh key things that are one of the most important things I think is key for any churches to have clarity of their vision and where they're headed and a conversation and this isn't a vision statement but one of the most important things is that as as we're discerning and praying and what is it that God has for us that what might our church look like in five years and if you think about that question and having that conversation around with you know four eight ten other core leaders around your team and to be praying through that uh there are tools and resources here but getting clarity of your vision uh what is this unique sense and direction that we believe God is calling us to and that we can start working backwards and building a plan to move towards that is one of the the key wins if I was a if I move into your community and I brought my family with uh some kids with me and I'm I get to choose a church from all the churches that are in the area and I uh one of my criteria is that I want to be part of a church that's got great vision that we've got the greatest mission on the planet and we get to take this swing at what God has put in our hands and I don't want to just grow old in my short time on this earth I want to be part of a church that is willing to take a big swing at what God has for us so what's your vision tell me about where you're headed what are you excited about what is this kingdom impact that we're going to be doing together and bringing clarity around that vision of where we're headed as a church is one of the key wins here and a lot of things come from that the second uh really important conversation to have is who is it that you're trying to reach uh as part of uh one of the key conversations that you would have as part of this is uh the common answer is that churches want to reach everyone we all get that but what we find is that churches that are actually more narrow and who they're trying to reach and have clarity around that do a better job of reaching everyone and that seems counterintuitive but getting clarity on who is it that God is uniquely called us to reach uh is another key component you get vision in place and get clarity around that and if you get clarity around who is it that God is uniquely called us to reach uh you're well on your way to taking some great steps and having great conversations with your team and some of those other modules really support those two big ideas yeah great well pastors i wanted to share with you um just this resource that we have available for you we are going to be creating a cohort where you can jump on we will give you these resources and be able to together grow and really start thinking and allies you know okay we may not be immediately getting back into the building but we need to start thinking okay well if you know we're running around if matt are you available matt is not here matt shared with me in our team and oh and you can jump in what was the word that he used that when when all of this happened we were kind of running and what was the word do you remember we were responding yes we were responding to a quick need we're trying to figure out get zoom innovative and now we're facebook savvy um but now we want to prepare and we want to be ready for what is to come for the grand reopening and so we thought that it would be a great way for you to utilize this research to start thinking about coming back but not only just coming back and the technicals about coming back or you're gonna do however you're gonna do it but also preparing your ministry as a whole to come back to be able to um look at your vision you look at your mission look at who you're reaching and kind of really tweaking that to prepare yourself to come back so we will be starting a cohort to please email me let me know if this is something that interests you if you want to join we can get a cohort going and start going through these things before we start reopening and then we're starting to re uh go crazy again trying to figure all of this out um so that is that's it for me well thank you lilyana um and I do thank all the presenters and I do think these are we have there's some really great resources that have been shared both from texas methodus foundation and from uh the unstuck group and again if you're interested in having uh holy conversations carol mcgomerick carol will you type your email into the uh into the chat for everyone uh so that they can have that and also taking those questions that john has and starting those with your leaders is a great place and if you're interested in going through the unstuck course we've we've purchased uh 15 subscriptions for that course right now and we can make more available if the demand is there and we're looking at gathering a cohort um we'd love to see a cohort of about eight churches to start or about that's about our key number for the recommendation of mark and so we'll be looking to get that that together in the future so um I'm not seeing any further questions coming up in the in the chat box and so in not seeing those let me express on behalf of everyone john mark this was very helpful and very thankful for your time and generosity of your time and sharing with us in the north texas conference and I find it very helpful and so for um and for next week again we're going to be looking at advertising the technology 102 we have the grant of gathering new faces in online spaces that is available and so some persons are like what will I do with $500 to to improve our online presence well next week we'll be talking more about that in that and so I know for some of your members and and some of us uh thinking about doing strategic planning in the season like this is is really hard and I think john captured it well that it's it's definitely second level courage so I thank y'all for for stepping into that space and exploring it with us today we thank god for the ministries that you're each engaged in and I'm on now call on matt temple from the center for church development if he will close us out absolutely I would be happy to um let us pray gracious god we thank you for yet another opportunity and um possibility in a world where we are isolated to come together and as god we move into um sort of this unknown I'm reminded of the name one of the names that Abraham gave you which essentially was the god who lives beyond the vanishing point god that you exist beyond the horizons that we can't see you exist in the unknown you exist in the places out of our control and we believe that not only are you present there but you're making all things subject to you in those places and so we trust your will we trust your leading we trust your guiding and I pray that we would be leaders uh that could prospawn god that we would be proactive in the way we lead through this time and um god we would be filled with vision intentionality um god that our strategy would be well thought and uh lord that we would be agile in in the midst of what is sure to be um a lot of new and uh unknown challenges and opportunities and uh we just trust you in that I thank you for this great group of leaders in the north texas conference and the work that you've done through them the work that you're currently doing in them and god the work that we're going to do together as we move forward in your name we pray amen amen amen hey thank y'all for responding with us today uh god bless y'all we sure appreciate you