 And then this means being recorded at the Center for Church Development, growing disciples and funding ministries, and it will be placed on the North Texas Conference website when we are done. So with that, I'm going to now turn it over to Joe Park, who's going to be our first presenter, and he's from Horizon Stewardship. And so thank you, Joe, for kicking us off. You are welcome. We appreciate the opportunity to be here today. You know, as we look at it from our perspective, working with thousands of different churches across the country, right now we're encouraging churches to focus on these kind of blocking and tackling steps first. And that is focusing on the opportunity. There is great opportunity to be the church. We are seeing churches that are thriving, given is up, worship is up, ministry participation, small group is up. And it is those churches who are seizing the moment and leaning into that, that are succeeding. And there's a great correlation between being able to do ministries and mobilize your church and those who are seeing high levels of ministry funding. And so everything else that I'm talking about is really predicated on the idea that you are focusing on those opportunities, your work in your discipleship path virtually, and that you have mobilized your church for ministry, such that when people are looking at what your church is doing, they are just so proud of the way your church is standing up, that you have flipped from what the church needs from you, if that was ever your focus to, you know, your web pages, what can we do for you? You know, working on defeating isolationism, getting people engaged, creating virtual communities. The other is online offering talks, promoting, reoccurring, giving, and communicating with your ministry and financial leaders in ways that are unique from the ways that you're also communicating with your church. And so I'm just going to kind of run a trailer, try to point you towards some resources that may be available for you, that are available for you. This is our new reality. I want to go back and show you this. This is giving365.com. This is a free on-demand resource library from our horizons. I'd encourage you to write that website down so that you can, if you want to access any of the resources that I'm talking about today, that you have this handy. So in there, you're going to see in the first folder a lot of information in the folder that is marked leading through coronavirus and social distancing. That is where most of the resources I'll be talking about today reside. You'll notice as you slip through some of those other areas that you're going to see. Like we've got a couple of dozen videos, how to, we've got articles that we've had published, blogs. All those are available to you. But today I'm going to primarily focus on the resources available that speak directly to how to do things in coronavirus. So this is our new reality in terms of our worship center, but there's all our people. They are still there just like we are gathered here today. And so how do we engage them on the funding ministry side? Now, this webinar is called Making Disciples and Funding Ministry, which is Horizon's tagline. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the discipleship piece of it, but if you are interested in that and its impact, I'd encourage you to visit with Blair Thompson. She has done a terrific job inside the context of what we call next level generosity and engagement on creating year round generosity plans. Well, that all begins with mission, vision, discipleship. And so if you just got questions, I'm sure she'd be happy to visit with you about that. So I must do on your online streaming and giving is intentional offering talks. This is a best practice. This is a top five best practice that we have at horizons in terms of developing cultures of generosity. There is such a correlation between churches that experience high levels of ministry funding and how well they do their offering moments in worship. And also the same negative correlation between churches who really put very little energy and effort into the offering. We frankly see a lot of negative correlation there. So what are we talking about with an offering talk? We're talking about two to four minutes in your worship service. And I'm talking about right now, while you're doing online worship, you should be doing an offering talk in that space, in that time. You're telling a story of impact. You're asking people to give. You're sharing with them exactly how they can give. And pastors, you need to be seen placing offering, your offering in the offering plate, not just online. But every single time there's an offering, you need to be seen doing that first. You want to be avoiding pressure, desperation and manipulation. And it needs to be a work for full and sacred experience and a time where you begin by expressing gratitude for the faithful giving in your church. So making your offering talks inspirational. Ideally, you're sharing a story of a single life that was changed instead of. So you're putting a face on it, as opposed to saying, well, you know, we had the youth group go out this week and they delivered groceries to 35 families start with a family that receive groceries and tell and tell their story and then say, there were 35 janets that we helped this week. So start with a story, put a face on it and work your way back into other facts like how many you have you want to make how many participated make it relevant to your setting and where possible share measurable outcomes, not just the activity, but the outcome. So the activity was delivering groceries. What was the outcome? What is the difference that those people are experiencing in their lives and their relationship to Jesus? Be sure and use video and scrolling. I think, let me say that it is, it is my belief that online church is here to stay. We are training people to do, to experience church in their pajamas. The churches who have been doing this well in the past are typically seeing about 20% of their regular tenders who weren't for whatever reason and worship with them that Sunday. Attending and so if you are thinking this is just going to blow over in a couple of weeks and be done. I think you're going to be, I think you're going to be missing the boat so I'm encouraging you to think in terms of investing in what that experience is like. Include stories that of people whose lives were changed because they serve. So we take that same example you could have taken and told the story of, you know, Tim who's one of your youth who life was impacted because they were delivering groceries and you know you had 17 Tim's in your youth group that went out and made a difference. Also make these teaching moments about biblical generosity. If you think about the kids time in worship, a lot of times that message that whoever's, if you have a children's time, that message may be the most important point that somebody walked out the door with. These can also be teaching moments you want to be clear about the ways to give. Here's an example of what one church put on its website showing how you can give through a variety of different ways. You can make them interactive, especially if you're using Facebook live. Your curator down the side in the chat box can be posting different ways to give. You can ask people to share the way they're given. You can ask them if you are now in this and this moment you're an online giver or recurring giver or you give to our church and you're celebrating that worship with that act of worship of giving online with us. You know, send us a thumbs up or an emoji face and the screen can be filled with people who are responding. Also, don't want you to forget your audio audience. So when you're giving instructions be sure you're saying them to them in a way that they can hear it and then consider sending a preparatory email on Friday beforehand with giving instructions and I've got an example of that here that I'm going to play for you. This comes awfully close. It's a strange season that we are in as we continue to not be able to meet in person and in lots of kind of ways and obviously here at the church. We have moved all of our worship to online services for the next couple of weeks and we'll be monitoring that as we go. It's our goal to keep the people of our community safe and love our neighbors as best we can. In the next couple of weeks, please join us at a huge turnout and a wonderful worship experience last week but we want to join you at 1045 am on the live stream for worship or later on in the week when you can watch. We anticipate that this will go on a little bit longer. So that's one of the reasons I'm coming to you today. I want to talk to our church members and attenders and faithful givers of the church to continue your financial giving to the church. Many things are still happening in the life of our church this week right now. We are a pickup location for the kids in our community run in the backpack program. We are continuing our efforts with the tornado relief of the city of Mount Julian and the county of Wilson County leaders in that way. We're providing financial assistance to people who've lost their jobs attached to the church tornado as well as coronavirus we're meeting with our students online every day and on and on I just wanted to know the church is still going. And so I just wanted to share with you three quick ways that you can continue to give to Providence, since we're not here with the basket on on Sunday morning so the first one is this, you can give online by visiting Prov.church slash give Prov.church slash give. That's a way that you can give on online. It's also a way that you can set up a reoccurring gift to the church. That's what Rachel and I do. We every month have that come out automatically. And if that's not something you've done yet for us, this will be a great time to do that just have that consistent giving you already get consistently. You can go ahead and move to an online way of getting you can do that on our website, Prov.church slash give. If you need assistance and learning just kind of how to do that, which buttons to push you can talk to our bookkeeper Mary Joe McElrady will be available. You can call the church office at 615-773-7862. Talk to Mary Joe or leave a message for her and she'll call you back and walk you through that. The second way you can give any time is by texting Prov.church to 777-977. I know you've got that information on the screen there. So that's like on Sunday morning during live stream if you want to still give in the worship moment you can just text that number and give and that way it's really simple and easy. And finally, this digital stuff isn't for you and you like to write a check. We love checks. You can mail your gift to Prov.church at our address 2293 South Rowland Road and that is in Mount Juliet. So I just wanted to remind you of those ways to give our church is in a really strong financial position because of your generosity. So it's not a panic mode or anything like that, but we want to stay in that place and move into 2020 in a strong way. And so I just wanted to give you that information about how you can give. I hope to see you in the way that we can see you this Sunday 1045 for our live stream. Love you guys. We're praying for you. We are still here for you. Contact us in all the normal ways. Take care. So you see that the ways to give all laid out there. This is something you can send in advance of in advance of your weekly worship. You can do it on Friday, put your work for bulletin with it, but you set that up. Other things that I want to cover. I'm going to be running short on time is recurring giving the main thing is not electronic giving the main point is to get people to give on a recurring basis. That's where you see increases and in generosity, you can see some of the statistics about how he givers and recurring givers participate more they give more and we have in giving 365 in those resources I talked to you about today. We have a guide to promoting recurring giving it is basically walks you through the process it gives you all the steps that that you need and any church can get to 50%. We're seeing in this moment I have churches that were at 85% recurring giving, meaning on the first day of the month, primarily they get 85% of their funds. We're seeing those numbers where people are are doing this program jumping from 4050 60 into the 70s and 80s because they're they're making their case on that. And the last thing is to stay connected to your to your leadership, your leader, your financial leaders, those are the 5% or so of your church that gives you somewhere around 40% of your giving. When you mix your seeded ministry leaders in there with it, then you're you're really talking about in most churches somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 80% of your total giving is coming from this group, but they represent less than 20% of your total givers. So somewhere less than 10% of your active households in the church in the typical church so be communicating with them staying close to them, particularly your financial leaders. Don't start with an ask start with how are you doing, be their pastor first and develop channels of communication that are directly pointed to these groups, because they're the ones that you're going to be able to leverage as you go forward and roll out to change when the church gets reenergized together so there's there's webinars already in that, giving 365 on every one of those topics today. So one of our ministry strategist and I are doing one for a webinar for TM math, where we're going to spend almost an hour focused on the offering talk answering Q&A is related to that and that begins at two. That begins at two o'clock today so I appreciate the time that you've given me, and I'll turn it back over to you Owen. Well thank you Joe and we sure sure appreciate this we're gonna run a lot of helpful a lot of good information and people in the chat room are asking to see if we might can get access to the to your presentation and Joe that you saw, that's Jacob Armstrong at Providence Church and Mount Juliet, they're a client church and and doing really really well that piece is in there today and we're also interviewing him about his experience and so we'll have that and the leadership email that we're sending out each week if you sign up for giving 365, it will automatically sign you up for that resilient leadership if you're not getting that information also on our homepage horizons.net. We've got about 30 links related to COVID-19 leadership and COVID-19 the PPP loan program. Those are not horizons links they're just links from around the around the web PPP funds ran out today going to be a lot of interest in whether you should continue to apply. We'll be addressing those things next week we'll have interviews with leaders, attorneys and CPAs who will tell you how to make sure that your accounting is correct to set you up for forgivable loans so that'll be coming out next Wednesday. Fantastic wonderful resources there and Joe I thank you for your time and for being here with us. Our next presenter has given a lot of time thinking about offerings and writing about offering to some books. And with Texas Methodist Foundation we have Reverend Melvin Amerson and so with that I will turn it over to you, Reverend Amerson thanks for being with us. Thank you, Owen, and thank you for allowing me to be a part of this panel. Just want to share some thoughts and ideas about this time and season that we find in ourselves in. This time and season can be extremely challenging to churches large and small, in particular minority churches. I want to share some ideas with you ministry ideas to engage and encourage and inspire your congregation to the ministry, not just for today season but moving forward beyond pandemic. When I think about this time. I always think about thinking outside the box, but I challenge pastors and laity, not only think outside the box, but proceed to shred the box so you will not be tempted to jump back in. And so we're trying new things with this pandemic many churches or embracing technology and electronic giving, which is great and beyond that you can expand ministry in great ways, using technology. It's a time and season to grow disciples in ways through the use of video conferencing teleconferencing and Facebook live for a moment consider partnering with other congregations in areas of programming. A person can host a webinar anywhere. If a colleague or member of your church or another church is gifted in the given area. Explore the possibility of leading a Bible study or ministry offering via the web or webinar, invite another congregation to participate in programs that you're offering at your church or study. Travel is not required during this season. And so this gives us the opportunity to be in community with our brothers and sisters throughout the conference and throughout a connection. It's a time of season for what spiritual formation. And growth, along with extreme ministry makeover. The number of things that we're doing today will continue in the future. Some things we may not ever go back to doing as part of our ministry. So this is a great opportunity to be creative and innovative. Largely since we're confined to our homes. We have a number of opportunities to connect and minister to our members also to the immediate and broader communities in different ways. It's time. At this time, we don't hear the same excuses why we don't attend Bible studies and so forth. We're at home. And so I think is a great opportunity to extend ministry opportunities to our members who are homebound. Think about creative ways to offer classes, studies and meetings. These are opportunities for ministry. Yes, sometimes we have to be creative and think beyond our comfort levels and comfort zone to do things new. And so this is forced upon us, but I think it's a great thing to embrace. What are the things I would challenge a congregation to do during this season. I would challenge them to do an online church wise spiritual gifts inventory. Discipleship resources has an excellent resource for that. I would have take the inventory, test and put it in a category, profile it, put in database and begin to think about new ministries that we could put together post pandemic and how we can grow ministries and develop new ministry opportunities for our congregations. Allow people to be involved and engage. And so that's one thing I would highly recommend Bible study. We can offer multiple Bible studies, topical Bible studies. And because people are at home, they're there available and during the season, people do not have as many distractions if they have in the past. So this is another opportunities with spiritual growth in the life of the church prayer ministry groups. There's another opportunity to develop a new ministry or expanded personal finance classes or classes on plan giving budgeting. Those are also some opportunities for new courses may not have those professionals in your congregation, but there's several congregations that have members will be willing and ready to share the gifts with other congregations doing providing webinars and doing things. Teleconferencing and video sharing and so forth is opportunity to really expand your reach to offer things to your congregations and new and fascinating ways. How about a book club study book or the Bible study a fictional book or nonfiction book or book about travel. Those, that's a great opportunity to get people together to form new friendships and new relationships in different ways. What about classes on drawings probably have an artist in your congregation willing and ready to share the gifts. Many of us or in our homes, unable to share our gifts with one another and have an opportunity to do it in a special way a unique way. People are willing to do things that they normally would not have time to but willing to share during this season. Take advantage of that and allow people to share their gifts with others. This is also a great opportunity for strategic planning or discerning your congregation's purpose. During this season and the season to come post pandemic. These are all great opportunities to expand your ministry to think about things differently. Moving forward in the season to come to new season will come. And so we need to be prepared to do new things. And since we shredded the box that we're so accustomed to that comfort zone has been shredded. And now we have opportunity to do fascinating great ministries moving forward. And I'm going to move into the last part here. Funding ministry. I'm very passionate about stewardship and generosity, and, and Joe did a phenomenal job talking about generosity but I'm not going to share a whole bunch about it but I'm passionate about helping people uncover and discover their passion of generosity the spirit of generosity. This during this season, some people unfortunately some people lost their jobs. But we realize as clergy giving and generosity centers all under pastoral care. People are members, we need to visit with them during this season, we have to check on their well being. Check on them and see how their families are doing how they're doing spiritually and how they're doing financially how they're doing in this new time for them. So Pastor be there as their shepherd. And that's so vitally important. People give and give generously when they know their pastor cares about them. And so that is so vitally important and we should do that in and out of season, not because of the pandemic, but we should do that in and out of season. And that's one of our calling out of location to check on people and be there and be present in every facet of their lives. One thing, how I look at giving, giving is an act of worship and an act of gratitude. Giving should be part of every worship service online or recorded serves and we need to be intentional about the offering. Be intentional share stories celebrate the offering use scripture use human be proactive and be creative. We have to develop spirit of generosity within people, allowing people opportunity to give back to God, and showing that gratitude for all that God has done for them, but being intentional. And one thing we have to give over our fear factor sometimes talking about generosity. Let me say something briefly about electronic giving. We need to set the example. As Joe mentioned, the members need to see pastor their pastor, put money in the offering plate or check in the offering plate. But I will also share this. We're encouraging electronic giving. How about you making a gift on your smartphone doing a worship service. As you invite persons to give during the service and actually use your smartphone and making a gift. Leaders lead and pastors members look for our leadership. That could be a very great inspiration for a person to take that next step to giving generously and giving electronically, particularly in this season. And that's the way the future and many, many are growing and going toward giving electronically. Many of the things that we do paying bills often electronic. There's also a group that still writes checks. And some also give and support to the ministry of church through money orders. Provide offering envelopes provide envelope. Posted paid envelopes mail those to their home so they can participate in offering and mail a check back or money order back to support the ministry of the church that they love. Give them that opportunity. The churches are struggling as many as some are struggling, mightily, but not all families are suffering from this pandemic. Some have the opportunity to work at home. And now they have reduced expenses because they're working at home. They were working outside of home and having to transport themselves to and from work to home. They have ability and opportunity to save money. I was on the call from a boy that I sit on and we were just sharing stories and one lady said that a couple of families. They were working from home didn't have childcare and it was a number of expenses they didn't have. So they were able to accumulate some savings. And what did they do. They decided to write a check and fund their church and also some other nonprofit ministries that we need. So those are opportunities for us to really make a difference and not just look at this time as a season of scarcity for some is a scare opportunity to share the abundance with those who are in need. We need to be together as body of believers. There's someone who needs our help need our resources and we need to be present for them. Those are just some opportunities for us to make a difference. Remember the ministry opportunities grow your ministries so you can grow disciples faithful disciples who will be out there. A difference in the life of the community. And I just want to share that with you and thank you for your time. Thank you Reverend Amerson. We really appreciate it and appreciate you taking time to be with us. There's a lot of ideas in there and remember this is going to be recorded. So if you want to go back and connect with this on the website and go through some of those ideas because there's a lot of great information there. So we want to have a balance of having some experts and again I shared Reverend Amerson's books in the chat there and having Joe Mark people who when you are doing and pastoral visits preparing sermons. They're thinking about stewardship fundraising financial discipleship and so it's good to have those experts. We also want to have some North Texas Conference practitioners and when I pitched to the cabinet that we are looking for some practitioners who are engaging in financial discipleship and stewardship with their church under these under the coronavirus season. Who is doing it well the two names that floated to the top were Reverend Cassie Wade and Reverend Andy Stoker and I am very blessed and happy that they are able to join us. They both come from very different contacts and so we're going to be able to have a medium size county seat church as well as well I guess I guess first Methodist Dallas is also a county seat church. It is definitely an urban center in a different church and so I'm going to ask Cassie if Cassie will start. Thanks Owen. Yeah I was this so far has been really interesting to listen to both Joe and Melvin share their insights into giving and and I have to say that we have really pulled on those resources as we have met this time. We were as Owen has said we're a county seat church but we're a small town county seat church and mostly a rural county. And so when this all came into being we had none of of the online hardly any of the online resources ready to launch right so the challenge was to how fast can we get this up and running and and make a difference and make it not only doable but something that was engaging and that people wanted to be a part of not knowing how long this was going to be. We anticipated and planned for six weeks we said gee let's look at this as a short term six week process what are the key elements that we want to present to our congregation during this time and so leadership and Ricky Harrison and I got our heads together and we kind of came up with them. Four areas of priority. We wanted to be able to worship and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more here. Do pastoral care and do some kind of connecting or spiritual growth component and then be very clear about our giving. With regards to worship I'm going to start there and talk about as we thought about it do we we have two different worshiping environments currently running at our church we have a most traditional in our old historic downtown church sanctuary that is 100 years old and beautiful but we don't have a lot of electronics in that did we want to do something traditional or did we want to do something more modern like our concrete mission with a band and things like that and what we decided was that we really wanted a middle road something that was neither traditional nor modern or blended and unique pulling out elements of each of those so that it would be different and that people from both congregations both worshiping communities would fill at home and find elements of each of those and what and we were intentional about making the time also different from our regular worshiping hours and we did that so that thinking long term if this is successful perhaps we could continue some kind of online worshiping component but would not conflict with our in person worshiping components and so we chose a different time. We also simplified the format a lot we felt like it would be too busy to do just a regular worship service that had all the various components that were used to on Sunday morning so we started and we kept it pretty simple. We knew the components needed to have some inspirational moving music something that people could not only engage with but also pray with. We knew that we needed to encapsulate the entire worship experience in this in this environment of prayer because in this time of uncertainty people are searching for prayer and new ways of understanding how we engage in prayer. We also wanted to of course give a message of encouragement through the word and be very intentional and very clear about opportunities to give and what that looked like. So we started with a Facebook live that was what our technology at the time was able to do in such a short notice. So we started with Facebook live we had to Facebook pages that were not really attended well because that's not our environment our environment is mostly face to face out here in in wise County and so Facebook we had to kind of begin to promote it and get live on those Facebook pages. We had some technology tapped in our congregation that could help us understand some of the nuances that was more than what I was able to do which is simply go to a Facebook page click the live button and begin to talk right. So we knew we wanted something a little bit bigger than that we had a camera in our modern worship space and so we intentionally use that space with that camera and we used our technology people to help us connect that camera into our live feed. But one of the things we learned right off is you know we were we were it was pretty rough the first couple of weeks I know many of you I bet I can look around and see many of you had some rough starts to this so online worship stuff. And so there was glitches it didn't stream well we didn't understand why a lot of that had to do with that bandwidth in a rural setting as opposed to an urban setting or sub urban setting but but we were able to kind of just work together and get through those and we used a lot of humor to help us get through that rather than frustration rather than pointing fingers and allowing that to get the best of us we we laughed our way through that and that was that was what probably got us where we are today we're now four weeks in and we've doubled what we what our views were the first week and so we're feeling pretty good about that. We intentionally changed up that worship environment so so even though we were using the space that our modern worship was in we changed the setting we put more traditional elements in it to engage our traditional worshipers we use different musicians every week is some different kind of music we've had everything from gospel to very traditional him sings we've had more contemporary music and modern music so we've every week we brought in different people to do music and I think that has helped to engage a broader audience across our whole spectrum as we've gone into this. So we you know we're still learning from that but we're having a lot of fun what what it has allowed us to do is learn how to engage in this elect in this online world. Not only on Sunday morning at 1030 each week and inviting people back at that same time in the same location in their living rooms but we've learned how to capture information of our congregations families in their living room by getting them to send us pictures by inviting them to engage with us some way and we have captured that and then reuse that to invite other people to join us throughout the week in all kinds of settings so that's been fun it's been challenging but it's really been fun to see how that's rolled out. We were concerned about pastoral care one of the areas that that I was particularly concerned with is a is our demographic that would be probably the most impacted by this virus the soonest and that would be those who were any any of the vulnerable populations they took to sheltering at home long before the sheltering at home. Commands were put out there and policies were put out there so we wanted to be intentional and many of those people are are what I call active retired people that really the church runs on right. So these are our folks that are up at the church every single day. They're the ones that we can count on to stuff envelopes or do whatever. And now all of a sudden their whole world is is confined to the walls. We're not always the most tech savvy so we wanted to make sure that we engaged with them in a way that would help them still connected. So almost immediately we rolled out a pastoral care. What we call telecare ministry just popped up overnight people said hey I'd like to make telephone calls I engaged them immediately sending them names of every person that attends our congregation. They sent them names of anybody over the age of 70 and some of them even got calls and said hey you know I'm I'm okay like you know you would see me normally at church I'm just staying in right now but but we continue to do that on a regular basis and then we have a lot of information back to the pastors or to other people. Another thing that spontaneously popped up in that area was a lot of our younger people wanted to help. Is there any way that we could run the errands and so we called doorstop drops popped up and we have now people that are in queue waiting to run an errand for someone who feels like they can't get out and maybe pick up some milk or eggs or something like that the grocery store and then we just drop it at their doorstep. And a lot of other fun things came out of that time we've intentionally made calls to the people that we normally visited at the nursing homes and those who do not have phone phones we have intentionally written them weekly letters so we've been pretty intentional about making sure that people feel connected. If they cannot feel connected. The other thing that we were able to get our hands wrapped around pretty quickly was zoom it seemed to be an easy fast way to implement we we made the decision that because we were not going to be at the church. And we would turn down all the electricity we would lower the utility bills in order to increase the cost in our technology area so that we could intentionally buy the licenses that might be needed for zoom Sunday school classes or zoom children's programs or zoom youth programs and we have made that technology available to our leadership and to each of the Sunday school classes and I've got such a delightful story to share with you. One of our classes that's been around for a long time and has the oldest members is a woman's class called character builders, the youngest woman in there is around 80 and the oldest is 98. And they would normally meet on Sunday morning in their Sunday school class surrounded by the crosses that they have collected over all of the years and they will love on each other and do their coax berry study just faithfully. So when zoom came in came on the scene we invited them to be a part of that, not knowing how they would react and these ladies have embraced it. So the first time we had our zoom session with the character builders class there was about nine of them that showed up. And they were everything from their smartphone to iPads or computers that their kids and help them set up. They were delighted to see each other's faces and they laughed and held each other in in prayer and uplifted each other. And the funniest story that we have out of that is a story of a woman who cannot figure out how to get her camera to turn right side up. She attends every zoom session upside down, and they love her in her upside down state the same way that they love her in her right side up. So they have continued to be now that I think last week they had 15 of them joining them on a zoom. So it's been fun to watch that our kids as young as five years old behind an iPad. That's a big problem for them. They've been doing Sunday school together, and our children's minister has been running around dropping off packets for them to show up on Wednesday to do their Sunday school together and creative things in our youth area as well. We've used this as an intentional spiritual development tool zoom. We've also launched a couple of new groups for people that might be new to our online worshiping. They have an opportunity to click a link right in the Facebook page that says connect with us and we get them hooked up on a might be like a live group. There's two of those forming right now and so we've continued to do that and engaging them in what we talked about on Sunday. So if they were there on Sunday, then when we get together, we talk about that same scripture and we go into more depth and prayer on a and get to know them personally. So the other thing that I wanted to just mention briefly here was not briefly I really want to be specific as we were intentional about our giving. So we are a church that had a website and we had a link to online giving, and we had kiosks we felt pretty good about those three things, but probably less than 10% of our giving came through those mechanisms. And so we realized pretty quickly that if we were going to do this for any length of time we needed to get on board with being very clear about ways that you continue to be intentional in your giving. So, as we looked at the website we realized that in order to get to the giving you had to know to drop down a particular menu and get drive over to this giving link right. So, early on we realized that our website kind of the front page had to be revamped and I'm just going to share quickly that page with you now. And you can see how this is a traditional website with at the top just some banners that go across, but you had to kind of know how to navigate to find things on there. And so one of the things we realized pretty quickly is that we needed everything we did everything we talked to to be one click away. And so when they go to Decatur Methodist.org, they can join us for live worship, they can request financial assistance, they can ask for a prayer and they can give online. The three things that we felt like were important in this time and this season are right there one click away so you know that was for us, we realized pretty quickly that people were we would say go online and find and then people would say we can't find it and that was our feedback so so we help them with that a little bit. Okay and and but and then when it came to telling the stories when we got to the to the giving portion of any worship. We did exactly like what Joe was talking about. We told a story. We started the first week even by saying Ricky stood up and said I received an email earlier this week from someone who says hey I am doing great during this season. He asked us to have a job and I have a few extra dollars I would love to give to somebody in need how can I do that. And so he continued from there he talked about how can you give. And so every week we have used one story or another to compel people to continue to give. And we have also not tried not to forget that some people still give a check like Melvin talked about many of our givers still come in their faithful they give regularly but they're going to write a check rather than click on a digital link and put their credit card information out there so we've been intentional as well at saying our address every single time we meet. It's here's how you can give online and and it's pretty simple link. It's at DecaturMethodist.org slash give or it is you can send a check to P. It's a real box 302 Decatur and I mean it's so that air that just rolls and we say it often and we say it succinctly so that people can get it and know that they're giving every week we tie it to our mission or to the theme of whatever we're talking about in the future. So if it's a story about giving in our worship theme then that's what we tie it to. If it's not we always tie it to our mission statement which is to make disciples for Jesus Christ. So we talk about that. We plant that idea in their minds. How can I give and so far we've been fortunate. One of the lessons that we learned early on was when we told the story about generosity towards giving for others in need. Then our first initial week giving came in in spades towards our fund that gives for financial assistance so it was designated rather than undesignated. We realized that in this time of crisis people are generous in specific kind of ways and so we had to kind of dial that storytelling back and talk about ways that that we need to continue the ministries and ongoing ministries and so we did that through the stories of how our children's director ran around each of the homes and gave Sunday school packets to the kids so that they could jump online and that's the way you continue to support the ongoing ministries of our church even though we can't gather in person. So we've been really intentional about that and and so far it's been pretty good. We continue to also tell and remind people that this is a season where not all of us are fortunate to have our economic have no economic impact or fortunate to work at home or and but there are those among us who might not be so fortunate. So if you have extra we invite you to help with this time in this season through giving more generously but we we're starting to launch an idea of giving reoccurring and so Joe I really appreciate that and Melvin both of you've lifted that that is so important. This reoccurring giving and whether it's $5 or whether it's $50 this reoccurring giving is a is a characteristic of discipleship and we continue to focus on what it means to be not stewards because they don't always understand that but what it means to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ and to develop their discipleship in that is to give generously on a on a consistent ongoing basis. Just one more thing before we go I want to lift up something Melvin said was one of the things early on as we realized in this particular county we've got many churches that are so small. And so we reached out to pastors of the smaller congregations and we said how can we help. How can we help you launch technology that might be helpful. And so we've been working alongside some of them to not only help them launch their own technology but if they decide they can't do their own technology and have their own worship services we've got a neighboring church that is worshiping with us but we are very clear that when they connect with us they are still members of their own local church and that they're giving should go to their own local church and that is the way we continue to take care of one another so I think this is a great time and a great season to reach out to our neighbors and continue to be the connected Methodist church that we are. So thank you for inviting me to share our story. I'm not sure it's all that innovative, but it has. It's been fun, and we are now gearing up for more than the six weeks obviously we feel like this is going to go on so it's fun to learn from each of you as well. I appreciate it and appreciate the perspective and the variety of things that y'all are doing to connect your congregations to this wonderful tip. And with that I'm going to now turn it to another county seat church, the county seat church of the county of Dallas and if Reverend Stoker will lead us in our final presentation. Absolutely. Oh, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you today. I am grateful for the time I have to share with you I'm going to go ahead and start sharing my screen here. So, so many great stories have been have been shared throughout our time together I wanted to back up just a little bit from my vantage point I'm a, I feel like I'm called to build a culture. And so I thought I'd just share with you a little bit of the culture that I've been trying to build at first church. The culture of connection. And one thing that I've been playing with the last seven years to my appointment is seeing our mission field as a playground. As some of you know, I'm a child developmentalist and family scientist at heart. And so playgrounds and children at play have been really a great gift for me to imagine how we see the church in a new way. And so, from the very beginning, I took on five, five ways of imagining how we were going to connect ourselves together that our building speaks welcome to our mission field. It's inviting and calls people forward that we're listening to our neighborhood. Now, our neighborhood as Reverend Wade knows is being a county seat church you your neighborhood is is broad. And so we see our neighborhood broad as well. Part of our conversations in the neighborhood became is also becoming aware of the pain of the neighborhood, be it racial injustice or further inequity. We develop a language of language of inclusion for all starting with children. This is an opportunity for us to fully embody the message of Christ in welcoming all all of God's children together, and then develop and reflect on a theological framework as a foundation for reconciliation, bringing people together. That's what playgrounds do the best, and then pray for open ears hearts and minds in and through our community of faith. So those are just some things on a very basic level that I try to do day in and day out at first shadow Methodist Church as I think of my position as senior minister. When I walk outside the doors I am representing not only a building, but I'm also representing a culture within that building. So part of the fun was when I first got there first time Methodist Church was not was not all that conversant in online electronic giving text to give. And so we dressed up our wonderful organist Tim Effler in the Uncle Sam outfit and we wanted to invite people for auto draft. And so this auto drafting became part of our our big push toward electronic giving. Once again being playful being fun. These were digital signs we had a social media push early on we sent postcards home to some of our older members to invite them to to sign up for auto draft. So fun, enjoyable using humor. I love that Cassie said use humor when you do this. This is a wonderful opportunity and it was good to see Tim's face for once and not the back of his head. So then we move to okay our website is is a resource for members and a welcome that so to speak for our next potential guest. Websites oftentimes are sometimes host insider language. What we tried to do about five years ago with our website refresh was to make it far more conversant with seekers and those who aren't familiar with United Methodist Insider Language so that that caused a little bit of anxiety because websites as resources websites for as a resource for our members was what what our congregation is used to. So, being more conversant. You'll see that at the very top of the website. This is our give page. Not unlike Decatur Methodist dot org slash give there is fumc Dallas Dallas dot org slash give. And so this is the give landing page on the give landing page it is clear on the menu that is across the top there's an opportunity to give every time. And so we then invited people to different levels of giving so click here to give now to set up your future giving this was our online focus. People could give to our stewardship campaign, our capital campaign, our first foundation which was established five years ago, they could even give for flowers here and then online giving. This is where I want to focus my attention for the next few minutes. Online giving so clicking the online giving button takes us to the online giving page where in you can see you can enroll in auto draft you can make budget donations ministry area donations. You can even give for the column barium, our first foundation, our good rich facilities fund and our rise fund. Each one of these has a click away as you can see, and that click away lands on a donation page that donation page I circled here for you to see that it's run by the ACS Technologies Company. ACS has been a great partner for our congregation and I trust for others to really help us integrate our website into a giving mechanism. It's helpful on the back end for our for our bookkeepers and for us to see where the that giving is landing. During this time of COVID-19, we've been placing this as a social media push over the last two weeks. Let me pause here and let you, I'll keep this page here and tell a very brief story. First guy Methodist Church of Dallas has for the first time in a little over 40 years of full time communications director. We hired her a year and a half ago, and we had had part time contract employees and volunteers running our communications and media ministry. It got to a point where I was, I was doing a whole lot more content building than I would, than I would have liked. And we hired almost Dr. Angela Patterson. She is all but dissertation in her, in her degree, which is spirituality and social media. So she has come in and transformed our congregation in the way we see ourselves. Joe Park will know that partnering with Horizon Stewardship, we were really successful in our capital campaign last year and our finishing. We were about two weeks away from being fully finished of a 47,000 square foot renovation, $10 million capital campaign. Last year. And Angela Patterson has done an amazing job for and with us our congregation. United Methodism in the time of COVID prayers presents gift service and witness. These are ways that we thought we could invite people to consider their membership vows, while at the same time, not. Well, at the same time being sensitive to those who have lost their jobs. So let me talk for about 90 seconds on social media for spirituality sake. And, and then we are trying to reach a variety of people of all ages and stages. And this has been a way of evangelism and connection for us. So our Facebook page, seven years ago, had 300 followers. We are we're cresting right over right right under 4300 followers today. It's a constant. It's a constant way for us to imagine and think and to think about where we are and how we're serving our, our broader playground, if you will, as in our mission field. This is our Twitter feed. So Twitter, you can see we have 478 followers. It's been a little less engaging but still trying to garner some followers using quotes prayer quotes, etc. Instagram has taken off if you're boy that's three pictures of me I apologize. I should have better vetted this. That is really something. And it's just goes to show you what an egomaniac I am. Those three pictures of me got the lowest likes mostly dislikes on our Instagram page. But using Instagram you can see we have 809 followers. This is a, this is a great translation for Facebook. Using Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, these three helps us to stay connected both from a discipleship standpoint and a giving aspect, because we can no longer open our doors for for our folks to come in and be welcome that way. So our website serves as that open door in this time of the COVID crisis. Let me just share one last thing. And I hope that there are some questions for our time together. During our push to to electronic giving, we decided to put these cards. Thanks to Patty Martin at Walnut Hill United Methodist Church. It was a privilege of serving Walnut Hill for a year where we decided that we were going to put these types of cards as well in the Walnut Hill pewbacks to remind people that even though you're giving online. There is still a physical act of placing a card in an offering plate. Also, we decided to really create a more robust ask letter, and then a follow up with thank you cards whenever anybody signs signs a pledge card to us that that they would receive a letter from our stewardship campaign chair. So having a letter from an LA person. This may be something you're already doing, but in our, in our experience, moving, moving from a clergy focused system to a lay focused system has been my, my greatest project at first church. This is the fourth year that we're sending our ask letter by our capital campaign chair, and then we simply send a sweet thank you card signed sometimes by all of our staff or just me depending on, you know, who's in the office, but a 25 cent stamp goes on those thank you cards and people are automatically responded to instead of a whole lot of whole lot of text in our asks, we decided that we were going to keep it simple and give simple breakdowns of where your funds go. This is just a layout from our, our physical brochure, we had an online brochure through constant contact, but this is a physical brochure where we basically were talking about the specific programs on how we are expanding a bigger table. You can see that it's, it's not, it's not necessarily about what's going on inside the walls of the church, but how outside the walls of the church we're connecting. We're connecting first church to our playground. So, I can, I'm more than happy to, to share any anything else during the question and answer period. It's an up is a great opportunity for me to share a little bit about what we're doing at first church and, and we always appreciate feedback on on our social media channels on our website. Just be kind about my haircut and the color of my tide. Apparently those are the two hot topics on social media and our website. So just be kind. We'll, we'll move from there. Oh, and thanks a lot for the opportunity. God bless you all. And looking forward to the conversation. Thank you, Dr. Stoker. We appreciate that. And again, we've gotten a lot, a lot of information from all of our presenters. And I saw like Rob Evans taking pictures and so forth. This is going, this is again, this has been reported. It's going to be on the North Texas Conference website. We have all four of our presenters here with us and we also have a lot of communal knowledge and experience on here with with all of the participants. And so now we're going to just open it up and to some to some questions and then sharing. And so we have a question here. Andy, can you share the name resource doctor that shared about spirituality and social media. Yeah, absolutely. She is my director of communication. If you go to our website fumcdallas.org. Her name is Angela Patterson. And we just got word right before we went into quarantine that she was all but dissertation so. So anyway, if you want to call her Dr. Patterson, she'll know she'll know where that's coming where that's coming from. But Angela Patterson, she is a phenomenal resource. I think I'm looking at Joe Park. Joe has met her and has seen her work. I think her horizons picked up a brochure. She's she's transformed the way we're thinking about things at first church. I highly recommend You're reaching out to her and she she's been a great gift. Great. Thank you. What other questions do you have? I'm looking in the chat box. And Not seeing any. Liliana, I don't know if you're meeting everybody. Everybody's just muting themselves, but we'll just open it up. Also, if you just have questions or if there's something that you want to share that you see is bearing fruit. Connecting people with stewardship ministries and in your church and your congregation, your context. I guess if you're able, you can unmute yourself and Liliana says everyone has the power to unmute themselves. So I want to invite you to unmute yourself and and share what you see is working in your church for people to engage in And their discipleship and giving At first grand prairie. We have been reassuring people that even though there is no one in the church building during the shelter at home orders that the mail is not staying in the mailbox so for the non tech savvy in our congregation. We're trying to reassure your check will not be left outside for a whole week. Anyone else. We have a question from Nathan Presley that says, Reverend away mentioned the smaller church. What advice do you give the churches that are small as 10 or 20 in this time of social distancing open to anyone on the panel to share. There are smaller churches. I'll share something with that. There's a church in Texas conference that invited some smaller congregations that didn't have technology to join them online. The pastors, all three of them share message why they online video Facebook live and that's how they reach not to churches so that their members can actually see them if they actually have Online capabilities of viewing a service. So that's just one way that again partnering with other churches to share the word and share ministry. Thank you. Someone early asked about text giving and it was shared that band co has a text option planning center is another and it's one that Oakland is using network for good is what union uses and I know there's some there are some others out there anybody else has other text giving means feel free to put that on there. So can Benson asked Andy Kathy, are you emailing your members on a regular basis on church activities program services, etc. If so how often we do a weekly newsletter at North Haven, UMC, but not much more. Should we do more. And let me let me answer we went around and around about this very question, the first week. So we were sending a weekly newsletter, we decided to shift during this time to sending a newsletter Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Thursday would be Thursday's edition and a weekend edition of our newsletter. We broke down our newsletter across our three planks of our mission. Gosh now. I can't remember our mission. Where am I, where am I. So we are grow disciples, connect communities and serve our world. So there is a grow disciples piece which is a daily ritual for families to engage in a prayer, a craft, something that gets hands moving or something like that. Connect communities is a video a very short video from one of our lay members about what's going on in the life of COVID or what their job is at the church or a musical piece and then serve is anything from Dallas ISD to North Texas food bank, etc. Those are going out Monday through Thursday. Then we decided instead of streaming all at the at 11 o'clock at a specific time we decided at 845 which is the time of our first service at first church that we would put the venue link on our website on the worship landing page so that people could at 845 log in. So making sure that folks have some freedom in that. For example, our Easter services. We had 600 viewers after 1pm on our Vimeo page after 1pm on Easter. It's it's fascinating that boy we would have only had 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock so we've decided to make it far more engaging both with our newsletter that people can either ignore or far more accessible on how people engage our worship. So I'll just did we're doing we do an weekly weekly email newsletter but it has a distinct look it doesn't look like our regular one. Or the concrete mission one so we have we used to have two that went out to different groups now we kind of combined and so we we have branded it differently during this season so that it looks a bit different and we've kept it pretty simple in those areas that we worship. Way to connect spiritually way to give those kinds of things every single week and where to prayer for each other. We have in addition to that because we were right up on Holy Week Holy Week we did a lot of that interactive stuff Andy. So now I guess our conversation will probably switch now there was such a great impact on that daily engagement either through that two ways to engage we had a every day we did a interactive stations of the cross on our Facebook page where people interacted with that Facebook post and then the other way that we did was we sent out weekly or devotionals from different staff people. So now our conversation is changing today how are we going to continue to engage people more frequently throughout the week so those are great ideas and I appreciate those. Penny Martin shared that they had they are promoting that they're outside mailbox it's locked encouraging people to go by and drop off their gift. We had another question about has any church received backlash for asking people to give in a in this time that we are living. No, we have we have almost experienced something different. We have experienced one in that we have experienced people that haven't given regularly in the past are giving more regularly now so they're in. You know I think crisis brings out with people in a couple of different ways it makes them more compassionate or it makes them hang on tighter and you know pull in tighter so but we've not experienced that we've experienced the generosity. We've experienced people giving more because they know which church family members are maybe hurting and so we've seen some you know three and four hundred percent increases and what they're what their online giving is been. And the same thing we're still getting a lot in the mail that comes through and I like the idea of sending up the prepaid the postage stamped envelope we're going to we're going to put that into effect. Here. Very cool. Zach. I might get on mute and turn on your camera if you haven't and share the idea you're sharing and also your superintendent shared with me that you did an interesting giving about people driving by and you're like sitting at one side of the table and they're sitting at the other and I don't share about what you're doing. Okay so what I'm at half first year I'm at the church of house so it's a small town and country church and what we've been doing for a while with the audio is that we have this really small. I was trying to find it on Amazon, but I couldn't find one it's like $10 cube Bluetooth speaker where you can put one of those really really small thumbnail flash drives in and so what we've been doing to our homebound members is we upload the sermon onto that and it's it's a dummy safe because it only has an arm button and volume up and volume down until they turn it on and it instantly starts playing the service and so what we do is each person has to like a set of two of those and we when we drop one off we pick the other one up and so each week it's like a contact list drop off and pick up kind of like the old milkman type situation. And so they have you know they're they're a week behind but they're still getting it and it's audio only. And that's a way for people who don't have internet, don't have computers don't have smartphones. It's just a little brick that they can just turn on and they instantly hear the service and so with all the music and the sermon and everything. So we've been doing that for about a year. And we've and so now we've just done it used to be our care team that would deliver them in person and then have a face to face meeting every week as they dropped it off but now we're just dropping it off in a spot where we don't have contact because we do have a lot of people who are need to stay safe that way. But if you're also talking about the drive the drive through offering things since we're in Grayson County we don't have the technical shelter in place even though we are still abiding to a lot of careful considerations we have a little covered drive through and at the end of our church. And so I've been I've been telling people that we have an online all church Sunday schools zoom at nine and then I upload our video that we do pre recorded because small town we figured out after two weeks after the Cassie the trial and error of Facebook live when all six churches and how started trying to do Facebook live we just crashed each other. And we couldn't we couldn't even connect to Facebook is how bad it got in our little town. And so we decided to go pre record and then we upload it to my YouTube page and then have links on our website and our Facebook page and email out the link and that goes live at 10 which is our normal worship time and I tell people like I saw I've been at the church from 1115 to about 1230 and I'm on I'm I have a six foot table that I sit on one end and the other and sticks outside of the cover drive through and and so and I tell people do not get out of your car so they just roll down the window and I have a it's a it's a fountain bucket basically is what it had come from but it's really just a really big bucket and so at the end of that they just dropped their offering and and then I take it in and I just like kind of spray lice all over it so I'm not actually touching it and then I then I don't process the offering with then our treasurer processes on Tuesday so it's still technically had time to just sit there but they just kind of drive through then just say hello and and so we've been having Easter we didn't we only had two people but the other weeks we still had a lot of people that have come by and I invite them I have that time of offering and I've been remembering or telling people to you can respond now to watching the you know video and being with us in worship by having this act of coming up to the church and giving your offering so that's what we've been doing. Thanks. Can you put the link to that device and in the chat. I can put one that's like it. I haven't found the exact one we use and the one that we found is cheap but I'll put one that's like what we use. Great. Kevin Strimke shared that first Soto is posting devotional by lay members and again we're encouraging find every way you can to engage your lay members in ministry and during the season and that's a that's a great way to do it. I know Greenland Hills has been having members read bedtime stories for kids on on Facebook live and so find different ways that you can connect people with that. Mary Martin says Grace Avenue has their front door unlocked for people to drop drop off. Council Linda is sending out a pastoral letter every every week and more information on that other questions that we have while we're waiting for other other questions to come in. I will do a info commercial about what Center for Church Development is doing is next week we're going to be talking about gathering new faces and online spaces. We're redirecting all of our our new spaces and grants to helping churches develop online new spaces. And so some of the technology that's being being that is being shared whether that's having your own online giving whether that's just up in your hardware to be able to use a better camera and so forth. We're shifting our grants to enable for to help churches gather new faces and online spaces and so be looking for that to come out next week. We're in the process of redoing our application. We have 10 questions for the new spaces grants that's going to be cut in half and it's going to be integrated into the website and so we're going to be rolling that out next week. Next Thursday, that is going to be our topic gathering new faces and online spaces be looking for that and then in two weeks, we're going to start talking about thriving in a new reality and about understanding that. Leading beyond the Blizzard is one of the articles that's that's out understanding that there's not just going to be a day where the whole church opens up and everybody comes back and it's going to be business as usual. We really do understand that we are living into a new reality and how can our churches thrive and and be best prepared for this this new reality and so that is going to be in two weeks from now. We'll be looking for details on that sharing details with others for various social media. So, is there any final questions or anybody who wants to share you can unmute yourself and share if you if you desire. But I want to open it up in case any final questions or comments. I am hearing none. So, let me thank again, Joe Park, Melvin Amerson, Cassie Wade, Andy Stoker for this presentation we give you much thanks for taking time to be prepared. I think all of y'all from the ministry that you are doing it is I just tend to be inspired on how our churches are just moving in and adapting into the season and continuing to minister not only to their members, but reaching out to so many people through online media and so I thank God for you and appreciate the ministry that you're sharing and I'm going to ask Reverend Diana Masters if she's, if she will close us out with prayer. So, thank you all. Let us pray. Dear God, we give you much opportunity to be on the line and learn. We thank you for each person that so willingly and generously gave of their time. Oh God, we ask you to bless them as they were blessing to us. Best all of us, oh God, as we learn what it means to be the church virtually with you still being the head of our life and guiding us, oh God, we thank you for your love and your protection that you're giving us during this pandemic season. We love you, we worship your God and we ask that you continue to bless and guide us and let us follow the leading of your Holy Spirit in Jesus name, amen. God bless you all. Thanks for joining us.