2024 North Texas Annual Conference: Monday's Afternoon Session

[Music] Standing on the Promises of Christ my king through each Eternal ages let his Praises Ring glory in the highest I will shout and sing Standing on the Promises of God standing standing Standing on the Promises of God my savior standing standing I'm Standing on the Promises of God would you stand up and join us Standing on the Promises that cannot fail when the howling storms of doubt and fear ail by The Living Word of God I shall Prevail Standing on the Promises of God standing standing Standing on the Promises of God my savior standing [Music] standing I'm Standing on the Promises of God Standing on the Promises of Christ the lord B to him eternally by love stronghold overcoming daily with the spirit sord Standing on the Promises of God standing standing sending on the Promises of God my savior [Music] standing I'm Standing on the Promises of God Standing on the Promises I cannot fall listening every moment to the spirit call resting in my savior as My All In All Standing on the Promises of God let me hear it standing standing standing on the Promises of God my savior standing standing I'm Standing on the Promises of [Music] [Applause] God this session is now called to order please take your seats we're going to give everyone a few minutes to settle in one minute and then we can get started with a good word thank you for helping us come back into worship through the music all right next up on on our agenda Let's see we have um let's pray how about how about we pray before we come back where's the list of prayers that I've got Andy uh Linda mayber is Linda mayber here where's Linda there she is Linda can you open our session with prayer for this afternoon thank you so much thank you Bishop let us pray holy holy holy God we're gathered in this space By Your Grace we have experienced and risen above changes and doubt and storms because you are by our side we have stood fast because through it all you have been with us guiding and directing us we thank you for the vision you have pour into Bishop SS who is leading Us in this Mission possible now called The Horizon Texas conference God we ask that you continue to pour into all of us the wisdom the fortitude the hope that only you can give as we run on to see where the end will be as we with Hope and Faith and love toward all your children are convinced that you are indeed leading Us in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen amen thank thank you so much for that all right friend we we have a uh another young adult at our table this afternoon and this is Cari Atkins from Aral United Methodist Church and she's a sophomore at Aral High School welcome Carly and as we settle in is Michael Ginger here there is come on up up here M let me introduce so you are in for a treat I've I've known about Michael now for a couple of years he has uh uh he's been ma named as one of the wesan impact Partners lock Innovative leaders and so Michael is just uh a highly Innovative Pastor who doesn't know he's got no plan B right uh he just needs to get it done but I've heard Michael on podcast with the Texas Method Foundation I've heard him speak at a board of directors meeting and uh he is married he married uh like all of us do to his partner Mariah is she here today okay she's an occupational therapist at TIR Memorial at Herman and they have a 15-year-old dog named Crouton Crouton okay so Michael was uh appointed to a church in galson he's going to tell you this story so I'm not going to steal this thunder but I think his church had four people and he said they had a 50% increase when he and his wife showed up and so you talk about church growth right uh so Michael has the largest uh Ministry to the homeless in is it galison County yeah gson County and he has found ways to purpose and reimagine spaces and build Community Partnerships and everything else like that and I think you know one of the reasons that I asked him to to address this today is because we are in that space where we have to rethink so much of how we do our ministry I thought that covid-19 was going to help break out some of the the paradigms and the Frameworks that we had about Ministry and it did for for a couple years and then once it lifted we kind of reverted back to some sense of normaly but we need to keep pushing that edge because that and the edge is where the grace of God is often times right that that's where the that's where the Beyond Jerusalem and Judea and and Samaria and Judea and the ends of the Earth it's where for the ends that Jesus says I'll go with you right if you stay in Jerusalem you you're all you're on your own it's when you get out to the ends of the Earth that I'll go with you so so Christ goes with you with us as he goes to the end of Pope Francis of aissi talks about those that live on the outskirts of existence that's one of his main uh things and you know Michael has uh not not just talks about it in theory but he's a practitioner of it and he's going to share with us how that could happen in our spaces so without further Ado let's give Michael Ginger a warm nor Texas conf thank you [Applause] Mike well good afternoon North Texas annual conference what a joy it is to be with you and what a joy to know so many of you it kind of felt like a homecoming this week which is great so wonderful to see familiar friends and and faces I'm grateful that my talk got postponed because um coming off of the excitement of a uh unanimous vote and then being the barrier to lunch didn't sound like a great spot to be so this is this is much better uh like Bishop sign says I passed her a a teeny tiny Church in galston that could probably fit inside of this Sanctuary it's a small church that's doing really big things um and a Liv in galvaston don't listen to what Charles Barkley has to say about galvaston it's a great place with beautiful beaches um I hope you'll come visit sometime so um I want to tell you a little bit about my church my first keynote will kind of talk a little bit about about how we do what we do why we do what we do and then the second keynote we'll kind of look at some tools and tricks that you might use to um think about Ministry in your context and how you might do things a little bit differently so two disclaimers before we get started first um I'm going to share a bunch of stories about the Redemption freak show that is Central United Methodist Church everyone that I share about um has given explicit permission for their stories for their names for their images to be used I think it's important that we name that here because poverty tourism is a very real industry and exploiting folks that live on the margins is also a problem and so I want you to know that our folks usually I'm co- teing uh with one of our community members but that just didn't work for today so know that everybody's given permission for that and second um the worst thing that could possibly happen as a result of this keynote is you leave here thinking I need to go recreate the things that they're doing at Central I can't think of anything more lame and boring than you trying to do the things that we're doing and I hope instead you'll be inspired and think about what could we do I mean how does first Richardson become more first Richardson and how does arapo become more arapo and how does University witto Falls become more University if you try to become Central I think God will be very disappointed so may you become what you are in your own context I'd like to tell us a couple stories is that okay if I do that yeah great um Chris Mason grew up um cadd corner from the church and the projects that are right across the street from central and uh Chris had a pretty rough childhood he was exposed to violence at a really early age the first time Chris held a gun he was 7 years old his mom put it in his hand because he was being picked on by the kids at school and they would come and wait outside of his house with sticks and stones waiting to pick on Chris and his mom who's a tough lady named Hazel said we're not going to put up with this and so handed Chris's first firearm at 7 years old and he stood on his front porch marking his territory Chris graduated from high school but didn't have a lot of options and ended up joining the Marines while he was in the Marines he was asked to lie on behalf of his sort of Band of Brothers that he was with and when things came out that uh something sketchy had happened and Chris told the truth of what happened all of a sudden his brothers were no longer with him he was dishonorably discharged and sent back to the United States where prospects were even more limiting at that point Chris not knowing what he was going to do um joined a gang and very quickly became a gang leader he ran the 35th Street Bloods which is right across the street from where my church works and so if you were in Galveston 20 years ago you would see Chris posted up on the corner where he was selling drugs he's been shot multiple times um here's a picture of Chris I think we've got that up here um when I met Chris Chris I Googled him and this is what popped up was a a Houston Chronicle article violent career criminal arrested in galvaston if you were to show up at Central today and you were to come worship with us on Sunday you'd be greeted by Chris on the front steps of central where he would welcome you with all of his tattoos and uh he's got beautiful locks and he show you and your kids where the nursery is he's an amazing guy uh in fact just a couple months ago we'll put this up uh we baptized Chris which was is really special Chris is a part of our community and this is a TMF group that came down and visited with us about two weeks ago where Chris co-taught with me um about how to do Church differently and so you have this former gang member who's been turned into a greeter that's now welcoming folks into the kingdom of God and the question of course is how does something like that happen and and we know the answer it's it's Jesus when Chris first came to Central almost exactly a year ago today he walked up and he said Pastor Michael for the first half of my life all I've learned is war and I'm ready to learn peace and I said me too and I know the prince of peace and Chris began to learn about this Jesus and became a part of our community ultimately being baptized into our community and co- teing and so certainly has to do Jesus I don't want to undersell any of that but it also has to do with a community that has been trained to see Christ not as violent career criminal like the Houston Chronicle would have you believe but it's somebody who's some Precious Child of God who has unbelievable skills skills to be a gang leader means you have to have incredible management skills it's a lot of people to to take care of you got to figure out your outs um he was in the distribution business which means he knows a thing or two about business and marketing and advertising so what happens if the church gets a hold of that and takes those gifts and utilizes them for the betterments of our community and for the kingdom of God and Chris has done just that this seen differently um it reminds me of the story from Exodus with Moses in the burning bush do you remember this story Exodus or Moses is in the land of Midian and he comes across this bush that's burning and it won't go out and so he goes and he walks up to it and this Angel this messenger of the Lord begins to speak to him and tells him to take off his sandals because where he's standing is Holy Ground some 2,000 years later after that event in the book of Acts um stepen is preaching a sermon to the Sanhedrin and he mentions this story about Moses and the burning bush and here's what he says this is from acts 7 this is vers 29 to 30 it says Moses fled and became a resident alien in the land of Midian there he had become the father of two sons now in 40 years had passed an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Si in the flame of a burning bush I can't tell you how many times I've read that passage and the last year or two it it dawned on me that Moses had been in the land of Midian for 4 40 years before he noticed that burning bush and this is not in the scriptures but it led me to wonder for how long had that bush been burning and Moses hadn't been paying attention and it was only when he stopped and he paused and he took off his shoes that he realized that God was speaking to him in that very moment did the ground all of a sudden become holy or was the ground holy the entire time and Moses just woke up to the awareness right that everything is holy and everyone is Holy my friends there are burning bushes in every single one of our communities and every person that walks through the front doors of our church and the folks that are never going to walk through the front door of your church we need to have eyes to see we need to wake up my friend Renee who lives on the streets she really captures this beautifully I think this is not Church language but it's real where I live uh this was after a Resurrection sermon that I had preached this year and she decided to text me about my sermon she said Pastor Resurrection means wake the F up happy Easter Bunny Emoji right I love my people friends it's time for the church to wake the F up okay Bishop that's that's the only f word in my presentation I promise okay so yeah so so really my my whole talk my whole idea is just really simple I I think that Central has the spiritual gift of paying attention that's really all that we do and someone invites you today you're being invited into this too to this this ministry of paying attention of noticing burning bushes where other people see lack noticing abundance where other people only see scarcity you know maybe where you see a dumpster now we're looking for dumpster fires right so like this is is the spirit of God doing its thing let me tell you a little bit more about my church uh my church was started in 1885 by Miss Eliza Perkins I love that the United Methodist Church has always empowered strong women Eliza was not clergy she was a lay person and she started a mission Sunday school on Galveston Island in 1885 with 13 kids and three adults in her front yard off of 39th and Avenue I that little Mission Sunday school grew um from a membership of 16 and before long we'll put up this next slide thank you Tech Team for working with me by the way so that is not my next slide that one is though that's great um there might have been a couple more before that sorry guys or maybe not okay great so in 1957 this church had grown and membership had increased to about 853 persons from this Mission Sunday school I mean this was a thriving Church sort of the who who of everybody in Galveston um this church continued to grow and you can kind of pay attention to who is there um it might also be important to pay attention who's not there during this time robust children's ministry and choirs we can keep flipping through these um I love the ceiling fans that came up from the floor I thought that was really cool so um we had to put in a big fan because we' have air conditioning for a long time in galvaston and so this was just a retro throwback to the way things used to be um lots of children but again notice who's here and who's not not here um I was appointed in 2014 and the year before I got there in the charge conference paperwork um the pastor who was there before me wrote this he said we are facing a membership crisis that is difficult to overcome which was the understatement of the year because this was Central's worship attendance from 1975 to 2014 and that little teeny tiny dot right there uh that's when Bishop Huey said you know we should send Michael there thanks I call this the slide of Doom right is this familiar for I mean some of our churches I think are going through this and and really strong good church this is a difficult time to be doing Ministry and so solidarity um this slide of Doom so 2014 happened but I was intrigued by this I wanted to know kind of what happened what had changed so much in our community why did things look so different now than they did back in 1957 when there was a membership of almost a thousand and my wife Mariah who Bishop signs mentioned um really helped me think through this here's a photo of Mariah this presentation is really just an excuse to show you my family so uh Mariah is an occupational therapist she's one of the smartest people that I know she works at tier in the Houston Medical Center working with folks that have experienced traumatic brain injuries so folks with gunshot wounds to the head people that have experience Strokes brain tumors Mariah is the one that takes them from uh being minimally ious to going and living full and productive lives it's literally Resurrection kind of ministry in this photo she's working with folks from MIT to help design a robot that helps people that have had a stroke regain function on their affected side I mean just brilliant I'm taking the trophy husband role very seriously here so Mariah works with patients that have um a disorder that's called Aphasia are you familiar with Aphasia yeah maybe you were a loved one we have several members of our church that have experienced Aphasia if you don't know what aphasia is um it's a linguistic disorder um that whenever you have trauma to The Language Center of your brain which is on the left side of our head we've got broka area and Vern's area when we experience trauma to the side of our head it affects the way that we understand speech or the way we're able to produce speech and so there's two different kinds of aphasia there's expressive aasia and receptive aasia and so here's just an example this is my dog Crouton um like Bishop signs mentioned named after the delicious salad accessory and so if we're taking the word dog expressive of phasia would be I know exactly what a dog is I am not confused I am not stupid it's not that I've never seen a dog before I know exactly what a dog is and when I'm reaching in my bag my toolbox of language and I'm trying to find this word dog I cannot locate it so I might call it toaster I might call it cat I might call it Bishop signs I me whatever is in here I cannot find it but it's not a cognition issue they know exactly what they're thinking about they just can't locate the word the other version of aphasia this is way oversimplified is receptive aphasia so if you were saying the word dog to me again I know what a dog is when I see them but if you say the word dog to me I have no idea what you're talking about you might as well be speaking Spanish or Mandarin or some other language that's totally foreign to my experience it's nonsensical and it's meaningless and so I started thinking about this and what was going on in the life of our church and what I realized is that like Aphasia is something that's being experienced in the church as well we might call it theological Aphasia and I think there's two versions of this too both expressive and receptive and so instead of um dog uh we can play with this and do God instead right so I have people in my congregation who have had real experiences of the Divine they are not confused about they have met God outside the walls of these churches okay but because of a deficit of language or church language that no longer matches their needs outside of the walls they're digging around in their religious tool bag and they can't find any words to communicate what they've experienced outside the walls of the church and they often end up walking away or what I think is more common is this receptive aasia in the church where's where preachers like me get on stages like this and use a bunch of words where people think what the hell is he talking about right he's been talking for 30 minutes and I don't know what he's saying because it doesn't connect to anything in my real experience outside of these walls and again I think the option for folks is to step out of the building right like Elvis people have left the building I think this is what we're experiencing right now and of course AP fasia is called by trauma and so we can think over the last five years I don't know if you've read about this or not but the church has gone through some difficult things over the last 5 years disaffiliation and splits the covid-19 pandemic George Floyd and our racial issues that we're dealing with divisive partisan election Seasons I mean you name it we've gone through it and I think our folks are wrestling with where is God in the middle of all this I think a more courageous question to ask is not only what has your church experienced but what is your church chur inflicted over the last 5 years because some of the churches in Galvis and I know are not only recipients of trauma but they're purveyors of trauma and so this is an opportunity I think to be really honest about what we've been doing over the last couple years it's not all bad news though this guy named Oliver Sachs he was a 20th century neurologist and he wrote a brilliant book called The Man Who Mook his wife for a hat and if any of you read that book it's it's wonderful so he kind of walks through all these different dis orders and uh patients that he's interacted with and he's got a whole chapter on Aphasia what we're talking about here and it's called the president's speech and so Oliver in this chapter of his book He's reflecting on an experience that he had where he's walking through the aphasic ward of a hospital and there was a common room where all of the patients that were experiencing Aphasia were gathered and they were watching TV remember these are folks that have difficulty processing and producing language okay they're watching TV and all of a sudden the whole room fills up with laughter these aphasic patients cannot stop laughing and so Oliver sax walks into the common room curious about what's going on in this space and he notices that the patients are watching the State of the Union Address that the president is giving it's good right um it's in the 1970s I'll let you figure that out so um and they're laughing and they're these are are folks who have difficulty understanding speech difficulty producing speech but they are laughing this is what Oliver says about his experience says in this lies their power of understanding understanding without words what is authentic or what is inauthentic thus it was the grimaces the histan isms the false gestures and above all the false tones and cadences of the voice which rang false for those wordless but immensely sensitive patients it was to these for them most glaring even grotesque incongruities and impr probi that my aphasic patients responded undeceived and undeceived by words this is why they laughed at the president's speech what is Oliver saying he's saying that though these patients could no longer receive speech in the way that you and I do could no longer produce speech in the way that you and I do they had become very sensitive to other ways of communicating right there's other ways of communicating besides just speech and so the president as he was giving this beautiful speech with all of these elegant words was lying the entire time that he was talking okay and our friends could pick up on this and because it felt inauthentic they laughed and I can't help but think that some of the folks that left during that slide of Doom that we showed earlier were probably laughing at the church as well because they had picked up on these in congruities of what we say and then what we do how do we bring that into better alignment and how do these folks become prophets for us I think that's the really courageous question not someone to sort of convert to our way of being but if someone for us to deeply listen to who can point back to us and say look this is where we're off a little bit the way that this gets fixed in my wife's world is something that's called neuroplasticity um neuroplasticity is um the brain's ability to rewire and recreate itself so if you have um a fasia if your Language Center is damaged what's amazing about our brain is that it can totally rewire itself and they've done brain scans where someone's Language Center actually moves to a different part of the brain and they're able to regain speech it's why my patient my wife's patients my patients look at me classic white male there right so um yeah my wife's patience um Jesus um yeah the reason they're able to regain uh function and movement and speech and being able to eat enjoy being outside um is because the brain can rewire itself this is called neuroplasticity I think it's a brilliant concept so I can't help but wonder if like the church needs to be thinking about this and maybe develop what I'm calling like a little bit of theop plasticity or maybe EC clesiop plasticity if you will like if the brain can rewire itself so that communication can take place because that's the goal with person's experience in Aphasia it's communication not that you talk exactly like I talk but that meaningful dialogue might take place between us what could happen if the church begin to rewire itself and so theop plasticity becomes this ability of the church to grow and to change through reorganization it's the courage that you all just had by voting for this New Horizon Conference to change to meet needs to better be the church in the world to function differently than previously has if you know anything about Plastics um plastic of course is something that's malleable that can bend and change some of our churches need to be bending and changing a little bit but if you're have a military background Plastics have a different connotation they're things that go boom right and so again I think a courageous question after we've talked about trauma and what's been inflicted is to ask of our churches to ask of our system our conference what sort of things need to change and what sort of things just need to be blown up like year-end reports right so just need to yeah I'm preaching now we'll come back to those in just a minutes so I'm not going to be invited back but that's okay um for Central our theop plastic moment happened in 2018 we um had a park we don't have a park we went to a park CER Park uh which is just a couple blocks from our church it's where a lot of our unsheltered residents hang out during the day so we had a big barbecue we had a church service out in the park it was wonderful and my folks being really good church folks they saw these unsheltered neighbors that were kind of sitting off to the side and they said hey would you like to come eat with us and they did it was really a special day and then being really good church folks they asked these unsheltered folks hey would you like to come to church with us on Sunday morning and would you believe that these homeless people had the audacity to take them up on their offer and they showed up and we didn't know what to do except to love them and to get to know them so very slowly over time we started to build these incredible relationships with folks that we wouldn't have known otherwise that frankly I didn't even know existed in the city of galvaston and we learn names and we put names to faces and we discovered that our church uh we were again a teeny teen tiny Church you saw the the chart before but we had a shower in our church a single shower that was built by the pastor who lived in the church before I got there very makeshift scary shower that had carpets in the bathroom just like all of your bathrooms do right terrible um and we thought oh you know we could we could open this up on Sunday mornings and let people start taking a shower and then we learned like folks needed to do their laundry and so Beth my admin started taking people's laundry home with her and was Wasing it and bringing it back for them and and since we're methodists after all we're really good at eating together and so we thought what if we did this on Sunday mornings because we learned that Sunday there was no food available anywhere on the island for folks and so we came up with this idea of This Thing Called Peace meal instead of P IE it's pea CE peace meal and it was an opportunity before worship on Sundays for folks across the demographic divide to come sit around tables to share a meal together with little conversation cards get to know each other and get to learn from each other other and hopefully develop a sense of peace between us so it was one next right thing after the next right thing until 2024 when we are now the largest provider of homeless services in Galveston County which is unbelievable yeah so here's some of our stats from last year um we served a lot of hot meals we have a lot of shower we're finishing up a remodel right now that's putting in a whole bunch of new showers for our folks our hot meals are really special too because if you were to walk into the kitchen you can't tell who's somebody from my staff who's somebody who was sleeping on the beach last night who's a volunteer from UTMB we've got the synagogue and the unarian universal I mean everybody is in the kitchen cooking together and you can't tell who's who we do a celebrity chef program where folks get to um because everybody's got a favorite meal right and so we highlight members of our community who get to plan the meal and feel the Dignity of preparing that for the day lots of laundry that we've done um we have a bicycle repair shop on campus which is really neat we had a community meeting one day where our folks said we're having difficulty getting around the island because I get a flat tire and Galvis also if you don't have a light on your bike it's like a $500 ticket um at night and so if you're not working or you're in between jobs or you just got a job but haven't gotten your paycheck yet you're not going to have that kind of money until you end up going to jail and then you lose everything so we thought oh we could do something with that so we've got Central bike on campus now which is a bike shop that's run entirely by unsheltered persons I can't fix my way out of a brown paper bag but we have people that take these Frankenstein looking bicycles and make them safe and functional give people lights and helmets it's inspiring work there's a guy named Ricky you'll see a picture of him in a little bit when uh Ricky first got to Central he would just sit in the corner he' play on his phone the entire time he wouldn't talk to anybody Ricky had a fever that lasted when he was about 5 years old old for for four weeks and as a result of that lost his ability to to read and to write some pretty significant cognitive issues that Ricky has but Ricky is incredible with bicycles and so we open Central bike we put Ricky in charge of the bike Ministry and now I can't get Ricky to shut up okay like we try to close every day and Ricky just wants to have another conversation and talk he came out of a shell because one of our fundamental things at Central is asking what's right with you not what's wrong with you there's a lot right with Ricky and he can fix bikes amazingly we provide computer assistance you know this the shift from analog to digital if you were in prison during that time you want to go work at McDonald's you walk into the store they say this is great go to jobs. mcdonalds.com and if you don't know how to do that it's a huge barrier so we help people navigate computer systems we have Locker storage on campus for folks in my second keynote you'll get to learn a little bit more about Grace Clinic we have a full medical clinic at our church where folks can see doctors nurses PT OT clinical Sciences Social Work mental health the VA counselors um you name it it's a dentists everybody is up there for free okay whether you're uninsured or underinsured you get access to health care for free it's amazing yeah um and that grew and changed and now we just in January launched our brand new substance use disorder clinic galvaston county has the second highest um opioid abuse rates in the state of Texas our little Galveston County does higher than Harris County where Houston is Galveston county is kind of the center of this and so my folks kept dying kept not figuring out how to get out of this and so we worked with UTMB and the center for addiction sciences and created the substance use disorder clinic where folks now can come into a place that they trust Central get the medical treatment that they need as well as the peer support group and the faith family to help encourage them along their Journey we've already seen early successes again it's only been um a couple months now but my friend James who's been using heroin since he was a teenager he's now in his 40s has 75 days sober as of last week which is the longest yeah James James couldn't remember the last time he was that sober over the last 30 something years I mean just amazing stuff he's got his motorcycle back he's got a job it's really exciting emergency shelter um during covid um you remember when Texas froze over that happened in Galveston 2 back in 2022 I think it was 21 um because it was still covid uh Salvation Army couldn't open up enough beds the city wasn't doing anything so we decided to open up our church like I know a lot of churches here in North Texas do as well we had the most awkward sleepover I've ever experienced in my entire life but we invited about 60 of our friends to come spend the night with us we had no power we had no water we were fleshing toilets using our neighbors's pool like scooping not using the pool but scooping water out of the pool to flush the toilets it was amazing and so we're able to open that up whenever we get bad weather during um during the the hurricane season and so and the most exciting thing that we've got going on now is this transitional housing piece so we started a new nonprofit last year called galvon housing plus um uh my friend David um uh David died about 2 years ago um David was a good friend that came to Central experiencing homelessness he was a barber he used to cut my hair all the time and um David was really sick um David had some serious like bow issues and because David was really sick David couldn't get a job and because David couldn't get a job um David couldn't get insurance and because David couldn't get insurance David was really sick and because David was really sick David couldn't get a job and because David couldn't get a job David couldn't it was a mess we didn't know what to do um David was in the hospital and he was discharged because UTMB wasn't doing anything about it and I met him in the hotel room where he was staying and this is a man who's 6'3 who weighed 85 PBS it's a skeleton right before he died we were able to get him into a nursing home and so he was able to die not on the streets but but David died about two years ago deeply impacted our community we all looked at each other and we said if this work is going to be sustainable like we got to figure something out so we did like what any of y'all would do and we bought a frat house oh we bought a frat house so uh this is we'll go back a slide if y'all don't mind U we'll put the frat house back up there UTV uh this is the alphai alpha frat house it's a medical fraternity so maybe not as Rowdy as some of our College fraternities but it came up for sale and so we wrote a grant and this in the next uh month is going to open up and become transitional housing for folks who are coming off of the streets which is just going to be amazing it's got 18 units in it we just hired our executive director folks will be able to stay up for two years and have a community where they can get to know each other where they can use the skills that they already have to find employment and to eventually transition out into sustainable sort of living so we're really excited about this happening but I'm going to be honest with you all all the stuff that I've shared is the most boring stuff that we do it's the least interesting stuff that we do it's the numbers that all the funders like to see but I could honestly care less about any of those things what's important to us is the relationships you know Mother Teresa once said you can diagnose all of the world's problems with this we've forgotten that we belong to each other and so Central is a place that's trying to help people remember helping people wake up and so these are some of my friends um this is from our kitchen that's Caroline and James and Renee and Stephen there's not a single paid person in here these are all folks that are living on the streets that are cooking each other breakfast on Sunday mornings for peace me before it starts this is Edna uh Edna is an absolute Terror my friends okay I've seen Edna smile six times this is one of them I was driving Edna around one time and Edna um pointed to a car very fancy car she asked me if I liked it I said yes she started to open my car door and said I'm going to go get it for you and I said Edna please don't please don't do that so um but this was a good day we were planning flowers out in front of the church and Edna was walking by and she stopped and she started playing flowers with us and we caught this photo that I think is amazing Edna's off the streets now which is wonderful um this is uh Mike Mike we call him headlight because he's only got one eyeball he came up with that nickname not me um Mike was a a high school athlete Superstar might have had his photo in Dave Campbell's thing with you Bishop signs so I don't know um but Mike uh when he was in high school was messing around with a gun with some friends that went off and he lost his eye as a result of it and so scholarships went away future went away and Mike ended up homeless on the streets Mike loves cars hence the name headlight and so we helped Mike come up with his own car detailing business that's still going on in Galveston today and so if you ever need your car detailed come and check out Mike and Galveston amazing skills from these folks this is Ricky who I was mention Ricky built me this bike for my birthday one year out of spare parts that he found unbelievable stories unbelievable skills that are burning bushes that sometimes I think we tend to overlook this is Deshawn we call him lucky Deshawn is an amazing artist so he does chalk art for us all the time at the church and um and this is Thomas we only let Thomas in the building because he brings cute puppies with them so um that's Lucy and Diamond um from the Beatles song or or the street drug one of the two so um Thomas is an amazing helper at the church and so that little orange car back there is is his and uh Thomas just gives people rides all over the island he lives out of his car but he wants to use that as a gift to other people and so helps people get to doctor's appointments or get people shelter when they need to Thomas is amazing that's my friend David that I was talking about cutting our other friend John's hair um unbelievable Barber KC barbecuing for us again these are all people that are living outside on the streets that have immense gifts to offer the rest of us in the church Billy Ray who works on the seaw wall he collects palm branches and he turns them into these beautiful works of art you can see the cricket that's there the cross at Central every Palm Sunday every member of the congregation gets one of Billy Ray's palm crosses which is just incredibly special uh Kenneth who's a architect helping us deal with some mortar issues on the side of our building just unbelievable talent in unexpected places um we go to the next slide so this only works when you get to know people deeply Kenda Cy Dean wrote a great little book called um innovating for love if you haven't read it I highly recommend it it's a great book on Innovation and she says this she says we're never more imaginative than when we were in love is't that true when I was first dating Mariah I had no money whatsoever and so when our anniversary or our birthday would come around I would write her poetry and I would write her songs on my guitar and they were terrible my friends but I was so in love that it was all this imagination and creativity just kind of flowing out of me Kenna goes on to say that we're never more creative than when we are trying to address our children's suffering if you're a parent and you've got that crying kid you we're going to do whatever it takes to make those tears stop right whether that's holding the kid whether it's putting the kid on top of the dryer not in the dryer but on top of the dryer right driving around the block whatever it may be we do what we do until the tears stop and because we've got to know people up close Berne Brown says people are hard to hate up close because we have these relationships Central is committed to doing whatever it takes to make the tear stop to make that image of Revelation right the end of the scriptures where there are no more te to be reality in our city called Galveston and and this is kind of what it looks like is this great community of kinship our front stoop is where all the magic happens and people come to hang out Chris I should have told this story earlier this is a great story um Chris who I mentioned before um he and one of our other Old-Timers were sitting on the front steps and they were just laughing this is a couple weeks ago as hard as they possibly could and so feeling left out like I was like laughing without me there I went over and I was nosy and decided to find out what they were laughing about it turns out these two were in rival gangs growing up and they remember shooting bullets at each other and Chris pulled back his locks and sure enough there's a mark where a bullet he got shot in the back of the head by this guy and in the back of his arm and here they are on the front Stoops of my church laughing about it where else can this happen except for the church my friends place of reconciliation where we can come together my mom always gets worried about this kind of stuff because she loves me right um and she worries about enemies and rival gangs and you know the scriptures over and over again talk about Deliver us from our enemies that's this prayer that we hear in the scriptures but I think the easiest way to be delivered from your enemies is if you make them friends all of a sudden the enemy goes away but the person remains right and then all of these other things get unlocked it's had an amazing effect on Central um we're worshiping more than we ever have uh in the history of central which is really [Applause] cool you'll notice that says 2020 um because we made a conscious decision Bishop science plug your ears um we stopped counting after 2020 because I realized we were measuring the wrong things like I don't think worship attendance I mean people count so we count people right but how do we measure like compassion and how do we measure like the hope of two former gang members laughing about shooting each other who are now both greeters on Sunday mornings how do we measure like people getting access to food people learning how to read how do we begin to measure those kinds of things I think that's the the challenge for us so I want to end with just kind of one final story and then we can um move on to more business um very early in this project um we have we don't have ushers at Central um we just kind of ask for volunteers to pass the basket when it's time to do the offering and so after service some of our volunteers came up to me um and we get all kinds of weird things in our offering baskets all the time okay Rusty Nails we get gift cards with Zer balance on them which is it's the worst because you're like this is great and then there's nothing on it so um Marty gr beads you name it it ends up in our afon basket one particular Sunday there was a 9mm bullet in our offering basket and I remember looking at our volunteers and saying I didn't think my sermon was that bad this Sunday right goodness and then I had my cernus moment where I was reminded that the world doesn't revolve around Michael and so maybe maybe this was one of our gang members who that morning made the courageous decision not to put that bullet in an enemy in another person but instead decided to put it in the offering basket that morning more likely that person's enemy was themselves and they made the courageous decision that morning not to put that bullet in their own body and instead put it in the offering basket and this is just conjecture but I like to imagine that they were the very first person that received the basket that morning and that bullet was the first thing that went in which meant that every single person at Central on that Sunday had to carry the weight of that bullet as it passed from row to row and friends this is the kind of kinship that I think we to create and I think the opportunity that's before us with this Mission possible and the future of the United Methodist Church that on the days that we feel like loaded guns we might have a community of people around us who would carry us and support us and love us and ask what's right with us not what's wrong with us thank you [Applause] simply amazing thank you so much for that Michael and we look forward to hearing the second part okay all right we have a revised agenda my did I leave my phone over there can I have it yeah okay so again we'd like to thank Michael ginger for that and uh don't worry we're not covering our ears about numbers uh we are also asking ourselves how do we measure what what is unquantifiable right the the qualitative aspects of our ministry and how how we measure the impact that we we are observing in people's lives to relationships and and to the work of the church so it's a uh you know we got a ways to go with that but we're we're working on it but you've given us some good handles to start really honing in on what are the things we need to look for to to uh to measure our fruitfulness so thank you for that okay uh so we're going to begin with our retiree video and then our Board of uh ordain Ministry report and then Michael will have the second keynote at 250 so get get a risk we'll get some water take a break and then we'll come back with you so um our retirees session is coming up and Inter and I am the firstan female to beain in the north Texas e for jumped in my car and it was an awful stormy night and we got together and um drove into the storm and the hospital parking lot in Denton they would not let me in with him and I waited there and it was like maybe midnight 1:00 I don't know but he and I had a time to talk and he came out of the hospital and she had passed and we just hugged thing for me is that it's it's that congregation it's that it's that connection and doing what we can to just be involved and to help them whenever and wherever we can two things that stand out for me uh we were able at First Methodist Dallas to start the crossroads community services that became the largest distributor of food for the North Dallas food bank so we're very proud of that it's now a standalone nonprofit but we started it as the mission arm of that church and then at Highland Park we started the mark Craig leadership Network and we've been able to recruit train and graduate 30 six interns and send them into the church and so uh that's been a real privilege to be involved with that and to Mentor those interns who remind me of why I got into Ministry in the first [Music] place I want to encourage United Methodist Christians to start working on their own souls and come to a place where they experience and we experience a kind of Grace that extends out into the community and creates Partnerships that kind of way of being to me enlivens and brings healing uh brings hope and joy and it brings purpose and I think about places like project transformation that came together because we saw a need in the community and we reached out in Grace and partnered or places like Cafe momentum that do such important work work with young people who are coming out of um the correctional facilities and that all comes when we do our own spiritual work of looking at what the needs are in community and knowing that God you know will lead us out into the community to meet those needs I would encourage churches to create new engagement by number one keeping their hands on the pulse of what is happening now please discard all those manuals from the 1950s hello we people are demanding fresh relevant Ministries people are hurting they need family they need help and the last thing they need is a stale Ministry so I'm saying be brave be bold think outside the box and do not be afraid to fail do not be afraid to fail because some of the best lessons you will learn are in the valley of failure pick yourself up and try try [Music] again it may sound trite it did when I was a young pastor but I would say Bloom where you are planted uh after serving seven churches uh and 43 years in Ministry I would say that sounds like a very wise thing to me in areas of Salvation we focus on where we're going in areas of ministry we should focus on where we are nourish your soul continue to study and take care of yourself um be somebody that reaches out and connects to people where you can get support from Faith friends and not be alone and and lastly know God is always with you that you're never alone um God stands strongly um with your in your calling and in your connection to the people of the church and so allow yourself to continue to be led by God and God's holy spirit so that you'll uh have the strength throughout your whole Ministry to be with the people of God hire a great pi or an organist cuz music K get the sermon completed earlier in the week don't wait till Friday Saturday take a weekend off every so often you deserve it get a mentor you're going to need some encouragement and support along the way and I will tell you that uh my mentor is Jack Gibson from kuster Road shout out to you jack um thank you so much what you've done for me try to call a few uh congregants uh each week just to say hello No Agenda not asking them to do anything but just say hey I'm thinking about you I mean a lot of you person is going to be doing that but I'll tell you it's I think it's about having some fun as well change it up just a little bit and make it fun as well as it should be God loves that [Applause] it's fun great great wisdom um the chair recognizes Reverend Chris D and the board of ordained Ministry for their report oh yeah there's a lot of us yeah all right good afternoon bishop and members of the annual conference my name is Chris D I'm the chair of the board of Waring Ministry for this quadrennium uh which means that this is the last report for this iteration of the board to the north Texas Conference of course we anticipate the next Board of R Ministry report will be in 2025 to the Horizon Texas conference uh if you're new to annual conference if uh you don't know what the board of ministry does we're responsible for the recruiting credentialing and ongoing support of clergy throughout their careers uh there are more than 40 board members representing the diversity of our annual conference this is a a faithful and committed group of clergy and Ley who take their work very seriously and have served our conference well and I'm going to have some more to say about them at the end of our report uh our report today you'll hear from a variety of leaders of the board who will highlight various aspects of our work and up first is Reverend Anne Willet who chairs the committee on preparations and qualifications Hello friends I'm Ann Willet I'm the senior pastor at North Haven United Methodist Church and it is a blessing to be able to lead the committee on Preparation and qualification did you know that if you feel called to ordination in the United Methodist Church you have to mean it it doesn't happen by accident it happens after many years of theological training many years of being mentored many many uh uh pages of paperwork interviews and uh we are credentialing the people that will become your p pastors and it is a great blessing and a great privilege today I'd like to introduce those that will be commissioned and ordained at at the service tonight and so Bishop if I may have these folks come forward for commissioning we have one Deacon Jenny Bates Jenny would you come forward and I invite you to stand uh and then the 10 Elders will join you these are for commissioning and provisional membership Stella Cho Daniel Cho Colin craft Kimberly eorts Monica Frasier christon Glover Shandon kleene Carol Petrus Valerie SU Tristan [Laughter] Steed y'all coming to the ordination service tonight all right just checking we're going to have one just in case you hadn't heard but congratulations Kristen again congratulations congratulations congratulations congratulations yes congratulations congratulations congratulations congratulations congratulations so these persons has been has has been mentioned they've been through a lot a lot of theological studies and training and poking and prodding and examinating and all kinds of stuff and sleepless nights and prayers and a lot of support by their friends and fam so they've already been presented to the clergy session as recommended by the board of ordain Ministry in the clergy session unanimously uh receive these persons to be commissioned tonight and so we'll be having that commissioning service tonight they all have an appointment right all of you have an appointment you're going somewhere yes just to make sure and uh and and we'll we'll make this night special for them but these are your Commissioners for 2024 [Applause] thank you see you tonight Bishop we have four Elders that will be coming for ordination and full membership tonight and I want to invite them to come forward Randall Lucas [Laughter] Gracie Mard Melissa Nelms Christopher vaugh we have the we we have two more shall I uce them right now too yes go ahead okay Richie Butler is coming tonight for full membership to [Applause] so Richie has already been ordained and we are recognizing his ordination from another denomination and we also have coming tonight Christina hilderbrand Christina is transitioning from Deacon to Elder there she is [Applause] congratulations Christopher conratulations conratulations so these persons have also been through the process they've been through the commissioning process and then of course the rim right the residence ad Ministry that is that what it's called here yeah yeah so they gathered together for two years in Retreat so all of you churches that had uh these Commission in on your staffs and they've been had to take some time off to go on Retreat or or to do the inogram now is that the inogram and all that good stuff and do your ministry project and have your uh your your church team and so many other things all right you finally arrived you're finally here right it's going to be a big night for you tonight and we're going to ordinate I always tell them that when I or ordained people I have large hands and I make sure that I put the full weight uh of of the hand on them so they got a brace for that before it actually happens we don't want anybody to get a neck pain or neck injury but I I just want them to feel the weight of the office you know when you step into a place as United Methodist Minister it means something because you've been through a lot I I I told him at the clergy session that you know they got 8 to 10 years 12 years of just formal education before you ordained an elder and uh and a lot of the community all of these persons have been walking with you and helping you and encouraging you and mentoring you and uh you know in so many other ways and so you'd not get here alone there's a saying that if you see a turtle on top of a tree stump you know it didn't get there alone somebody had to put put it up there but tonight is your night right tonight is the commission these night and and all that'll be there and we just we just give thanks to God for not only calling you and for the church that shaped you but also for you saying yes to the call and all the people that have walked alongside of you so so these are your ordained Elders uh for this year they've also been recommended and approved by the clergy session and so uh it's a big night for them and also for us as we have hope for the future in your leadership so thank you [Applause] [Laughter] I'd now like to introduce Diane Deets director of local Pastor education good afternoon Bishop members of the annual conference as director of local Pastor education for the conference it is my great privilege to work with our local Pastors in fulfilling their educational requirements local pastors are tasked with preaching and teaching the word administering the sacraments ordering the life of the church and serving the world they serve and are licensed in a local context from bivocational to full-time whether serving for a season or for a lifetime they serve our churches lovingly and Faithfully each of our local pastors M must meet educational criteria to be appointed and granted a license to serve in this capacity their education starts with licensing school 80 classroom hours that include studying United Methodist Traditions preaching education Mission and pastoral care this year we have seven graduates of licensing school and I would invite them to come forward as I uh say their name so we can recognize them and congratulate them Stephen Wright Joe Clark Gary piland Cheryl Bishop Colin craft Stacy or and Aaron Blankenship if you would come forward at this time [Laughter] everyone up here we have a special gift for them we have one more over here all right so congratulations to all of you we just would like to recognize your ministry I know some of you come from second careers or third careers and you know God's got this call upon you and you've taken the next step you've been through the exploring candidacy and then the what is it the inquiring and it's got a whole bunch of steps right in classes and things like that uh but you know what your ministry is valuable because you you get appointed and you serve and you serve with you know the mission field you know the people and you share your gifts uh you you you care for the people and you extend the grace of God and we're going to multiply Jesus followers we're going to need a whole lot more of everyone to get this work done okay so thank you for your work we just want to pray for you that and commission you uh as you go into this new work okay so let's let's pray extend your hands over to these persons here gracious God we give you thanks for these persons who have answered the call and who have uh offered themselves to be equipped and trained to serve you in the local church and other Ministry context bless and guide them in all that they do give given them discernment to understand how to lead your people with wisdom and with Grace Empower and enable them in all ways and bless them and give them the strength to to be to serve and to uphold and to walk alongside and to extend your grace through the work and the mission and the ministry that you've called them to in Christ's name amen amen all right congratulations and thank you thank you [Laughter] in addition to licensing school most of these candidates will attend an academically rigorous course of study school which includes 20 courses in the area of Bible theology congregational life and pastoral identity this year we have two pastors who have finished their course of study requirements at this time we would like to recognize Doris Smith and Scott luganville and invite them to come forward to be recognized congratulations right well again so how many years is the course of study now how long did it take you to finish five and a half five and a half years Co got in the way okay yeah so you did a lot of long distance but you know what you you did it the Perkins yeah Perkins and Duke Perkins and Duke okay well that you you finished right you finished that part and so now we're ready to receive you and and to affirm your ministry your call and all the good work that you've done all right so may the Lord bless you and and as we send you forth into the mission field to do God's good work that you would edify the body of Believers and strengthen it for its mission in the world amen amen amen amen amen thank you [Laughter] [Applause] and Bishop this completes my report and at this time I would like to introduce Edgar bassan who will present a report on certification thank you good afternoon friends the Lord be with you amen so please allow me just to share with you briefly what the well my name isaban I'm the pastor of new world and I serve as the shair chair of certification in specialized Ministry now please allow me to share with you briefly what this is about uh in case you or someone you know might be interested in pursuing certification so the UN of the church employs clergy and lay people in various specialized areas of ministry such as Christian education youth ministry spiritual formation and Ministry with people with disabilities specialized Ministry certification recognizes individuals who have been called and committed to serving and have met the required academic training experience and continuing study standards to excel in their specialized Ministry in other matter the specialized Ministry certification indicates a commitment to Excellence and ongoing skill acknowledge Improvement certify individuals in a specialized Ministry uh are equipped to lead others in United Methodist churches and context specialized Ministry certification is offered through three different tracks one is professional for Lay licens or ordained Leaders with an undergraduate degree undergraduate for undergraduate students and Par professional for individuals without a college degree volunteering or working in a specialized ministry as you can see the range is wide and there are many ways that people can serve uh being certified in these areas of ministry so certification is available in 12 areas of specialized Ministry including Camp Retreat Ministry children's ministry Christian education College Ministry evangelism Ministry with the poor Ministry with people with disabilities music Ministry Ministry with older adults spiritual formation Urban Ministry and youth ministry now this year we have 19 candidates in the certif certification process and 13 certified in specialized Ministry additionally we have 11 certified leaders some of whom are appointed to supply pastoral leadership to a local church so I just want to finish by saying this if you or someone you know may may be interested in pursuing certification in an area specialized Ministry please reach out to us uh for any certification requirements and any other questions you may have so thank you bishop and and I want to welcome now uh my dear friend Reverend Dr Tom Palmer thank you so much Edgar I'm uh Tom Palmer serve at first Capel and I'm chair of conference relations and it's my honor and privilege to recognize the culminating cohort of clergy retirees of the north Texas annual conference so um this this group of beloved pastors um both elders and local pastors this year um have given over a quarter of a millennium 260 years in Christian service through the United Methodist Church think of the many persons who professed faith in Christ through their Ministries the number of baptisms the countless comands the the disciples who've been graciously formed the Saints empowered and equipped for Ministry the thousands of sermons preached I calculated over 15,000 sermons have been preached by this group The Bible studies led the midnight visits to the hospital hours of prayer the the hundreds and hundreds comforted and loss and offered Resurrection hope the many joined together in Christian marriage the acts of justice and service inspired the finance committee meetings endured and all the late Saturday nights and early Sunday mornings all for the glory of God and so uh as I call your name please come forward as the as Bishop signs in the annual conference can express deep appreciation for your faithful Ministry in Jesus name and my predecessor Paul G will assist in in passing out certificates and pens uh for elders Leslie Camille Camy Gaston [Laughter] beatric P Pacho [Laughter] Beatrice John feedler Rebecca Grogan [Laughter] Joe P Chiron patteron Don Lee and local local pastors Freddy or [Applause] Jr dtha [Applause] burus and Philip stall [Applause] here we go okay that everyone we have some certific ific yes sir yamy all right well thank you for that and by Tomas you were going to the Litany of all of the things that a pastor does I wondered if it sounded really fresh and personal right so like you knew what you were talking about but you know I I I got to do a driveby for all the several lunch and I drove by the uh luncheon for the retirees and they were having a party in there uh they were the happiest group in the whole building today and did did you notice how everybody walked but they were like Galloping up to the front no seriously friends I mean Godly we stand on your shoulders because you have Faithfully served you you have shaped congregation shaped life you've been with people when they're hurting you've counseled people uh you've been out front the church's Mission you've inspired many and you probably inspired many other people people to follow in your footsteps because you've been good models of that somebody somebody in your church just said I want to do what that person does and so I know some of them you already know who they are some of them you'll never know but you've inspired so many people and you continue to inspire us today so for all that you've done for all the ways that God has used you never take lightly what God has wrought through your Ministries okay might have been a word might have been just a moment but God took that little bit and multiplied it and so we're going to pray that God will bless you in this next season of life okay and then we're going to celebrate your ministry right and uh let let's pray gracious God we give you thanks for these your servants who have given almost 250 years of combined service and preached 15,000 sermons or whatever that's just the ones that they wrote and talked about not the ones that was in their hearts or their minds for that didn't make the final cut but you've been working to them Lord and now at this season of their life we pray that as they look back on their Ministry that they can look back with Incredible gratitude because when they look back as a sheep looks back to the shepherd they can honestly say the Lord has been my shepherd I have not wanted he's led me through the valleys he's anointed my head to preach the good news to the poor to Proclaim Liberty to the captives to Open the Eyes of the Blind and help the lame to walk and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord the Lord goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life let them hear that from a perspective of someone who has been called and cared for and followed by the Good Shepherd they've been good Shepherds to so many enable them to continue to bless your church with their gifts and their experience and their mentoring in so many ways help them to enjoy the Fulfillment of their lives in this next season with tremendous gratitude and joy for having been served for having served in your Vineyard in Christ's name amen would you give them a hand for the good work [Applause] Bishop this concludes uh my report i' turn it back over to our fearless leader the chair of the board uh Chris D just a couple of things here at the end uh as I mentioned this is our our last annual conference as a board but we do have one more set of ordination interviews because we have six more months till the end of the year um this November we're going to be interviewing candidates uh for next year's ordination so that they have the chance to complete the process in um that they've known all along before anything changes with the new board uh and they will get to do that with the board that they've known this whole time and then those who are recommended for ordination in November will be part of the first class of wans in the Horizon Texas conference in 2025 um and that brings me to my final point so this has been a quadrennium full of challenges for all of us of course uh the past four years required the board to adjust processes to navigate the pandemic which is harder than it sounds um on interviews uh we had to evaluate candidates Fidelity to the United Methodist Church during the season of disaffiliation um and I believe most importantly for the future of our church it was our work uh as a board to discern the theological stance of the north Texas conference with regard to candidates in the lgbtq plus Community who have discerned a call to ordain Ministry in the United Methodist Church and what I want to say uh is that the group before you spent a tremendous amount of time over the past four years in prayer in theological reflection in respectful um and sometimes rather intense intense conversation working through our challenges and disagreements and trusting in the spirit's leading because that's what we do as methodists um we have different theological opinions we have uh posts we serve in in very different churches that hold different theological perspectives and as board members we know that we're called to be mindful of the mission field uh context where we serve as well as the calling of um ordained folks who are uniquely qualified and called by God even as we interpret uh the Practical matters of life in the church through the lens of our own personal understanding of United Methodist Theology and I want to say that this group did that work with Integrity um with mutual respect and most importantly always with a deep and Abiding Faith in uh the Christ whose Grace has saved us all we arrive at the end of the quadrum as a board having made real and Lasting and lifegiving change a change that will help help all of us better serve uh the mission field in the generations to come and change that impacts more lives than any of us realize I'm sure and so I am deeply grateful for these colleagues and friends and fellow Travelers and I invite you to join me in thanking them for their Ministry [Applause] it's been an honor and this concludes our report thank you thank you so much thank you for your leadership thank you amazing work and Chris Dow has offered excellent leadership through this whole season so we're greatly appreciative for Chris and for all of the board of ordained Ministry all right what we're going to do is we're going to move into Michael Ginger's second part but before we do that I've asked Dei where's deei there she is de's going to just stretch us out a little bit she's got something for us to sing and to and to uh just kind of reposition ourselves for the second part of Michael's presentation so Dei lead us forward yeah stand with us just stand with [Music] us the splend of the King come on now clothed in mesty let all the Earth Rejoice let all the Earth Rejoice he rise himself and light and darkness Tres to high and trembles at his voice and trembles at his Voice come on now let me hear you how great our God be How great is our God all will see how great How [Music] Great Is Our God H to H he stands and AG to AG she stands time is in his head beginning and the end beginning and the end the God had three and one oh yes Father spir Son The Lion and the lamb The Lion and the lamb oh yes how great is our God God sing with me how great is our God and I will see how great How Great Is Our God for he is name above all names and he is name above name and he is worthy of all praise my heart will see how great is our God name above all names oh yes for he is and he is my heart will see how great is our God Ra give us just a minute here oh yes how great [Music] you may be sitting all right can we do another one is that okay you got no choice so here we go um listen uh where we've been is we recognize that trauma causes people to not communicate clearly on both sides and so reorganization has to happen so that we might hear because that's the goal is really to hear it's not to conform to a particular speech pattern but it's to listen deeply and so developing kind of a plastic way of being blowing things up reconfiguring the church this is the work that we're called to do I think in this season now when I give presentations like this I get two forms of push back one is that Michael we're a little teeny tiny church that we don't have any resources we don't have any staff we can't do the kind of work that you're doing or two the kind of church that we Pastor would never be okay with people like the folks that I showed you earlier coming in so let me just address those really quickly do you remember that that slide of Doom that I showed you earlier so when I was appointed to Central we had four people that that were attending um I think they were original members from 1885 okay God bless them saints that had the courage to turn over the keys and and uh and let us do something new but we had four people and my annual budget this included salaries utilities everything was $40,000 per year for that church so if your church has more than four people which is probably most of us here and your church has more than $440,000 in annual budget I don't want to hear it okay so we got work to do okay um and I want to give you some skills and some ways of thinking that might be helpful for that again the goal is not that you replicate the things that we're doing at Central but that you become the church that God envisioned when your church was planted in the community where it was planted so I want to introduce you to an idea that you may be familiar with it's called asset-based Community Development or ABCD for short um a lot of the things that I'm going to show you today come from um depal university they have an entire Institute for ABCD it's been transformational for our work at Central where again we begin with that question what's right with you what's right with our church what's right with our community rather than what's wrong and what work do we still have to do so let me start with the story um these are my friends this is um Isaac there on the left we call him Chico that's Renee on the right she's the one that sent me that text message by the way so now you got a name to a face and uh and then that's Dr Miles far who's um the Provost at the University of Texas Medical Branch this photo was taken when Renee and Chico were teaching a class to a bunch of first year medical students um at utm's campus because these are amazing folks that have amazing things to offer burning bushes that at one time were overlooked so teaching these future doctors that are going to be interacting with folks like them in the emergency department soon after teaching them about compassion and kindness and love really beautiful Chico has been coming to the church for a long time um about a year or two ago Chico started to develop a uh a little pimple on the side of his neck that he didn't pay too much attention to that little pimple grew to be the size of a tennis ball and then the size of a grapefruit on the size of his neck Chico was sleeping on the beach not too far from the church and so he'd come into Central and he would use our our free clinic upstairs to get the things that he needed but he became really frustrated with the traditional medical system because he went to the emergency room to try to get this checked out and nobody would help him so he made the decision that he wasn't going to get any help and so he was just going to end it all Chico was a heroin addict at the time and so his plan was to go up to our grace clinic on the second floor of the church they talked to Martha one of the nurses there to get some bandages just to kind of take care of this thing and then he was going to go and overdose on heroin and be done with it he got up to the clinic and thankfully he ran into to Martha who's our phenomenal Community nurse who kind of runs the whole thing and Martha said Chico this has gotten really big he said I know I just need some bandages and I'm going to get out of here Martha said no you're not and when Martha says no she means no and so you'll get to meet her in just a little bit so she sat Chico down and Chico waited all day and it just so happened that the president of the University of Texas Medical Branch was volunteering at our Clinic that particular day and his wife is a dermatologist and so they took Chico in and they realized that he had a sell carcinoma growing on the side of his neck that had to be taken care of fast forward just so you don't worry about the story um Chico just a couple months ago celebrated being cancer-free which is really exciting so we got him radiation and chemotherapy treatments um he's thriving and both he and Renee actually serve on the board of galvon housing plus that new nonprofit that I mentioned but the story that I want to tell is the first time he went to his ear nose and throat doctor to kind of get a treatment plan plan put together and so he gets called back and ENT is great really kind and uh she calls him back by name they sit down in the room she starts looking at his chart kind of flipping the pages back and forth she looks at Chico She looks at the chart she looks at Chico She says I just got to ask who are you and Isaac looks back at her and he's annoyed at this point because she called him back by name she says I'm Isaac what are you talking about she says no no no no no like I'm looking at your care team right now you've got the president of the University of Texas Medical Branch you've got the Provost for Community engagement you've got this person and this she said I work at UTMB and I couldn't put together this kind of team are you a celebrity or something she said this is a man who had been sleeping on the beach the night before who had almost committed suicide by overdosing on heroin that this woman stopped and said you must be somebody special that's true about all of our folks it was transformational for Chico that moment when he felt like somebody not a heroin addict not a homeless person but a celebrity somebody to offer something back to the world and Chico has done that like I mentioned being on our board he come and teaches with me all the time you know people are kind of like this cup of water um half full and half empty everybody communities individuals like Chico we all have amazing assets capacities and we also have deficits and I think our perspective changes dramatically depending on which one of those we focus you've probably been around people that tend to focus only on deficits that Focus only on needs they are exhausting to be around aren't they my mother-in-law I hope she's not watching this right now but goodness gracious right or people who focus on abundance rather than scarcity right who see again these burning bushes on every street corner and the potential within people and so asset based Community Development this work that comes out of at depal University and others have done work on this too um is really helping us focus on the glass being half full how do we start with what's right with you and not with what's wrong with you um and so if you were to look at my neighborhood where my church is located again where Chris was running the 35th Street bloods in this area if you did A needs assessment of a neighborhood I mean I couldn't fit everything on this slide I just kind of had to pick some things I mean unemployment is a huge issue in my neighborhood gang activity is a huge issue in my neighborhood TR and see um we have kids all the time up at my church which is a blessing but also like you're not supposed to be here you're supposed to be at school right um broken families the divorce rate in Galviston is incredibly High there's slum housing all around us crime is rampant mental illness homelessness of course we've talked about illiteracy we live in the middle of a food desert which is a real challenge um for our folks to get fresh nutritious food you just focus on the needs does this sound like a place you would want to move anytime soon Charles Barkley would say no you don't want to go to galvaston but if you take that same neighborhood around the church and you begin to focus on the assets P it's a totally different picture we've got all kind of businesses in our community some really big fancy ones and some little kind of Mom and Pop there's a tamale shop called pennies that's run out of this lady's kitchen it's the best tamali in galvaston we got houses of worship I mean there's a house of worship on every every single Corner in Galveston we've got amazing individuals that live in our community that have tremendous gifts we've got artists we've got a hospital system got higher education Texas ANM Galveston has a campus right here we've got Galveston college is one of the top community colleges in the state of Texas univiversity of Texas Medical branch that has Bachelor programs like nursing all the way up through doctoral kind of programs we've got citizens associations like the Kepner Park neighborhood association or the 33rd Street AA group that meets amazing Collective groups of people got beautiful Parks like Kempner Park where we had our picnic that time youth we've got older adults I mean this is a place where I would like to live I think but you can see the difference of whether you focus on needs or whether you focus on assets how you begin to perceive the community that you're in and the people that you're doing life with and this has had real effects on our neighborhood whenever you only focus on needs um this is what folks used to say when we first got to Central we live in the dirty 30s and do you feel the weight of we this is where I live is in the dirty 30s GH that affs like our psyche and our souls deep down when we focus only on needs this is especially true for philanthropy and I think Ministries that many of us are a part of money does tend to flow into neighborhoods like mine where central is but it often only flows into predescribed programs that some funders decided are important without usually asking the community members if it's what they really want it or not and you can only spend the money in these particular ways right or money gets directed to folks that look like me professional helpers right and doesn't actually go to the people that directly need that funding itself I've tried to do the math and I'm convinced that if we were to shut down every single nonprofit in Galviston and just give their annual budgets to the people that are living in poverty I think it would go away pretty fast the poverty system or the nonprofit system is expensive to maintain and I run several nonprofits so I'm I'm talking to myself here too but it's easy for money to get misdirected not flowing into the hands of the people that know how best to stretch it you want to learn about budgeting talk to people in poverty they know how to make a dollar stretch we tend to place our focus when we focus on needs on on leaders who magnify these discrepancies because annual reports when you're submitting things to funders how many people did you serve I'll never forget a meeting we were in after we launched the only evening food distribution in Galveston County we recognized that the Working Poor didn't have access to fresh food because the food distributions were during their workday so they either had to take time off to get food for their families or they went without so we started an evening distribution where folks who were working who had more month than money um could get food at the end of the day we were in a meeting with one of the churches we partner with and with the nonprofit and we were celebrating that our numbers had grown and I remember thinking this is awful we are celebrating that there are more hungry people in Galveston than there were last month and so I think when we focus on need we tend to highlight these discrepancies the negative aspects of our communities we create a dependency on the system when we focus on needs because we Overlook the gifts that people have and so we create structures and systems that people become attached to and remove themselves from rather than looking at the gifts and Graces that are already existent in our populations and we experienc hopelessness I mean My Block was hopeless for a long time you got bullets flying everywhere you got unsafety it's a hopeless place when you only focus on needs and so what asset-based Community Development is really trying to do is to shift away from this thinking about needs and to help us to think about what are the gifts and Graces that are found in our communities so depal University this was years ago interviewed thousands of people and they did this across 30 different cities 300 different neighborhoods and they talk I asked people to talk about their communities things they value and they love about the places that they live and the people that they live with and what they found is that people tended to talk about six things the first area of assets when they were talking about gifts that their communities had were people and as the church we know this better than anyone else right people are our power right so individuals who knew things gifts of the head they could talk all day about baseball or about football about the Houston Astros right so I'm from galvaston uh Texas Rangers we'll do that for you guys um right these kind of head gifts that they have uh these individuals also had heart gifts like things they were deeply passionate about the women in my community are really concerned about education right now and their kids because we have a school kind of choice system which means only the kids with Transportation get to go to the fancy school it's way out on the west end so you get this group of moms together who are passionate about making sure that their babies have education that's um acceptable for them it's powerful and then our hands are things that we can do it's Ricky fixing bicycles and it's Renee helping us to cook breakfast unbelievable skills that these folks have so individuals is the first area that every single person in these thousands of interviews lifted up individual gifts in their Community associations these are like uh neighborhood associations I mentioned the AA group that's just down the street from us an incredible resource for us or neighborhood associations or different Facebook groups Runners clubs these kinds of informal unpaid groups where people are getting together these are assets that are found in our communities institutions um for us UTMB has been an incredible institution and partner but we also have these higher education institutions all found within our community I hope you're thinking too about your spaces right now like what are what are these where you live what are the assets that you have physical space I mean I had four people but I had a church that had a 20,000 foot Footprints what could we do with that kind of physical space and not only our Church's physical space but we had access to parks and we had access to outdoor space and we have places where my community members would hang out I mean physically space was a huge asset for us going on Exchange um this is where bartering or sharing happens if you've ever done the church plant thing and met in a school for a while there's often exchange the school allows you to use their building often those churches will then uh do a fundraiser for school supplies at the beginning of the year you have these amazing kind of Partnerships that happen and then our culture and our stories and our histories because not everyone in my neighborhood viewed the neighborhood the way that I did because they'd been there for a really long time and so they knew what a gift it was to live in the dirty 30s I mean amazing things that were happening in that space that I just didn't have eyes to see when I was a young dumb Church planter 10 years ago I'm still dumb not as young as I used to be but I thought that my job was to like bring Jesus to this place when really it was about discovering where Jesus was already at work in my community with all of these assets and it's been transformation so I just want to give you some examp of of what these assets look like for us and I hope this will generate some imagination for you about how you might discover these kinds of Assets in your own community so that you might develop a more theop plastic kind of approach to Ministry so let's start with people this is my friend Ronnie um Ronnie is uh the most joyful guy you'll ever meet he rides a tricycle around the islands um I walked out back to our backyard um a couple weeks ago and Ronnie Michael come look at this I don't know if you can see this in this picture but that is a watermelon that's growing right there next to that angel that is not supposed to be a watermelon Garden but Ronnie decided he wanted to plant some seeds in our backyard and he was so proud of this watermelon that he had grown now I imtion we live in a food desert so my brain got to thinking Ronnie's really good he's got a green thumb I've got the opposite of whatever that is I kill everything that I try to plant my poor house plants but Ronnie has this ability to make things grow and so we were able to get Ronnie and his giftss in touch with the Galveston Farmers Market who have now designed beds that are being put in our backyard so that we can grow fresh fruits and vegetables to make a small teeny tiny dent in the food desert that we have in galison so folks can get fresh fruits and vegetables but it would have been so easy to miss this gifting that Ronnie has um this is my friend Vadim uh Vadim came to Galveston from Russia our washer went out um I guess this was a dryer and uh without even being asked fadim just jumped in and started fixing this dryer it would have cost us a couple hundred to replace this and of course viim with a few flicks of the wrist makes this dryer work again it's magic amazing gifts coming from unexpected folks this is our bike Ministry that I mentioned before Central bike and so these are our folks that are working on a bicycle um empowering people to take care of their things again just unexpected gifts individuals that if we never pause and ask we may totally miss out on associations this is kind of the next asset this is my friend Thomas he was carrying the puppies earlier um Lucy and Diamond Thomas here is hosting a community meeting that we host at Central um for folks in the neighborhood for folks that are living on the streets just to talk about things that are going on um and in this conversation what popped up was that the city of Galveston was going to cut public transit hours they were going to produce an hour so instead of the bus stopping at 6:00 p.m. it was going to stop at 5:00 p.m. and they were going to take away Saturday travel Al together now the only way to get to Walmart if you don't have a car is by way of the bus and so for our folks who are working who get off work at 5:00 p.m. all of a sudden you can't get to Walmart and you can't get on Saturday anymore if they cut the bus so Thomas and some of our folks again this is a guy who is living out of his car okay organized rallied met with the city went on the bus and began interviewing people with their phones about how important the bus system was and damn it if the city didn't extend those hours and keep them like they are okay so like it's amazing work that's happening but Thomas Thomas has been an addict his entire life and he struggled with employment and it's so easy to miss these gifts that we have in our midst if we're not careful I'm going to keep repeating this over and over and over again um institutions um this is UTMB and uh these are some of our amazing doctors that are here um so grace clinic is a free clinic that I mentioned that we have on Thursdays people can see every kind of specialty imaginable and it's tied into the same medical record that the emergency room uses so if our folks have a crisis in the middle of the week all of their notes all of their information all their documentation is found in that exact same medical record it's really amazing the whole model is based around foot care because our folks are on their feet constantly and so people come upstairs and they're offered a a foot bath where you have doctors future doctors that are about to make way too much money for their own good on their hands and knees scrubbing the feet of homeless persons and while they're doing that they're doing some uh motivational interviewing and getting to the core of what is the thing that we're going to address today we have a model too because of the trauma that our folks experience that whenever we're doing our sort of initial intake the entire team is there with the person PT OT Physicians nurses listening to this patient so they only have to tell their story one time right and so then very carefully the PT will notice okay this is a gastrointestinal issue I'm not really needed here we'll kind of step away in a moment but that way we're not recreating trauma upon trauma but this partnership was amaz UT me was in our backyard and so we just called and said hey could we do something and they said yeah let's dream about something the galon county health districts during covid do you remember those times oh goodness um during covid uh when the vaccines first came out the nearest vaccination site was about 30 minutes north of us you had to have a vehicle to get vaccinated and there was a police presence everywhere which was really difficult for some of our friends because it was very intimidating and they didn't have a car so we made the decision we're going to rent a bus and we're going to put our people on the bus and we're going to drive up to leak City so our folks can get vaccinated and of the let's say 100 people that were there that we asked if they wanted to get vaccinated four said yes on that day they didn't trust it they didn't know where they were going there were going to be cops there nothing against cops just sensitive for our people they didn't want anything to do with that so we called the health district because this was an institution that we had in our neighborhood and I said what would it look like for us to do a vaccine site at Central could we do that I said sure why not and so they set up a whole vaccination site at Central we had to have a police officer there because at the time it was still a controlled substance but this guy was amazing and sat in the closet for 3 hours he was on site we followed the rules but he was selflessly willing to sit in the closet because he knew that just being in the uniform was too intimidating for our folks amazing Act of like self-giving and sacrifice of the hundred or so folks that were there that got uh that day that we did that um 89 got their vaccine that day I mean incredible turnaround and I think speaks to the power of organizations like churches where we have a trusted leader but they watched me get stuck first right and when I didn't grow a tail or an extra head or something like that they said okay we'll give this a try leveraging this trust the institutions in the community is key I've got a short video that I want to show you um GE General Electric um their Healthcare Branch did a short little documentary thing about our Grace Clinic um because we used some of their sonogram equipment and they wanted to leverage us so they can sell more sonogram stuff but we got this great documentary out of it and so this will kind of give you a taste of of how we've partnered with a local institution so Tech Team can we roll that yeah where are you living right now on the street basically okay it's um uh it depends on the the building the weather um sometimes it could just be between a building and behind some bushes and as f as long as nobody knows you're there other times if it's really cold you need to find more of a shelter like uh the the last few nights uh it was pretty darn windy and cold and that can drop the windshield down a lot [Music] here in galvaston Texas I'm visiting St Vincent and this is a student Run free clinic at one of their mobile Outreach programs at the Galveston Central Church and the man leading this effort is a wonderful gentleman called Dr Miles spa and here he is Dr Miles how are you sir bit of a CO handshake welcome to Central Church thank you very much come on in you'll see just um the amazing like sort of touch points that we want students to see so when we take care of folks like understanding their stories and knowing sort of their background so we can build relationships because they feel safe here and these are folks that we would never see um in our traditional clinics because they don't they don't come to the clinics for either their uncomfortable um they don't have the means of transportation this is a place they come to be safe um to um they come naturally and so for us um this was already going on before we came to be um so we are going where they're at where they feel safe and where we can really um see them for where they are we we have we have good friendly relationships I think he went into the right profession I'm speaking with a Bas dependent there yeah um very caring he thinks Beyond whatever the medical ailments are actually it was during the freeze um we had a big freeze which you don't usually get in Texas and during that freeze um they opened up this place is a one of the few places where folks that were unsheltered um did were didn't have a home could calm and be warm um and so I read about that in the paper and then I scheduled a meeting with Michael and Julia who are the pastors here um and we um talked and our philosophies just overlap so much about what it means to be healthy sort of the h IC um health and so we determine we should work together and really bring um sort of holistic healthare to folks that are here um as well as sort of the social services and everything else that we can support along with the many different uh professions that we have what is it that is pervasive that you see a lot that if you guys weren't here if the job that you were doing wasn't being done the people here would be quite severely affected I mean it's a range of things so we see both the acute and The Chronic we see um folks that being out there and Living Without Shelter uh that they um have you know skin conditions and wounds um so we see those sort of things um we also see chronic diseases like um diabetes um hypertension um we see um a lot of infectious disease um so hepatitis C and other things that um we can get them into treatment to prevent like complications um that otherwise they wouldn't have so obviously lots of medical doctor students um what about nurses and physiotherapists I'm assuming they do they have the opportunity to come here as well yeah all you know we have this the beauty of this place is we have professions and faculty and students from all the professions So Physical Therapy occupational therapy clinical lab scientists um and nursing and actually the leader of this Clinic really and the leader of our community outreach is um an RN a nurse um our community nurse um by she go Martha Diaz um and she does wonderful work just here all the time getting to know folks getting to meet folks um really build relationships um she comes twice a week and checks on folks and just you know when she walks around she really knows everyone and it's really key to being able to provide Quality Healthcare is just having those personal connections and [Music] relationships oh should be just around the corner here there you are hi what is your job in tell so part of my job is to be a community nurse for the patients that are experiencing homelessness and I help them make ensure that they are doing everything that they can to stay out of the emergency room stay with a trusted face so that's why we wanted to make sure that I came consistently for them and so I come on Tuesdays and Thursday place and I have become friends with the community here being out in the elements you also get um you know your skin gets real dry she carries heavy heavy things on her bike and she holds everything together with bungee cords yeah and she's had multiple injuries to her to her hands and the edges from the bungee cords basically creating a friction burn on your hand you must get personally attached to a lot of the people quite quickly yes I have a lot of friends here um but yeah you're right it's it's very easy to get attached to them in what way um in a very personal and different level than I have experienced in my nursing career overall um this is something that is completely different than the bedside so I've never experienced this sort of um connection with the patients where I can see them as a person as a whole and I get to understand what they're going through oneon-one one and I get to experience their pain with them and you know certainly I'm in a privileged position but with them telling me person in person or I can I can be there witnessing what they're going through day by day um I get in a different level of of um trust with them don't pick it up and you tell me not to I know I know don't do it I'm the I'm the worst I'm sorry let me get you a b& d okay have you got an ability to go deeper have you got any ability to go into the DI diagnostic side we can actually on the spot now be able to give people information um if someone comes in with um abdominal pain um we can take a quick look just to make sure that you know there's not a giant gall stone um or um for a lot of our patients that have heart failure um taking a look at their signs of volume overload with the ultrasound looking at their neet quickly um looking at their inferior venina CA um and so being able to provide some information here even if it's um sometimes preliminary um provides a lot of reassurance for us as well as the patient so it's just a a beautiful way to um in a mobile clinic setting for people that don't have access be able to provide more information and help us make medical decisions [Music] so these videos go out of date really quickly because um both Todd and L are house now which is really exciting so um L is in an apartment yep and uh Todd is managing one of the hotels in galvaston I don't know if you picked up on his story but he worked his entire life developed triple layer cataracts because he was working with computers and so couldn't work anymore and with no insurance you can't do anything about that so A Doctor pro bono was willing to uh do the surgery and Todd is thriving now he's actually serves on another Board of an organization that um I'm a part of so I hope you can see that the beauty of um what happens when the church develops these creative Partnerships with outside organizations I recognize that not everyone here has a UTMB in their backyard but there's some group there's some institution there's some organization that if you called up what could be possible what would you do if you leverage those assets um the last one that I want to talk about for asset stuff is this physical space um so for us it looks like the front stoop very often this is where all the magic happens at Central is on our front stoop I had this broken down building with skylights that aren't supposed to be there um when it rains we just kind of pray and um bathrooms that are not great and yet we've been able to take this gift and turn it into something really beautiful but not just our physical spaces again um like ker Park where we had our picnic that time we now continue to have Services out there usually at Easter and um in October for a picnic because this is a place that's important to our community members it's still home for them and so um we want to go to where our people are not just to have them come to where we are so those are kind of those assets so here's just some really basic findings and again I hope you're thinking through who are the people in my community who are the associations what are the associations what are the institutions what sort of physical space do we have that we could leverage your neighbors not just the folks that go to your church but your neighbors know about the assets in your community what would it look like if you interviewed them what if you went out into your community and said when you think about this block that we live on what are the assets what are the gifts and the capacities that this neighborhood um has success happens not just from collecting all of these assets and having a really nice report to show to your church counsel or something but when you begin making connections between assets so we've got UTMB that we can then connect with this local church that we can connect with some of our unsheltered friends who know much more about homelessness than I do and when you put those things together it's amazing what sort of happens from that things begin to take off and so to connect assets you have to have a connector you have to have a connector and Pastors in the room I love y'all it's probably not you okay so you're good my wife likes to tell me all the time you're good at other things that's probably true for um a lot of the Pastors in the room you need to find uh who are the connectors in your community and so here's some characteristics of um what connectors this is my friend FedEx he got the nickname FedEx because he always delivers um what he's delivering is not important but um FedEx is one of our connectors FedEx knows everyone FedEx knows everyone in the community everyone and he's able to see people's gifts FedEx knows what's right with you and not what's wrong with you it's amazing watching him move through the community I think more people have come into our church because of FedEx than anyone else it's amazing and so how do we leverage that so again good connectors like FedEx they're they're gift centered they're focusing on what are the gifts and Graces that people have and how can we leverage those on behalf of the whole good they're well connected they know people they know each other they always deliver right they're trusted and they believe that the community is welcoming this is really important you cannot have a connector who doesn't actually believe that where they live or where they worship or where they whatever is not a safe welcoming place you need someone that communicates that clearly so we need connectors you need to find connectors so as you're thinking through some of this stuff and you come through the toolbox section we'll start kind of playing around with this maybe in your context or with our context here but with our neighbors like like what could we achieve if we just used our assets if we just discovered the gifts and Graces within our community what could we begin to do what could we begin to do or what could we do with maybe a little bit of outside help I'm not a doctor I keep trying to let them let me draw blood or do something like that and they won't let me do it yet but we knew people in our community that had the ability to do those things what happens when we begin linking these connections with each other and there were are things we just can't do we need some outside help and I bet that third question there are very few things that will fall into that category it's amazing what you'll discover within your own community and here's what this does to your people and this is not just for people living in poverty this is not just for gang members this is for Suburban stay-at-home moms as well okay is whenever we begin to shift this towards asset base we move people up this power ladder so for many of us that are doing charitable work in the community a lot of our folks that we serve even that language that we serve there's a clear hierarchy there right they have their victims at best their clients and maybe in some of our communities they advisers where we tokenize them and sort of listen to them on occasion but not really we're going to make the decisions when we focus on assets and Gifts trusting that the spirit really has been poured out on everybody all of a sudden these people become Advocates like Thomas advocating for changes in galison's transportation system or better yet they become producers and creators making this good world that Jesus tells us is how things are supposed to be it's the world turned right side up right and so it's r producing watermelons and it's my friend di producing unbelievable art for our community and it's Dr far producing positive Health outcomes for our folks in our community this changes everything I think when we begin to think about things this way so as we're wrapping up two stories two stories one um I heard this story this week um about Rabbi Isaac of krackow so Rabbi Isaac um he had this dream and in this dream he dreamed of a treasure that was buried under bridge in a distant City and so Rabbi Isaac traveled to this distant City and he went hid in the bushes and he kind of scouted out this bridge where this treasure was supposed to be buried one of the policemen who was in charge of guarding that bridge noticed this Rabbi hunching in the bushes and so went to go check on him and he said what are you doing and Rabbi Isaac said let me tell you about this dream that I had there's this amazing treasure buried under this bridge and I've come all the way from krackow he didn't say krackov come all the way from where I was to be able to um to find this the policeman laughs and he says you really believe in dreams like that the policeman said if I believed in dreams like that I would have to travel all the way to Kow and find some Rabbi named Isaac because I dreamed that there was treasure buried underneath his bed and Rabbi Isaac thanked the policeman and went back home my friends Jesus says the kingdom of God is within you it's under your bed it's in your churches it's in your neighborhood it's on your street corners if only we might have eyes to see the things that God has said before us and then of course the goal is this this is from lza um this is the dream right lza says go to the people live with them learn from them love them start with what they know build with what they have but with the best leaders when the work is done the task is accomplished the people will say we've done this ourselves how powerful is that we've done this ourselves North Texas annual conference may you be the kinds of churches the kinds of leaders who might wait wake up discover the gifts in your midst and leverage them for the sake of the Gospel thank you amazing thank you so much Michael for for sharing that powerful message and giving us tools to look at our communities as assets instead of needs right asset based Community Development AB c d all right it's been a wonderful day what we're going to do right now is we're going to um dismiss the toolbox sessions and resolution working groups but before we do that we have some announcements Kenny and then I'm going to ask that Reverend Julia Pac Romero local Pastor from Witchita Falls Wesley Foundation please be ready to pray us into our session this afternoon thank you for announcements to this afternoon to help prepare for the service of ordination and commissioning tonight please clean up and straighten up the area right around where you're sitting folks would be very grateful for that also we will hear the cro and Comm committee on religion and race Commission on religion and race report at this time as well is Heather here or someone from the commission no okay well we will follow follow up when we reconvene tomorrow morning uh right now the chair recognizes Reverend Julia Pac Romero where's Julia she here yeah she is will you all join me in prayer please oh god of abundance and connection [Music] we have listened to the words full of wisdom and filled with messages from you for this [Music] conference we have recognized those who have been commissioned who will be commissioned and ordained tonight the educational completion of local pastors and celebrated those who are entering into the next stage of Ministry of retirement Gracia oh God help us remember that we are someone important in the light of your grace God we ask for strength for the work still ahead in our resolution committees and learning opportunities GL so that everything may be done For Your Glory it is in your name we pray amen amen thank you Julia all right so we are now dismissed to the toolbox sessions and the resolution working groups and start at 4:00 we will reconvene tomorrow at 8:30 and we'll see you tonight at the or commissioning ordin service thank you