Back to School Prayer Initiative Webinar

my name is Meg wmer fail I serve as the associate director for the center of evangelism Mission and church growth in the central Texas conference and as of July 1 we'll be working with Owen and the center for multiplication in the Horizon Texas conference so looking forward to that and this evening we are here to talk about our back to school prayer initiative and so I want to welcome you and thank you for being here and um before I offer a few words I'd like to open us in prayer if you would join me please gracious and loving God I give you thanks for our time together this evening I pray that the ideas that we share and the information that has passed um will Enlighten us and encourage us for the path ahead that we would uh all that we would do would bring h honor and glory to you that we would serve our communities and the families in our communities well in all that we do and so with that in mind I invite us to open our hearts and Minds to the ways in which you would work through us through this initiative and look forward to sharing ideas with one another all this I pray in the Name of Christ Jesus amen so again thank you for being here this evening um this uh back to school prayer initiative is um something that the bishop has uh invited us into and has um you know is is very supportive of it falls in line with our vision that we are followers of Jesus seeking the loving just and free world that God Imagines for all people and fits um so well into all of the five U missional priorities championing Children and Youth multiplying Jesus followers pursuing and embracing diversity maximizing care and healing and telling our story and so uh we are not here uh to tell you how to do a back to school initiative at all but this particular initiative is focused around prayer and so we want to make sure that we give thanks for and affirm what you are already doing in your churches you are uh the ones who know best how to serve your communities and we are grateful for the work that you are doing and what you continue to do um this uh initiative is the first um initiative of the three conferences together and so we are uh delighted to come together under this uh something similar to the Blue Christmas initiative that took place uh at the end of last last year uh this we hope will not just um while we're using the back to school as a a Launchpad for this this is something that we imagine will continue for throughout the school year and we're hoping that um this prayer initiative will continue for many years to come keep keeping prayer at the center of what we do and so this evening uh there are several people who have been part of the team that I'd like to share with uh with you just highlight we have um Danielle Kim Reverend Danielle Kim whose story really launched this and she's going to talk a little bit about that I know many of you have seen her video uh that she she'll present in just a few minutes we have um Jessica Vargas we have Owen Ross we have uh Joseph Bradley we have Christine Pierce and John mclary and Joy d Dominguez are on the call as well and I don't know if anyone else I don't see anyone else yet who's uh a part of this team uh we have intentionally included folks from all three conferences on this leadership team and it has been a delight to work with everyone so thank you for being here and um as we move into just a quick moment of sharing uh we we are fully aware as I said earlier that you guys are already already doing a lot of uh you're already doing back to school initiatives and have have been doing those holding those for many years and we we'd like to just hear from you um what current practices you are engaged in you might want to share some of those in the chat um with us but just what what has worked for you when it comes to back to school um initiatives back to school blessings share with us uh some things that you have done that have been successful you want them written in the chat or orally or what yeah you can do you can depending on how many people are talking if you want to go list some things in the chat and others also share with us what you're doing that would be great I think that um we learn from each other and there is um a lot of power in collaboration and sharing of best practices I'm happy to go ahead I'm at Gracie Mard I serve at treets Memorial in Flower Mound and we are literally across the street from Marcus High School and so for the past oh I don't know 10 years so predating me um are um church but the Men's Ministry is the one who does most of the preparation uh serve teachers and faculty um lunch on the last day before students return and um that just they always really really appreciate it it's um a great way for them to for us to truly be in their in their place come to them and bring the lunch to them and they feel and appreciated and loved um so that's something that's worked really well for us good thank you for sharing good evening this is Marian Williams and I think Linda White and Pastor nuke and some others are on from St L Methodist Church uh for the last few years we have um uh before school started we would meet with the principal or administrators and do a prayer circle around them and um then um we would meet with the principles just to see what their concerns were before school started and then for school we would always um go to the schools the day of school of it opened and like these signs right here backwards though we had signs like this our members would go to each school we adopt the schools in South Dallas um and welcome the kids back and before for that we would give away uh over 500 backpacks with the supplies in it and we try to welcome the kids back and then during the year we also do things great thank you so uh good evening I am leer Anderson from the woods United Methodist Church here in Grand Prairie uh our team uh supports mostly Elementary we collect backpacks school supplies the whole nine yard this year we are also collecting uh water bottles we've already ordered those and we will be giving those along with the uh backpacks uh we also of course do blessing of the backpacks for kids who want to bring their current their own backpacks to church and have them blessed and we give them name tags uh in partnering with Mosley Elementary we also give coats and jackets for the winter and since last year we've been partnered with Isaiah's house so many uh young people who are going through the child protective uh system those that are old enough to go to school we also Supply them with uh with the supplies that they may need to go back to school uh in the form of clothing and school supplies so we're really excited about that new program that we are doing with uh with Isaiah house here in Grand Prairie so that's that's what we do we're excited that's great I love the fact that it's an ongoing relationship you know that you it's not just the beginning of school but you continue to connect with these children and families and with the community throughout the year yeah we are a small struggling church but this membership is revitalizing and renewing itself uh and these are things that they've historically done but there's new enthusiasm and vitality in what's going and the Isaiah house is a new uh uh part of the of the Outreach uh Ministry for Children and Youth so that covers a whole spectrum of you know prek all the way through high school before they age out the system yeah right right thank you okay anyone else like to share thank you for the comments in the chat have quite a bit in there I think Heather is on Heather are you on John would would you like to share what you guys are doing did you say John I did okay um well I I put in the chat we we do a um we take a as soon as worship ends on a Sunday morning the Sunday morning before the schools um bring back students uh we send out groups to every every campus in our district and spend a little time in prayer there we've uh done this in partnership with some other churches in town it's kind of grown to that and um we also let all the administrators know on each campus and so they're encouraged to invite teachers and there are lots of occasions when we've had uh some faculty and and staff join us for that um I didn't come up with that I stole that from a previous Church where they did that on a regular basis in in McKenna and and we brought it to Wi Falls it's been a big hit um and that's in addition to the regular ongoing partnership we have with one of the elementary schools in town and and some of the things that we do specifically for uh teachers uh there on that campus and um and then the reading partners that we have with a lot of the students there um and so that's it's kind of how we've gotten started and so I feel like you know we're we're in a good spot to to build on on on what could be next um but but those are just a few things that that happen in in wit Falls great thanks for sharing as you can see from the comments and also from those uh comments that have been Post in the chat there's a lot going on and and uh we we are grateful that you are willing to share that I know if there are other things that you would like to share after this um please do not hesitate to reach out and to share because I do believe that Collective wisdom can only benefit us um at this point we'd like to move on and U have a bit of conversation about what our objective is for this initiative and our what our why is and so we're going to turn it over to Owen and let him take it uh in this part of the presentation well thanks and I'm glad to see everyone uh here tonight and um if you got a chance at the North Texas conference to see John mcclard's presentation on this it was it was classic John he was he he says you know who here is excited there's yet another conference initiative who here's already doing something back to school and now the conference wants to add to this and and but then he began to share like but this has potential of of really changing lives and and and I firmly believe that um you know a lot of what we do helps kids through the school year um doing school supplies and such but this really does have the opportun possibility of really impacting um lifetimes has any of you had somebody that in your life that you knew was praying for you by name uh daily or frequently and if you would like to put their name in the chat I can share that person in my life was was Jim Turley and some of you may may a no Jim but he would regularly pray for me and then out of the blue from time to time he would just send me a text saying you know I'm praying for you today and it just man it always touched me and then you know a couple of times a year he'd be in town and he'd take me to lunch and then we'd have prayer there and um and as a parent I've taken my my kids to dozens and dozens of of churches with my with my job in church development in north Texas and there's three churches that send my kids birthday cards that are handwritten that says that they're praying for my child and that and that that touches me every year to know that someone is praying for my child even though it's you know you know once a year and so we're wondering how do we leverage our back toschool activities how do we leverage um uh our connections with with with families and children's in our church to U develop these prayer part Partnerships what will it be like for parents or students Educators to get an occasional card text or email to let them know that somebody is is praying for them we've heard I hope you've heard by now the testimony of Danielle about Jesu Park and how she's transformed her life and then if you've ever prayed for somebody regularly you know how that impacts your own life and your connection with that person that you're praying with and so this initiative it's it's quite simple how can we Leverage um our relationships with students and Educators disciple our congregant and potentially multiply disciples through praying for students and Educators by name and praying for people praying for students and Educators that were not related to one of Bishop sign's priorities is to develop a culture of prayer and it hits our five strategic priorities of multiplying Jesus followers Champion Children and Youth pursuing and embracing diversity maximizing care and healing and telling our story and so this initiative and that's why we have joy diser Dominguez that's on here Christine Pierce and Joseph Bradley as who are directors of various centers because we're seeing this being across it it touches it touches all areas again it's simple yet powerful and so I want to encourage you think about this in levels first think about the children who are active in your congregation the ones that are there on Sunday mornings um how might you connect them with people in the congregation that would be willing to pray for them by name and you can imagine how that relationship would develop if they knew Miss Anna over there is praying for you and every time Miss Anna saw uh you know little George coming in and that they're praying for for them um I would also say think about the children that are connected with your church that may not be active in your church the children in your preschool or your daycare having BBS this summer project transformation U families that come through your Church's Social Services uh and I've been to churches that didn't have children in there but I know that there's grandparents in there and perhaps grandparents can get other grandparents and get permission from their kids to say hey can I get some people in my church praying for our grandkids and can they be in contact with you and then children in the community whether that's through our distribution activities your back to school blessings um School relationships school counselors um one thing we did at Christ Foundry is we when I was Pastor there we did Big advertisement outside the back to school blessing Sunday and we always had visitors of parents wanting their kids to be prayed for but we didn't do this part which is the followup to build those relationships and so basically finding an opportunity to get before parents uh to say would you like one of our Conant to pray for your student or an educator would you like one of our carget to pray for you you know yes or no um and then is it okay for them to be in relationship uh be in contact with you yes or no and we're going to have people says yeah pray for my kid by name but I don't want to hear from you or I'm not giving any by my email or my or my or my phone number but but yeah pray for my child but then there's going to be those that say yes and so Joseph and Christine are going to share with you a little bit about how to help to uh recruit those persons how to connect with them and resources that uh you can expect from The Horizon Texas conference to help U equip your church in doing this work so Christine Joseph yeah thanks Owen um so when we envision sort of how this works uh you know practically for our churches is we think that it starts with something we're calling the prayer initiative coordinator and so this is some person this is a person that we envision being sort of the point person um in this could be maybe it's somebody on this call maybe it's you maybe it's a staff member maybe it's a lay person um I personally think that our church is at its best when when lay persons are involved and so um maybe it's a team of people but whatever it is some uh we imagine there being a coordinator or coordinators um and these persons are going to be sort of the the first level um and so we imagine this person helping move the congregation along we imagine this person being somebody who is helping uh remind um prayer partners of maybe specific dates in the calendar where they might be uh reminded to pray during you know testing times or during you know uh special events that are happening around homecoming or different things like that right this is kind of a point person um who's sort of organizing uh the prayer Partners in your church um this is somebody who we imagine also is going to be interacting with our team uh sort of as we progress through this initiative uh somebody that we will have the pleasure of sort of walking alongside in whatever ways can be helpful um and whether it's through trainings or whether it's through just simply you know hearing of the stories uh hopefully the stories of connections that are being made and lives that are being changed uh through through this um this is really just sort of a highlevel kind of understanding of what this looks like and on July 23 uh which is a little over a month from now we're goingon to have a training for these coordinators um where we're going to talk about some sharing practices uh Ministries around the school back to school you can sort of see it there the slide um we're going to talk about recruiting prayer Partners um Christine's going to talk about that uh again high level here in just a second um but this hopefully will give you some time uh to figure out who are the who's that person in your congregation that may have a heart for this ministry um again you may already have somebody in your mind of man that person uh would be the perfect person but hopefully uh you know you'll have between now in July 23rd to figure out who that's going to be and then we'll have some more uh training uh for the coordinators um at that time and so I'm gonna throw it over to Christine and she's gonna talk a little bit more about sort of the next level which is uh the prayer partners and how we're going to recruit those and so on and so forth thank you Joseph so when it comes to recruiting your prayer Partners I recommend starting at least two Sundays before the back to school event that you're planning um but I would actually recommend already planting seeds now because those seeds will be what brings fruit two weeks is kind of a short turnaround for people to commit to something for a year um so maybe you want to make a big push and a narrative around the opportunity that prayer Partnerships are happening or you want to have healthy conversations that Foster the direction you were looking for the best practice is always to have conversations in recruitment in addition to all the any of the all Hands-On deck blasts that you might include uh including emails bulletin inserts Etc but those conversations are going to be critical which also mirrors kind of what's happening with the prayer Partners your best prayer partner is the person who is present and those that are present will be some of the best prayer partners because that student will be able to see their human more often should they return but that doesn't mean that you have to have perfect attendance to be a good prayer partner casting the vision to the church includes um looking at the back to school Sunday plan that you have and starting at least two weeks before you intend to start talking about it and making plans for your bulletin inserts uh we will have a sample of what information you could be collecting to include contact information but a response card is always a great choice to recruit for anything around that back to school including not just prayer Partners but maybe you're recruiting for something else like you're going to have a back to school bash or you need prayer Walkers to walk those schools and pray for those students the next thing you want to do is you want to look at your website or your social media presentence and make sure you've got a banner or something posting about it um I recommend tagging people who are already invest invested in your ministry if you're going to use social media might as well use it to the best of your benefit uh the other thing and the most important one is probably the direct invites those are going to be the most meaningful ones in m in most of the ministries of our churches we already do this in different ways so for example with mission trip I had a list of adults and what I had witnessed or been told were their great skills including kid adults who were kind empathetic and prayerful and while we didn't do this as the exact same project we did do something similar for each mission trip pairing students with a Praying adult who wrote letters also to encourage the students on the trip so this may be something you are already doing on a smaller scale and we're just asking you to build it back up a little bit all said the best invite is a direct one and in the form of communication they respond to some members you have will want a phone call Others May want the conversation in the Pew right after church service when you've got to get somewhere else but it's important for that and then others may actually just want a brief text message between the 7 to8 time frame when they've already retired and put kids to bed I would like you to please plan to attend that July 23rd training for our praying coordinators the training of the prayer coordinators is going to be what makes this work so any of your prayer coordinators and also your prayer Partners will need to be Ministry safe background checked if you need help accomplishing that please just reach out there will need to be a basic level of confidentiality there will be need need to be boundaries that need to be set for both parties involved and then in the July 23rd meeting they will address or we will address some more frequently asked questions but our goal is to find people willing and able to do this ministry there should be training an addition for your prayer Partners hopefully by the second week of September and then you want to set after that second week of September you want to set a commissioning liturgy for these prayer Partners hopefully no later than September 22nd after training their first point of interaction can begin always following the guidelines and if any questions or situations arise that you want to connect with your praying coordinator coordinators for assistance and if your praying coordinators don't have the answer please reach out to everybody here finally one of the things that we do have to offer you is um a back to school toolbox it includes liturgies from from some of our churches use as well as liturgies from the UMC discipleship Ministries and UMC young people Ministries and if you have other ones that you want to share with us please let us know please email um it also includes bigger kickoff ideas and then two things that I particularly love which are prayer walls and prayer walks and how to do those best um it is also sorry it also shares ways to bless teachers and staff with prayer and service and college students because we should be thinking of them too or post high school students and these resources will be available through an online Drive I think your next person you get to hear from is Danielle who if you have not already heard she is phenomenal well well thank you Christine I hope I I get to live up to that uh expectation here so uh friends uh this is your road map in uh for for us to engage in this prayer initiative uh very simple four steps in which we can engage and um move forward um in terms of serving our community uh communities with prayers um and so um I would like to go to the next um slide uh these are the next steps for us um for us to engage in that four step road map uh number one is to recruit the um your prayer partner coordinators or uh prayer coordinators um we just need one maybe two if you're a big uh congregation and two and three are more like uh what is it Beck burner thinking you're like simmering uh in the back of your brain is that how you say it somebody help me here yall know what I'm talking about um and so uh just think about who could be your pray prayer Partners who are those people like uh Christine was mentioning um present and call to pray for our the children and also Educators um School Community um education Community U members um in your um neighborhood and also think about how you can engage families Educators administrators um to sign up for uh sign up to be how you're going to um be able to meet with them um and so if you would go to the next slide please so um if anything out of all these things um really the most important next step for us is to recruit uh your prayer coordinators um in your uh congregation and we have that registration link already open and ready for us um and so you can go ahead and take out your phone and scan this link or QR code or Andor um thank you Jessica um um click the the link uh that Christine has sorry Christine um has shared in the chat and um you can start sharing this link with your um prayer uh coordinator if you already have had a conversation or if you know that you're going to be you uh it's going to be you or um Etc and so um I just want to end by uh saying that it is incredible important for us to identify the jesuk parks um in our congregation they are the ones who are interacting with the families and students and children and so we um encourage you to um pray for them support them and and start thinking about um who who the who those might be um in your congregation that you are prophetically called to call that out call that calling out and so um with that uh I I just want to also pause here I know we're going to have a Q&A uh session in a minute but um some of you might be would you mind uh Jessica go back to uh slide 12 you might be looking at this road map and go all right Danielle this is too much we're not in the season in the life of our church right now this is great maybe next year two three years later but not this year um we hear you and um here are the ways that we encourage you to sort of think about um um consider um adding to what's already good in your um you know plan so if that road map is not working um try one of these five options or more I know that Christine had Christine and Joseph had put together really good options of um thinking about putting that like you know prayer component to your Reach Out Outreach to your community um and so for example you can host a prayer walk like um John was talking about um having hosting a prayer wall uh for your uh students and teachers and adults are working with them in your community offer to anoint your teachers hands um in your community uh a quick word of prayer and blessings having hosting a a breakfast lunch uh meeting for teachers and offering to pray for them or delivering backpacks with um someone said with like unique names like you're getting names of teachers and um those who are serving children and you're actually like giving them tags I think somebody shared earlier that's such a great um I think it Go was Terry right Miguel and so I took notes that was a great idea so those things are um one of the options for for you to engage in this uh prayer initiative even though um you're not um in that uh stage where uh you can think about having full-blown prayer initiative so with that I think I will pass it back to uh Meg am I right Meg yeah yes thank you thank you Danielle so we'd like to just take a few moments to um invite questions uh that you may have as a as a result of this I will tell you that this session has been uh recorded and the slides will also be made available to you afterwards um so let's let's just open open the floor to any um questions you may have if you prefer uh typing them in the chat that's that's good too no questions Meg if I may can I ask questions a question to to us so I'm just curious to know um when you're thinking uh looking at the road map or um the way that the prayer initiative um you know we we're going I'm just curious to know like what your first impression is um how you are thinking um you know this is helpful to the ministry that you are already doing in your mission field um and so I I would I would be curious to know your first impression of of what we just presented and um yeah can I can I jump in for just a second I think all of this is really awesome and and I love the idea of training prayer partners um to really have that one-on-one relationship with the kids I guess my my first question and I think this is probably something that will be answered later on was how to safely make those connections with kids families in the schools in the communities without kind of being being weird about it uh you know I mean I don't know that schools are just going to release you know names of folks um and for a church maybe that doesn't have very many kids in their in their own congregation but really wants to reach out in the community how to make those connections um so that so that you can effectively have this partnership with somebody and they can know that you're praying I'll go ahead and take that one Terry I'm so glad that you asked that one of the things that we want to make sure that we're doing is we are waiting for their approach so they may show up for back to school Sunday and submit a card saying that they would like to have their name included for a prayer partnership and that will be part of the toolbox that we provide there will be one of those in there for a parent that's saying hey I would love my child to have a prayer partner for this year um I know that I would love for my children to have prayer partners for every single year of their school life um and so that's part of it is is extending it and inviting them in but the parent and the child have to make that commitment on their end and then we respond um and that is perhaps the best way to go about doing it does that answer your question fully absolutely yes yes I think Terry everyone's context is a little bit different and it's up to you to determine what the best way to approach this is because you know you know your community better than anyone else thank you all Lisa had a question in the chat we are a tiny congregation in a town of under 300 I'm considering doing this with other two with the other two churches and their pastors are interested do you have any suggestions on adapting this for a more than one church program I was in the process of responding to that coming from a small town um in Trenton uh Wayne Walter at Market Street United Methodist Church and we did a prayer over Trenton event for two um we did it for three years I was there for four we did it for three and we prayed over all of Trenton we had folks from the Baptist Church Presbyterian Church um the the Church of Christ they participated but they participated in their Sunday morning event but I was happy for the participation so um we did a fullon prayer over Trenton uh event and we prayed at um the community center the police station the all all three school campuses um trying to think where else oh the city hall uh and the fire station and then each of our individual churches um and it was really successful um and we had different teams at each facility that uh prayed took a picture sent it to us and then we did a um kind of a a Facebook post after that just said You know here are all the places we prayed at today uh the first year it was just our Church the second year it was the Church of Christ the Presbyterian Church the Baptist Church um our church obviously first Trenton um there and there were a couple others that came uh just to be a part of us and so we had pictures of all these folks at the different schools the the fire department the police station the city hall the community center um all just praying over Trenton and it was a really uh neat event that we were able to pull off and do and it was a very tiny congre ation but we still did it so it can be it can be done if I hope that answers your question it helps we're really interested in trying to do the prayer Partners we have an the three churches have a great relationship interestingly enough it's Trent Texas instead of Trenton Texas that's great but uh the Church of Christ pastor and I have done a lot of things the First Baptist Church Pastor is working with us we did the first balarat in 30 years year before last and the second one this past year but we're wanting to do the prayer Partners thing as much as anything because so many of the kids their inent are lowincome and pretty rough spots so you know we're we're talking about the cards and how do you do it and how do you assign safe Sanctuary I know how to do for a Methodist congregation but how do I get the Church of Christ congregation safe Sanctuary trained um this is what I'm trying to figure out is how do I take this really cool idea that I want to try and bring in two other congregations over which I have absolutely no say and control we we just celebrated uh Vacation Bible School with the Presbyterian Church in town um here in Maybank and what we did was we had ours do our safe we're we're safe Sanctuary which is the equivalent of um I don't I don't remember what you just said uh because we've been in safe Sanctuary for so long but our our our training was safe Sanctuary the same thing that um they had to produce we had to turn in our certificates to them so I went through and printed all 39 of my volunteers certificates and they went through and printed all five of their volunteers certificates and we had them all in a folder so so we knew exactly who everybody was um from both sides uh the Presbyterian Church has a system for it as well um and so for them it was a little bit easier but for us it was you know still uh but but we made sure that everybody was there we had some volunteers from a uh Foster program that we use and a mom came with us and um I had the the forever families that they're part of I had her run a background check for them and then we ran Ministry safe for her so everybody was keeping up with um with their stuff so yeah hope that help hope that's helpful uh this is Maran from again from St Luke to this is a kind of a downtime for the schools uh they're getting ready you know for next year so I don't know about I know in Dallas the principals go on vacation in a few weeks but this may be a good time to contact the schools because the schools are not so up and going so the students are not there the whole faculty is not there and may be a good time uh to kind of make a contact so the principles can you know be able to listen and not have so much to worry about um I have a question go ahead can can you hear me yes um is there a certain terminology that should or should not be used knowing that parents or families might be concerned about there being prayer in schools I I wouldn't be uh too concerned about that because most of the praying is going to be done in people's houses I or wherever they are you know accustomed to praying um going through your local school to make those part those then that question you would ask the school um and my experience and connecting with schools and different parts different schools approach prayer in school in various in very different ways and so I think from our side we're just getting out there would you like prayer for your student uh yes or no uh would can we be in contact with you uh to let you know from time to time that we are praying what would be that preferred contact email or text and then and then getting that okay that makes sense yeah but if you're going through a school administrator school counselor anything like that then yeah you definitely want to ask them that's what we we were saying about leveraging um what you're already doing um to to get those um contacts that's when you ask you want to pray for you can create a Google form you can create a a sign up registration and you can have those people and they'll give you and then that's what like Goen was saying um I want you to pray by name but I don't want you to contact me but I want you to pray by by by name for my kid or for me as a teacher and here's my contact information so you can use what the contacts that you're that you're getting through BBS uh that you're the contact that the information when you're having those back to school um events and and then um you can invite them there say hey do you wanna do you want us to beay praying for you so that's like moving it like one step further like you're doing the taex then in that blessing of the backpacks invite them to write their information and then hey this is a a new initiative we're having this year do you want to be part of it so it's not necessarily us going to the school and asking them inside the school you know can you give me your name to pray for for you but we're inviting them to be to come and be at our events and say Hey you know now that you're here can I pray for you by name do you want to be part of this I'm sorry no that's great I was just I was gonna sry it's okay I was just gonna add um everyone's context is going to look just very different um and even if you're just planting those seeds with the school um it may be you know watering those relationships over the years that they'll grow and develop um but but even just starting with maybe even sending cards out having um all of the church staff or all of uh those who come to worship sign cards or have your children in your um Church make cards u for the teachers for the administrators um by just starting small starting to build those relationships um you'll be surprised how the next year um there may be a a willingness to partner on a deeper level okay thank you so I wanted to piggyback off of the lady before that I I didn't mean interrupt I apologize um we partner with different schools within our school district and when we do their um stock Teachers Lounge we put a QR code up that goes straight to our prayer portal of how can we pray for you and we did that in the teachers loung because anything like that that just makes them feel more comfortable how we can pray for not the teachers but we we've had some of the teachers say hey I've got this student a male student or a female student they don't name names because of obvious reasons that hey they could really need some prayer and it's something that also our ISD does a mentorship program and about 80% of our staff are mentors within the school district so we can also go in and be a face be there for these students and for administrators as much as we can so it's that little thing like you said that QR code the Google form like hey we do that hold on so well I want to thank all of you Erin I I I do say that we we did have conversation of separation of church and state and we felt like that if we are mindful of how we are approaching this and that it if it is rooted in the relationships from the church that emanate out and there is conversation with the school districts we certainly don't want to um you know be insensitive right so so um yeah so again every every person's context is a little bit different so we're here to to Resource you as you need um I want to thank each and every one of you for being here this is great conversation and and you guys have just the way you are sharing information and ideas I really pray that this will continue um as we move forward in this initiative um you guys are brilliant and creative and doing a great job and so thank you for all of that um want to just quick shout out to the team for the slideshow and the agenda and everything a great job um Jessica and Danielle and thank you so much and Joseph and Christine we have a great team nothing nothing happens in a vacuum here we are collaborating and working together and so very great uh grateful for uh the opportunity to do this and to live more fully into our vision and our uh missional priorities so um you have the QR code for the next steps and uh link to the coordinator training we look forward to that if you have any questions whatsoever um please let us know um uh Jessica is going to be the will be the primary contact for that so make sure that that uh if you have a particular question that you did not uh we didn't capture in the chat uh please feel free to reach out to Jessica and and ask those questions and if and if she doesn't have the answer then then we have a whole team of people that um uh can work together we'll work together to get that answered we look forward to working together through this initiative and and most importantly um uh look forward the ways in which God and the Holy Spirit are going to work through each and every one of you and your teams and um and the lives that will be touched and transformed so thank you all for your Ministries for your love of your community and the way you serve Christ um I don't have anything else um is there I didn't ask you ahead of time and I know this is really rude Joy but would you mind closing us in prayer I should have asked you ahead of time my apologies I'd be honored thank you let us pray great and gracious God we are so grateful for all those who are spending this time this evening and all of those who will go back and watch this video that we're not able to make it this evening um God what a a marvelous opportunity to to gather to be your witness of prayer and healing in this church to really care for um our children our administrators and God we're just grateful and honored that we can be a small part of that so that all may know that they're loved that they're cared about that they're seen God thank you uh for putting this on uh Danielle's heart to share uh with all of us to really spearhead these efforts um to to reach out and to make a difference in this world God as we go for forth place we pray for your blessings to be upon us we pray for um the teachers the Educators uh that are having a bit of respit this summer God we pray for your peace and your renewal and God we pray for all of our students for their safety uh for their their health and so that they may come back energized for the school year ahead and God may we partner with them to truly um be an encouragement through your Holy Spirit and prayer and all um all of the goodness that we can pour into to lives of those um who are are growing and uh developing and um and part of your church part of your body of Christ God we pray all of us through Christ Our Lord amen amen thank you Joy and thank you again to each and every one of you um blessings on the rest of your evening uh we finished ahead of time and so again please do not be shy about asking any questions and reaching out to us um if there's any way we can assist you in the meantime so thank you all have a wonderful evening