Forecasting the Near Future

- Thank you for being here today, we're glad that you've joined us. I'm Mike Jackson, I'm Director of the Office of Leader Care and Church Health. Let me introduce you to our panelists, we have Ken Allen who served as our lead church health strategists, we're grateful for Ken's leadership and Ken's almost been a year with us now, next month is his one year anniversary and we're grateful for his leadership and his vision and determination with the areas of church health, church revitalization and Bible occasional ministries. And then we've got George Yates who has been on a contract basis with us for a number of years now and we value George and his partnership as he gives us leadership in the area of church health and church revitalization. He's been a strong partner with our churches, training and equipping coaches working hand in hand with our churches and George, we thank you for being here as well. As I was talking with the guys earlier this morning, I mentioned to them about an article that Thom Rainer had written about five types of church members who will not return after the quarantine. And I read that with interest yesterday, as I was trying to digest that I said to the guys, maybe we need to take a few moments and just talk about that. In that article, Rainer points out that anywhere from 20 to 30% of our membership will not return post COVID quarantine. And that's interesting to know that as he outlined five specific groups of folks, and as he talked through that about some of the realities of that, and I don't know if you're sensing that, I currently serve as an interim pastor, of one of our churches in Charlton Association and I'm noticing that there are folks who've been absent, some for the whole period of time from the middle of March all the way through to this past Sunday. Some of them have joined us online when we have done our Facebook live, others have joined us in the parking lot as we did drive-in services and others have joined us in our in-person worship that we started about six weeks ago. But I have noticed that there's a contingency of folks that aren't showing back up and I know that that disconnects there, some of that can be alluded to summer, some of that is abundance of caution because of what's going on and just a fear of being exposed to a virus, some of it, you could probably use other terms to describe, but it is a reality and I think that part of what we, as a state missionary staff are sensing and seeing among our churches, that you're struggling with that and we don't necessarily think we have the answers, but we wanted to dialogue about that for a moment. So George, why don't you give us some insights from your perspective, what you're seeing in Kentucky as you've been ministering, not only in churches there, but I know your reach is broader than that, but what are you hearing from pastors and what insights can you give us about Rainer's article dealing with this fact that 20 to 30% of our folks may not return to church post quarantine, any insights?

- I agree with with Thom on that and I think that number is probably a legitimate number. I think, I don't know if he did any empirical research to get that number, but I believe that's probably true, 20 to 30% of our people will not. We know that most of our churches are not running more than about 60% of what they were before in-person or in parking lots or whatever. And I do hear that, I am hearing that as I attend meetings, whether it's Zoom meetings I've done a couple in-person meetings, a lot of pastors, that's the question that's coming up is, I'm not getting, they're not coming back, what are we going to do with that? And how do I address that? And I've heard a range of things, I've heard pastors actually, in my opinion, be writing or belittling people for not coming back and that's not going to encourage or motivate anyone. So I keep talking to the pastors about to encourage those people and think about those people. But we've also gotta look at they may not come back right away, some of them may come back in a few months, some of them may not have any intention of coming back. And there's different reasons for that as Rainer pointed out in his article. But what we've got to do is consider is coming out of this pandemic and with also with the social unrest, civil unrest and political unrest we have in our nation right now, things are really changing dynamics in our nation are changing and I believe our paradigm thinking must change as spiritual leaders as well and as the church and a couple of things, you know, we're gonna be doing some other conversations on Zoom in weeks to come in and we're going to be talking about those paradigm shifts in our thinking that church is not gonna be the way it was the last a hundred, 150 years and those churches, I believe are those churches that attempt to go back to everything the way it was, will probably be the churches we see closed in the next three, four or five years. And so we've got to help our pastors and our leaders and pastors have to help the leaders and church members, encourage them but think about what is it gonna take if our people aren't coming back or not ready to come back yet, what can we do to encourage them in discipleship, lead them in discipleship, what kind of changes, what kind of new methodology needs to happen, the ministry must go on and we'll go on, but what can we do to encourage do that? And a lot of that's gonna be as I mentioned with Ken earlier this morning, must be thinking farther outside the box than we've ever thought before about ministry. And I think that more than any other time in history and in our history, in our life or in the last hundred years even, we've got to realize what it means to be a church, to be a sending organism more than a gathering organism. I'm not saying we should eliminate Hebrews 10:25 or anything like that, I fully believe that, but to get people back in, we're gonna have to help them where they're at to move in discipleship and to grow in discipleship. And it's gonna have to require new ways of thinking and motivating people to get involved in discipleship processes, even if that's serving, start with serving and lead into Bible study, just coming back together.

- Good word, George, thank you for those insights. Ken, I know you're serving one of our churches here in the Montgomery Baptist Association as the co-interim with Rick Barnhart, what are you sensing about your worship? And I know you do a Wednesday Bible study, as well as you guys are doing Sunday morning worship there. What are you sensing about attendance? And does that measure up with what Rainer says in this article?

- No, there are a few that are not coming right now, I know one in particular it's family is basically told her not to come, our attendance it's okay. I believe probably more than ever though, that we're gonna have to be missionally relationally intentional, and we gonna have to begin with our own members. Certainly we don't wanna stop there, but intentionally relational toward our own members. We all know of the fringe in our churches, I remember when the tornado happened where I was pastoring, we lost the fringe immediately, which was probably a good 20 to 30% of our attendance when we started having to make moves and do things differently whenever it gets to where it's not as maybe easy or comfortable as it usually is, it takes a little more effort, that's when you had to really watch the drift that happens. And so I think overall, we have got to communicate being very missional intentional in our relationships, one-on-one and we're not always really good at getting beyond Wednesday night fellowship mail with the way that we relate to each other. Certainly there are friendships involved, but we're gonna have to really drill deeper in connecting with one another, to try to mitigate the fallout of the attendance factor that is happening.

- One of the categories that Rainer talks about, and we probably need to discuss this a moment is the fifth category that he discusses members who won't return is that cultural Christian Church member. I see our culture changing, we know that there's civil unrest and there's challenges in our culture today, and we realize that is impacting our church with some of the states making decisions and it's not right, our churches cannot gather, let me say it that way, thus creating some cultural shifts as well. I think there was a time that people thought it was the right thing to do culturally to go to church, but I see that shifting. George, what are you sensing in the culture where you are placed there in your environment? Are you sensing any of that impact that those who felt like, well, I gotta go to church because that's the thing that's expected, are you seeing a shift there as well?

- I think we're seeing all of that and not just here in Kentucky as I deal with some churches and associations in Georgia and other States as well and Alabama. We're saying those, what I say is at one point said there were six different people groups in different camps in your church. And there are people that eager wanna get back and telling their pastor, hey, if you don't take us back, then you don't love God, you don't love your people. And there are people on the opposite extreme saying, if you do take us back and you don't love your people, you're trying to kill your people and all that. And so it is a fine line to walk, it's one of those things that pastors have been thrust upon pastors, all these new decisions, all of these different variables, everything that on top of the regular ministry, which people don't understand a lot of times in the church anyway, what a pastor goes through and is doing. And so this is really compounding the decision-making of the pastors that are doing well with this and trying to get their churches on board with wherever they're at are the ones that are using wise counsel. And I think listening to more than one person and engaging the leadership of their church to make those decisions and to try to pull the church back together, wherever that is. Now my church here in Kentucky, we're still doing outdoors, we're not doing indoors yet. And my pastor texted me a couple of weeks ago, about a week and a half ago and he said, what do you think? He said, I'm getting all these requests and why aren't we back? Why aren't we back? And of course, there's the people on the other side I'm not coming back until this is cleared up. And I told him, I said, I think you're doing the right thing for our congregation and you're making the right decisions and you're not making those decisions alone and going through that. And so for us, for our church right now, the outdoor service with the Internet capability as well and FM radio, I think it's the best for our church right now because of the demographics in our church. For other churches that are back and willing to be back and people are coming, then that's great and that's good for them too. We're seeing good numbers there in the parking lot, people in their cars are sitting in lounge chairs or I'm in lawn chairs and I'll bring my recliner personally with me. But we've got different people and different things going on and I know every church does. And so you have to make those decisions based on your demographics, not your personal preference necessarily, and not necessarily the personal preference of the squeaky wheel, you might say in your church, but what are the best decisions that we can make for the demographics in our congregation according to what's going on in our own community? I live in a rural community, we're not experiencing everything like Lexington or Louisville is, or like you are in Montgomery or Birmingham and so in our context, what is the best decision we can... And we all know this is changing everyday. The reason we don't use the term new normal anymore, Dr. Rick Lance is the one that first said that time that I heard it and I bought into it 'cause I was looking for a term other than normal, it's the new reality because we're not settling in on a normal, it's changing every day. And so what are those changes every day? It's just the new reality, tomorrow's new reality is gonna be different than today's reality. And so just, I think you've really got to take a deep look at it, take a deep breath, not make hasty decisions and not jump because the squeaky wheel says to jump, but what is God leading you to do for your demographics in your context?

- Good insights. Ken you made the statement that after the tornado hit the church you served in Coleman that you saw the fringe members drop by the wayside pretty quickly and I guess I see it since that as a part of what we're experiencing, that's happening in our local congregations as well, that those fringe attenders, those members that may be not be fully engaged or fully connected to the Body of Christ at the local church have dropped by the wayside. And I think one of the things that we can do is just lovingly encourage, as you mentioned, Ken, and we've gotta be intentional, relationally intentional, or intentionally relational, however you wanna use that term we've gotta love those folks, accept them where they are. I think one of the things that we've come to grips with is that there are different levels of spiritual maturity and as a result, we've gotta love people where they are to move them to where they need to be in their walk with the Lord.

- George has talked in the past about how people change and we've got a sheet that talks about some of the psychology behind change and people have to see how's it gonna benefit me. And part of the conversation has got to be, why do you need to be a part of a fellowship? And then biblically, just delineate the truth of the word and how it is not just a part of the word, but how critically important it is that we have that fellowship with each other as believers and that believers wanna have that fellowship as well, how critical it is, our emotional health, our physical health, our well-being in life, how we are accountable to one another, it just can go on and on and on, how critically important it is today for us to get together.

- Absolutely, that's one of our God given... He's given us all this innate desire to have relationships and be around other people. And so I just think like Ken just said, we've got to lovingly bring those people back. And I think one of the great ways to do it, as I mentioned earlier, is through discipleship. We're trying to do something to actually pick this up from a church there in Alabama and kind of did our own spin on it and took it to our church.

- Then don't be surprised about that, George.

- No, I'm giving credit where credit is due, but we're gonna feed all of our senior adults, not just to shut ends, but we're gonna feed everybody who's over 65 and just do a complete meal and take it to their homes, have it prepared. We're doing everything, social distancing, gloves, and mask and all that and take it to them, just say, we appreciate what you've done for the last 34 years. And out of that has sprung other, which it did for me, but I was glad to see the other staff started sharing, well, can we do it for this group too later? Can we do? And that's what you do, the more people that I shared with, the more we need to get as many people as we can involved, because if we get them involved in serving that's discipleship, we can raise them up a little bit closer in discipleship through service and service projects. And that's what I talked about a few weeks ago on one of our broadcasts about one of our Zoom webinars, about connecting to the community, doing things like that for the community, what can you do? And let's get people to serve and that's helping to build that discipleship where they're getting, okay, yeah, I wanna do more of this, I wanna do and so then you lead them back in, but you may start out here, but you're leading them back in to that wanting to be in person again and understanding the need and the desire for that.

- Good word, I read another article and I guess it was a Facebook post, one of our Alabama Baptist pastors and he was quoting Dr. Jack Graham, who is a pastor Prestonwood Baptist Church there in Texas, and who has served as a former Southern Baptist Convention president and he made the statement, and I don't know if Jack posted this on his Facebook page or on his Twitter account or Instagram or whatever, but he said that Jack made comment that up to 20% of our pastors might call it quits in the midst of this pandemic and post pandemic time. And that tugged at my heart, because part of my role here at the State Board of Missions is caring for God's leaders and coming alongside and I really believe that it's always too soon to quit. My predecessor, Dale Huff would always say to those guys in conflict, he would ask them, "Can you stay in there just one more day? Can you hang in there one more day?" And I'm convinced that as we deal with some of the issues that are pressing on our pastors and pastor's wives and pastors families in the midst of this pandemic, it is depressing, it's discouraging. I am convinced that we wanna come alongside and we wanna be of help to our pastors, to our staff members, to their families and do all that we can to encourage them. We've got resources, we've already had a webinar earlier in this season about some mental health issues, but that statement just gripped my heart yesterday, as I read it and as I shared it with Ken and George this morning, I wanted to get their comments a little bit and let them share some insights. So Ken, what are your thoughts about our ministers and that statement, that quote by Jack Graham, what are you sensing and how can we come alongside to help our pastors hang in there in the midst of what's going on?

- I think sometimes we really gotta maybe take a step back and retool a little bit because in the midst of the storms, and then sometimes seen as the Hebrew people being oriented to God and then disoriented and then reorienting to him. So this is a time of disorientation, we are all, it's like I remember growing up as a boy running and playing and climbing trees and there'd be times when I'd hit my head, I haven't thankfully hit my head like I did when I was little, but it would ring my bell and it would take me a little bit of time orient again and we're receiving some blows and now they're a succession of blows and so we're disoriented. And it's a time to me then to back up, to look at things that we normally do not look at as pastor and people and that is the emotional, healthy side of things. And so I was telling them about a book called "How Your Church Family Works and Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems", part of that is anxiety and how people respond to anxiety. And I think that's important as a church and then the emotionally healthy church that resource the emotionally healthy pastor and begin to really see and communicate to the church. Sometimes if you know that you're disoriented and that you're in that phase, so to speak, it can almost begin to help normalize you again, that, hey, this is what's happening, understand what's happening, like the grief process, When you begin to understand the process that you're going through, it then begins to create normalcy in your own mind, hey, you know what, we're all going through, this is not something that I'm going through, or it's not just something that this church is going through. This is a process that we're all going through at this time, and we're gonna come out of it on the other end, but in order to do that in a healthy way, we've gotta recognize what's going on and try to lead people through the process and to get to the other side of it and be emotionally stronger as a result. If we all know this right now is a part of the pandemic, I'm gonna try to make this part shorter. Our bodies have not recognized this virus and that's part of the problem, we do not have immunity. So the church is going through things that it hasn't gone through before, So it hasn't developed a process for handling it. And so what has to happen right now is we need to begin to develop processes and understanding within our congregations about what's going on and therefore we can begin to fight that off, so to speak like your body would fight off a virus. And so hopefully guys can begin to think in those terms and not just react emotionally and want to run from it, which we all have that feeling at times of wanting to run, but to stay and develop the immunity to fight through what's going on.

- Well, as great as the challenges are in the of this pandemic, I also see there are great opportunities and one of those opportunities is the opportunity to network together as pastors, we don't need to go this alone, we need each other and we need to lean upon each other, we need to connect with each other and I know we probably can't sit down face-to-face like we normally would, even though that's possible in some of our restaurants or at a coffee shop or whatever, but I do think that as pastors, we've gotta reach out to our colleagues and to our friends, and we've just gotta be there for them and that's part of what I've sensed that we've tried to do here at the State Board of Missions. I know as we've been making phone calls and as we've been connecting with pastors, I've heard many of them say we're so grateful that you've taken time to connect with us, to call us, to reach out to us. For those pastors and staff members and ministry families, that are struggling in the midst of this, you don't have to do it alone, let me encourage you, reach out to this office, reach out to a fellow pastor or pastor's wife or pastor's family and let us be a source of encouragement to you. As the scripture say, bear one another's burdens that we might so show the love of Jesus Christ. I want us to transition a little bit and what I'd like to do is kind of talk about some things that we've gotta begin doing. The church year begin September 1, for many of our churches. And one of the things that we need to do is we wanna really look at what's next and how do we move forward? I think many of us have hit the pause button, as a result, we have kinda cut back on some of the things we were normally doing, but there are several issues that we have talked about that we know that we've got to reengage in, we've got to hit the play button again, so to speak and after we'd been on pause. And one of those is, let me just kind of highlight the things we talked about and then we'll discuss them. We talked about deacon ministry, this is probably the time that churches generally elect new deacons for their church year for ministry. So we need to talk about that for a moment, and those possibilities. It's also budget planning time for some of our churches, whether their budget is on the current church year from September 1 to August 31, or whether it's on the calendar year, that's gotta be a part of what takes place. But it's also nominating process time and that's part of what we need to engage in and get a reset, after this pause, get the play button again, because how do we get our officers and teachers? What do we need to do? So each of us have taken one of those topics to kind of walk through and just briefly discuss with you. I wanna talk to you just a moment about deacon ministry. I do think that deacons can rise to the forefront in times like this and should. I see deacons as servant leaders and I see their role of being ministers in partnership with their pastor and staff. And I would encourage deacon leadership to become the Aaron and Hur that Moses needed in the book of Exodus, that they would be that for their pastor and staff, that they would hold their arms up. But I do think that as we look at the new church here, that enlisting, nominating and electing deacons is going to be something that needs to be done. Most of our churches have some water, have a rotating system of deacons and as a result, there will be a group of deacons that will be rotating off at the end of this church year and as you anticipate the new church year. So I would just encourage you to continue to put in place those processes that you have before and give your church the opportunity. It may be that because you don't have a means of doing a nomination and election process, you may reenlist those men that were about to rotate off, and you may have to hit the pause button and say in light of what we're facing, we're going to delay, we're going to postpone our deacon election at this point in time, or we're going to do our best to continue to provide ministry as adequately and as effectively as possible until we can get to the point where we can do a little more formal. I do think that is critical that deacons take an active role in ministry and that they give leadership to their church along with their pastor and staff in this very challenging time. Great opportunities ahead and my prayer would be as one of our attendees posted in the chat, yeah, there are great challenges, but I would hope and pray that we would see the great opportunities and deacons play a vital role in that. George, I know you've helped us with some training with nominating committee and those kinds of things. Why don't you share with our folks a little bit about some of that process and what it looks like at this time as we're engaged in a pandemic and walking through these days?

- Okay, I will, thank you, Mike. Nominating committees are widely used by churches, especially Baptist churches, and whether you use that or some other process, I wanna encourage you in a couple things here. There are, in my opinion are two ways to use a nominating committee and most churches use it the way that I feel is the less useful way we'll put it that way, put it in those terms, but there's the pick and choose method, which normally in normal situations, four or five or seven people come together and sit in a room and we've got a video that we hope to have, training video on this, it'll share exactly what I'm sharing this morning. But those seven, five to seven people will sit in a room around a table and they will have either a pictorial directory in front of them or a line list directory of everyone in the church and then they'll have a list of all the opportunities, the ministry positions that need to be filled for the year. And what they do normally is they pick and choose, they'll look at those pictures and say, well, here's Bob and Bob's rolling off of this committee, let's ask him to serve on the finance committee this year. Or here's a Julie over here, she used to serve on this committee, let's get her to serve, she's not serving anywhere, let's ask her to serve and that's picking and choosing people to serve. One of the difficulties that I see or fallacies with the pick and choose method is that we're picking and choosing the people that we know have served there before, or the people that we know won't say no to us. And that's what we really want, we're just trying to fill in an empty slot with a warm body as soon as we get someone to say, yes, we run on to the next position. And I believe there's a better way to use a nominating committee and I call it the clearing house, and so what I encourage churches to do is to use their nominating committee as a clearing house and what you do there is first is you empower ministry leaders to recruit the people for their ministry. And I usually ask a question similar to this is who in your church is the best person to recruit for preschool and the preschool area? Is it a group of five to seven people sitting around the table who are never in the preschool area? It's not, we all know the best person is that person that's already there in preschool, either working or the one over seeing the preschool area. Same with youth ministry, children's ministry and other ministries in the church. And so we train our people to recruit the right people, and they're gonna see those, they know what the needs are, they know what personality types they need at that particular time, what gifts and skill sets they're needed. And so we try to help people to use that, let them recruit and then what they do is they bring those names to the nominating committee and say here are the three new people that I would like to serve this next year, then ones that are serving are continuing on, but these are the three new people I have. And so the nominating committee can then say, okay, well, you've got Bob down here, we have no problem with that, Bob is good, I think he'll be good in that area, you have Mary Jane down here, I think she'll be good in that area as well. But wait a minute, you've got to Sue down here and Sue's already committed that hour to serve over in this area of the church, you can't serve two places at once. And so they become kind of the clearinghouse, or they may say, well let's say it's a children's ministry these two are okay, but Sue has not had a background check yet and that's a requirement we have at our church. So they become the clearinghouse and let them use that as a clearing house method, the nominating committee, it makes them so much easier getting the right people in the right places, rather than just filling any empty slot with a warm body. And you help your people to understand what they're passionate about, where they'd love to serve, and people will serve out of their passion. I've written chapters in books about that kind of stuff, and people will serve out of their passion. We've just got to help them to unearth what that passion is that God's given them to serve in the church and move forward from there. And you find out that people will serve and stay serving and enjoy their service better and you have more fruitful ministry to that. There are a couple areas where I don't recommend you actually use that, there are a couple of areas where you don't want the same team in my opinion, replenishing themselves, or replacing themselves all the time. And that is the personnel committee and the finance committee, because I've seen it, I've worked with churches where a finance team in particular would get in a rut doing things this way and it worked great 20 years ago, but they've never made adjustments for their budgeting and the way they budget for the upcoming. So that's better to have an outside different group to bring those into the nominating committee for that purpose. And then the nominee committee may be a part of recruiting people for those. But that's a kind of the difference there, Mike, and what I like to share and now we're going through this pandemic, they may not be able to get together, but how can we do that? Through Internet, through the email, over a Zoom meeting where those nominating committee members can get together and say, here's some positions we need and what are we going to do? And who do we need to enlist those people rather than us trying to enlist those people? That way you don't have, one more comment on it, that way you don't have, a lot of times ask where is recruiting done in your church? Or when is it done? And most people would tell me, recruiting is done Sunday morning between Sunday school and worship. And I like to say, yes, we stand right outside the bathroom, wait for somebody to come out so we can pounce on him and say, we need somebody to do this, well, you go do it. And then we don't check on them for 20 years, 'cause we're afraid they'll quit and we'll have to do it all over again.

- Yeah, we always tell them there's not much to do, you don't have to do much, exactly. Well, thank you for those helpful insights, I know that churches are probably struggling with that and some have just said, we're gonna continue with the roster of leadership we've got currently until things change and that may be what is needful for that church. But whenever they get to that process of nominating and filling those leadership roles, I would commend to them what you've just shared with us, George, that we don't just buttonhole folks and that we leave it all to the nominating committee, but we utilize a process in which those that are immediately in leadership recruit and that the nominating committee becomes that clearing house. Those are great words of information, thank you.

- We have on the website, there's a church revitalization page, a passion assessment that will help you help people, your people, and you can send it out by email or just have them connect to get it on online there and to fill out where are they passionate? It's think 40 or 42 different people groups where they may feel that they're passionate about anything from different age groups to hunting and fishing or golfing or a needle point, I don't remember what all are on there, but different religious groups, cultural groups, socioeconomic groups.

- Good deal, good deal. All right, Ken, I know you're not the expert in budgeting, that's more Jim Swedenborg and Lee Wright but give us some insights which you can, and we'll all chime in to support you and help you along those lines in what churches need to try to do in the current situation with a budget for the days ahead.

- Yeah, I'm sure we all loved 'em as pastors preaching on giving and fundraising. Well, that's just something we just can't wait to do. So certainly in this time where you have to communicate need and we have to connect need to ministry and missions and really lift up what the church is continuing to do and what the church has continuing to support things like sending out, early on people were sending out, offering envelopes, online giving has picked up tremendously, so there's that aspect of it. And then there's what we were talking about prior, the three of us mission critical. And that those two words are really gonna be a part of budgeting as you forecast the future, you measure the impact of what is going on through your budget, and you wanna write by priority the things that are most important for mission impact. Those things are most critical, rank in terms of the priority. Again, prioritize your expenditures, lead the church to engage in the community and invest in the community, look for ways to do that and budget accordingly, have a dream and a hope meeting. People need hope in these days and begin to think through dreams and hope for the future as a part of your budget and what church ministries need to be included in that. And maybe over the course of the next year, have two to five priorities that is gonna be the priority for the church, biblically have them as a biblical basis, that for that coming year are the things that you're really going to make as a priority in the budget, just have two, three, four of those, not too many to really be able to fund and to go out and see those things through to completion. So have a plan, have a process for that plan and evaluate it while you're doing it. And again, that it's biblical, that it's connected to The Great Commission and that will create lift to your budget and to your giving and to what's needed in the coming year as well. I think as we focus on the future, there are gonna be probably some difficult decisions that may be made, or maybe if you're in a staff of more than one as a pastor with staffing, we were talking about, but as you look to the future and what's needed with your staff, there may need to be a reshuffle of priority there in accordance with that future and what that future looks like. And may be, it may mean retooling as well and retraining with staff. So again, keep an open mind with your budget again, praying through what is critical and then working out that plan as well.

- Good word Ken and there are resources here through the State Board of Missions, either through Jim Swedenborg or Lee Wright to help you with some budgeting, please let us know what we can do along those lines. But I think there's a key word that Ken mentioned and we use that, we hear that a lot here at the State Board of Missions, mission critical, what really is mission critical? And as you've hit, maybe like most churches have, the pause button because we cannot gather, I have not been able to gather and worship, we've had to put aside some of our ongoing activities. I would encourage you just to think through, all right, what truly is mission critical? What do we need to do that is effective, that is most relevant to reaching people, to discipling believers, to making a difference for the kingdom of God in the days ahead. To be honest, we all have things that we do because that's just what we've always done. And while we've got the pause button pushed, it probably is not a bad idea to make some assessments to look at and to ask the question what's mission critical? And we here at the State Board of Missions, Office of Leader Care and Church Health, we'll be glad to talk with you about those things, feel free to call us, email us, we will be glad to offer to you advice, but more than that, and I think we'll just be an encouragement to you to help you make some of those assessments, we've got some resources on our church health side of ministry that we can bring to bear just to help you on this journey of looking at what truly is mission critical and how do we make that assessment and how do we lead our people in the midst of this time, understanding and making whatever changes may need to take place. Ken, I know we've gotten several questions that have popped up and I have read as others have been speaking, one of those questions that came up Lee Wright, kinda answered in the chat forum. And there are resources as a matter of fact, Lee and I, along with Jim Swedenborg, we're dealing with this question yesterday for one of our associations in South Alabama, because they were trying to look at how they could do their annual meeting and in a visual audio, virtual format and so they were trying to figure out how to vote and how all that would take place. And so Lee gave some answers to that and Lee has a great resource for that. So for those of you who are struggling with either doing business meeting or how to engage your folks and other important decisions that you require a vote contact Lee Wright or help help us help you along those lines with Lee. So Ken I'll pitch it your way and let you address any of the other questions that are there. Guys, thank you for your insights into these areas that we've talked about from deacon ministry to nominating committee processes and budgeting processes and I do know that we've got to continue to move forward, the future looks bright. It may be different than anything we've ever seen before, but it does mean in the midst of the great challenges, there are great opportunities as well.

- Yeah, one of the questions Mike, basically there's the question is pastors are wanting to go back to normal. All right, I think we all have that idea of the nostalgia of yesteryear and so the question basically is will they be healthy in the long-term? Those guys that are just simply wanting to go back to the normal, will they be healthy in the long-term? I think you kind of mentioned that George at the beginning.

- Yes, its because we're in a new reality, the old normal is in my opinion is probably gone forever, are we going to settle into a new normal? Maybe, but not in the next six months or probably not in the next year, maybe even longer than that. I even said on one of our webcasts at Zoom meetings, we did several weeks ago that we could look at a full generation before we get back to any type of true normal. And that's not gonna be the same normal that we've had in the last hundred years and to try to go back and be normal, as things were in 2019, or prior to that, I think the churches are gonna get left behind, unfortunately, because things are continuously changing, constantly changing and it's not just from the pandemic as I mentioned it, Mike did too, from the social and civic unrest, the political unrest in our nation, all these things are weighing down on the church and the leadership of the church. And so that's why it's going to take different thinking from our churches and is not normal, will not be normal for some time. We just have to accept that and realize that it's a new reality leading us to wherever the future is, God knows that we don't, He doesn't give any of us that insight of what's around three corners away, we don't even know what's around the next corner, but He knows, and so we just have to follow faithfully, daily and try to make the best decisions for what we see that they were in today. And that also brings out just to kind of pick up on something you said while ago, with the budgeting and it takes it back to the nominating processes, don't get hung up pastors, and don't let your nominating teams get hung up on, we've got to fill all these positions because we've always had them or because that's what we've had for 20 years or whatever, because as you were talking about assessing, when you've got to assess those things, and is it really necessary to recruit 15 Sunday school teachers, if you're not meeting in Sunday school right now, you may want to recruit that for when we get back, but you're not sure what that's going to look like yet and if we're going to do them all together, like we have done them in the past or some of them I'm gonna be online or some other means. So I think the normal is not gonna be normal as we've known it.

- Yeah, George, Mike, we know that we cannot do ministry alone. I enjoy the interaction with guys, I enjoy being around some wisdom and listening and asking questions. Never has there been a more important time for pastors to seek wise counsel and not just hear their own voice because things have happened so quickly and changes happen so rapidly, both the opinions that are out there about COVID and the social unrest and all of the political aspects of the opinions that are part of that, if we don't watch out, we're gonna speak into that based on our mindset prior to all of this, where we need to be transitioning through this, to have a mindset that reflects the Mind of Christ and I think the way that we do that is by interacting with others, with other pastors, with people who are wise and people who are in leadership who think critically, it's gonna be very important or we're gonna end up giving people what I think instead of maybe what the right answer is. And again, how to process through all that's happening during this time as well.

- I agree and I think, not just listening for wise counsel, but listening to more than one.

- Yes.

- Sometimes we get stuck on why I like this guy or I like this person or this person has been, but let's listen to multiple voices to find out what's best for our context, rather than listen to what's good in his context or where he's at or where he was or those kinds of things. Listen to multiple voices that you understand and believe to be doctrinally sound and spiritually astute to God's ear.

- Yeah, again, it goes back to dealing with a new reality and we've gotta catch up to it, that new reality. Question, our budget team basically is discussing extending our current budget another year, another calendar year and maintaining spending restraints are others doing similar?

- In the church that I'm serving currently chose to do that, they talked and discussed what the needs were as we were a part of that process, as I listened in to that conference call, 'cause that's how they met together as a budget planning committee, we talked about as why receipts continue to hold up and as they continue the current trend that we're right on budget or close to budget. If there is a downturn financially in giving, that we may have to prorate our budget and make some adjustments accordingly to spending. Most of our churches have a lot of fixed items, you got your salaries, you got debt indebtedness, you've got your utilities, you got up keep and maintenance, all those things you gotta pay at a hundred percent. But you can at times make some adjustments with other expenditures and just say, we need to hold the line right now on those. So the church where I'm serving as interim has just chosen to take the 2019/2020 budget and make it the 2020/2021 budget. And with that caution that if there is a downtick in giving, and right now, thank the Lord they're giving a state comparable with budget needs and with expenditures. And of course expenditures are down because we're not able to do some of the things that we normally would have. So they're reviewing that, but the church did affirm in business meeting a week or so ago that we would continue with that budget for the next budget year.

- No, I'm seeing, you know, different things, some churches aren't doing that, just moving it down, keeping the same budget. Some are just keeping the same budget, but doing an 80% or 90% or something like that.

- Yeah, and again, I think just the word of caution would be that can also harken back to the pause button and with the pause, is also an opportunity to go back and look at the priorities of your budget in the long-term, as well as you look at the new reality, it's upon us. Guys I can remember having conversation as a pastor and with our church folks, I pastored for a long time in Coleman and there were so much that was earmarked, as Mike was saying that it was already understood that we're gonna have this expense. I began to press people and if we're about The Great Commission, what percentage of our budget should be about The Great Commission and really get us to grapple with that. And when I started talking about 20%, it wasn't there, there wasn't a 20% that we could free up without major changes. But it's a worthy conversation to think about what percent of your budget? And certainly when you think about when you give to missions and you give to your association, things like that, we know that that falls under Great Commission, but I'm talking about that happens through the local church. Again as part of the pause, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have just a good conversation about your budget.

- Absolutely, I think that's great because again, ministry is gonna be different from this point forward. And so why set your budget up as it was for the last 20 years if you're going to be moving in different directions and you're not even sure of those directions, you're not sure what needs to be tweaked or removed or cut back, or you might say, and so that's all part of that assessing process, that's a great discussion for every church to go through right now to have. We're not sure, but what we are sure of is what God and Jesus told us in The Great Commission, let's focus our budget more to the... That's one of the options I mentioned that earlier in one of our comments in the chat boxes that not dealing with just, and I'm gonna deal with this next Wednesday on a conversation on a webinar is not dealing with problems, but looking at this as opportunities. And I've written several blog posts the last few months about, man are we missing the opportunity, our church has taken advantage of the opportunity that we have here because of this reaching more people, shifting gears, doing more Great Commission work than we've done in the past? The opportunity's there, if we're willing to seek it out for our own particular church and our own personal ministry and move forward with fulfilling The Great Commission and budgeting is a key to that for all of our churches. Ken you may not have seen this, there's a question over on the chat box that said are churches creating committees to deal with reopening are church staffs making most of the decisions, deacons, et cetera? And I'll start this and you guys can chime in, I know I've seen in different states, some churches are creating committees to help them. I think it's wise whether you use committee, whether you use your deacons, whether you use somebody else to get more people involved. So it is not just the pastor making those decisions, or it's not viewed as just the pastor making those decisions, even if he is talking to 15 other people, get a committee together to do that. You can use some of your church leaders, so it's not just the church staff, pastor or staff, but let's get some of the church members involved, the laity leaders involved to help make those decisions so that it doesn't look like, well, they're just trying to push it on us or it doesn't look like, well, that's just what he wanted, we don't want that. This is something that we've agreed to because we've all come to consensus of looking at it from different people's point of view and where they live with their families.

- Amen.

- Or a little more than that.

- That's good, Mike, real quick question concerning what you all did in your interim business meeting, how did you do that?

- At the conclusion of our general worship service, we have a 9:30 worship service, we are meeting in-person, we're social distancing, wearing our mask into our pew space, Those that are comfortable keeping their mask on too, those that aren't comfortable take it off, they replace their mask when they get up to leave, we dismiss from the back because that's where our exit is and we dismiss in an orderly manner in order to protect those social distance guidelines. So we had our quarterly business meeting the first Sunday in August at the end of the preaching, we dismiss few guests that we had and it was then that our chairman of deacons moderated that, and basically there were two items of business, one was the budget and the other was the nominating committee report and those two items were passed. There weren't any other business so we was able to do that within about 30 minutes of whatever discussion timeframe, right at the end. This church again is on a quarterly business meeting, they did not have the business meeting that would have been the previous quarter because we weren't meeting in-person, but it did allow about 50 to 60 of our folks who were there to do the business of the church and to vote accordingly.

- Thank you, Mike, let me share with you as we close something that our church revitalization task forces working on within the facility here across our disciplines, so to speak are areas, our offices here, we're looking at a process, I don't wanna call it a strategy, I believe it's just the basics of church life and it's called Connect, Pathways to Connection. And we're looking at four different areas and hopefully this will just about, I think we're at, I would say 80% completion and by or before the end of the month, we'll have something that our communications office can edit for et cetera, but it's involved connect to the creator which involves renewal and worship, connect to the community, which involves your church community, you have Sunday school and Bible study that kind of community fellowship. Connect with the core, and that's disciple-making, that is mentoring, that is leadership type of development. And then connect with the commission, and that is of course, The Great Commission where we'll look specifically at how to reach out to the greater community and also personal evangelism and soul winning. So we're excited about the possibility, there'll be links and attached documents, et cetera, for each one of these areas. And as just forecasting the future, this is something that, again, pastor and leaders and churches can just come together, look at this and begin to think through the future and what is ahead of us and how to immediately begin to continue to do church under the circumstances or whatever the circumstances maybe. Also a little caveat to this that I think is really exciting and that is to have one or two of our coaches along with say three pastors that would wanna be a part of doing this and they would meet monthly and talk about each one of these areas and just go forward, kind of playing off of each other. So again, look out for this in the coming weeks, as we bring this process to close and get it out.

- Thank you, Ken, for your leadership in that area and for the faithful work of the church revitalization task force here at the State Board of Missions to provide a very useful resource to our churches and pathways to connections and connecting with the creator, connecting with community, connecting with the core, connecting with the commission. I think that's some good stuff and we look forward to getting that finalized and getting it out to our churches. So each of you who have participated today by listening in, thank you, thank you, thank you for submitting your questions, for participating in the chat, we hope this has been helpful, we realize that the future is going to be ever changing, even as a local school systems have decisions to make every day almost about what they're going to do, we're going to continue to be faced with those as a church, as a State Board of Missions, as the local association, just know that we're in this together, we're gonna partner together, we're gonna be there for each other, and we wanna encourage each other along the way. George, thank you for your insights, Ken thank you for what you do, Doug Rogers behind the scene thank you for helping us. As Doug has said earlier, as we always do, this will be posted a little later, you can go back and review or share it with others, and we're again, just grateful for your participation today. May God richly bless you, may he use you to make a difference for his kingdom. Thanks again, goodbye. Thank you.