Sunday School Leader Focus: Advice for Leaders

- I'm Daniel Edmonds. I have the privilege of serving you as a state missionary in the Office of Sunday School and Discipleship where I function as the director of that office. Jamie Baldwin is joining us, though he is going to have to scoot out in a little bit. Because the pastor of his church is sick and tired of Jamie, and he's leaving, no. The pastor of his church is retiring after 24 years, so Jamie is going to slip out and join that retirement reception. But Jamie also is a state missionary working in the office of Sunday School and Discipleship where he primarily operates with adults and youth. And so this coming Tuesday night he will have webinars for adult leaders on Tuesday night, Thursday night, Saturday morning and next Sunday afternoon. And then the following week for youth leaders on Tuesday night, Thursday night, Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon. The following week will be for children and then for preschool. And I bring in all of them because Jamie is also our event person in the office staff. And so we have all been in this wild scrabble during this year of moving what would normally be this weekend's Pinnacle at Shotgun Springs to online. And so we're glad you got word and joined us. And so Jamie will be with us for a little while. But beyond that I've asked a couple of my friends who are well known discipleship education, Sunday school, small group, pastors in our state. Jay Gordon serves as the adult, small group pastor at the Church Brook Hills. And Topper Reid is retired from Hunter Street primarily, but also served at Westwood. We were talking the other day he served at Park Memorial in Anniston. He has served at Calvary Baptist in Dothan, and at Huffman Baptist in Birmingham. But most of us know him from Hunter Street, and then Westwood Alabaster where Jay Gordon also served at one point. So Topper said he went to clean up the mess Jay made, or something, I don't know. Something like that.

- I think he was too far gone for him.

- Okay. But Topper also serves with unlimited partnerships, as kind of a national consultant for Sunday school, and small group churches, assisting them, consulting with them to strengthen their work. So we are delighted to have both of them with us, as well as Jamie. And delighted to have you all. And so I'm just going to kick out a few general questions that we get from everybody. And I'm going to start with Topper. And Topper is not on staff at Hunter Street right now, of course he was, and helped relocated Hunter Street where it is, and see a lot of the growth through the years with Buddy Gray, the pastor there. But now is in attendance. And Topper, just give us a little overview of what is going on at Hunter Street, and what you see may be coming up in the next few weeks. 'Cause a lot of people were wanting to know what other churches are doing during this time, so share with us, Topper.

- Thank you, Daniel. It's been real interesting this whole time to see what has taken places in our churches. And Hunter Street has been like most all the other churches around, we've been very cautious and very steady, and slow and responding to the direction that we're headed. Because quite frankly, nobody knew which direction that would be, and so therefore, we've been very slow and very cautious. One of the good things I think that Buddy Gray does as pastor, he's always been very good at what we call plowing the ground and getting things ready. And so he talked about a lot of the possibilities after we were just live streaming, and educating the congregation on what the possibilities were. He always said that we would move forward, but there was always two opinions, one to go quick and one to go slow. Not for anybody to get upset with anybody if we went one over the other, but to be patient, because there was a lot of value into possibly going slow, if that's what we did. So today it was announced, and I don't know all of the details, but coming up in August we'll be adding another service. Our service is live streamed and it's been live for about the last four or five weeks on campus. And like everyone else pretty much we can go online and get a spot, so that it's limited to a certain number of people attending, because of the social distancing. They have one door you come in, and a couple of doors you exit from. You're ushered in and seated, almost like for a wedding. And you're spaced out so that you're socially distanced. You must wear a mask. They have extra masks and hand cleaner, and that sort of thing available. You're encouraged to make sure you use the restroom before you attend, so that you don't have to go and use the restroom, or the water fountain, or something like that. However, those are available and they're attended to, so that they're kept sanitary, and so forth. So you have to social distance, and you have to wear the mask. And then you go out an assigned door. I did mention that they have hosts that seat you to make sure that you stay apart as you go down. So it's very safe. It's just different looking around and seeing everybody so spaced out. Today it was announced that we'll add another service in August. And I believe because, I did not get to write this down, 'cause I was actually live streaming today, because I knew I would be here, and I would be back in time to be prepared for this webinar. I believe we're gonna start small groups back in September after Labor Day, that Sunday after Labor Day. So I'm not sure if that's September the 8th, but somewhere right around in there is where we're gonna start back small groups. I'm not exactly sure how they're gonna do that, but the groups that would like to start can register for that, and get with the office, and let them know their desire for their group to start. I don't know if they're gonna be using all of the rooms in the building, but I think that they designated a number of buildings, or rooms in the buildings that are large. So that they can go ahead and set the rooms up for social distancing, and so forth. The same rules apply, social distancing, no food or drinks, everybody has to wear a mask and so forth. And then the rooms will be sanitized immediately following their use. And that particularly if a group is gonna come in after them. They have three hours of on campus bible study at Hunter Street. So that's kind of what's in the works. They're not gonna do, I think initially... I think when they do do their childcare they've got it divided up into birth through age three in small rooms. Four and five year olds they have a large worship area for them. And they'll put them in a large room and space them out with leaders. And then grades one through four also has a large room. And they're gonna put them in that large room and space them out with workers. And the fifth and sixth grade, they have worship rooms. They're gonna just be doing one hour with all of the kids that want to come in those rooms spaced out. And I think any materials, or anything that they would use would be prepackaged in Ziploc bags or whatever, and given out so that nobody's using anybody else's stuff. So in a nutshell that's kind of what they're doing. Students will kind of follow the same plan in their area.

- Okay. Jay give us the little thumbnail. Now Church of Brook Hills has a little added twist right now in that they tore down some buildings to remodel and redo. And so you have a little added twist. But tell us what your church is looking at right now.

- Yes, we've been in worship for almost two months. And we're running the same number of services we did before. We have a worship at 9:00, worship at 11:00. We did do on campus groups at those two hours, as well. But right now we are just doing those two worship services on a very limited, maximum attendance. And to be honest with you I thought since we'd been out awhile, I really thought we would be bumping the top of that limit that we had set. But as it turned out, no, we're not anywhere near that. I have to say this sidebar. I'm a little bit excited that the coronavirus has taken away one metric that we use so much to judge how things are going, and that is attendance. I just want to say this. We can draw a crowd without making disciples, and making disciples is a main thing. If we can go through this coronavirus and change one thing let's look at our metrics. Enough of that sermon. We are building a two story education building. And we thought it was gonna be difficult, and that it was gonna keep us from meeting for awhile. But here comes the coronavirus, and it looks like we may have a building come online before we have enough people to fill it up. We actually, one blessing of that, it gives us a little bit longer to decide what we're going to do. We vacated some space, we're renovating space. So right now we couldn't do on campus groups if we wanted to. But we imagine that building will come online, and our space will be finished sometime around October 1st. The joke around here is that we love to be planning eight to 12 months in advance. And we think we're on about a two week planning grid right now. It's just so hard to know what the numbers are gonna be doing and what we can do. And we're really finding people are gonna, people are hesitant to come back. Right now we're sort of on, we're gonna let the school go first, just to be honest with some behind the scenes conversation. Let's let the public school get started and see what happens there and how that's gonna do. Of course, we're on a timeline that we couldn't start before probably second week in October anyway. That's what we're doing right now. We are allowing a few on campus groups. If they're adults and don't need preschool children and student space, and if we can provide a room large enough for them to socially distance. Of course, we ask them to wear masks, and socially distance, so we have two on campus now, probably four within the next couple of weeks. People are starting to ask about coming back. You know our Zoom meetings are going well. We offered a couple of different Zoom accounts for groups to use, and also, encourage people to buy their own, or use some of the free options. Over 98% of our adult groups were meeting online. I know there's some Zoom fatigue, and we can talk a little bit later about how to overcome Zoom fatigue. I've got some ideas that I think are important for us to think about there. One other just interesting thing that we're realizing. This is gonna be a longer event than we anticipated. And so I think we are gonna have to settle in to the fact that things are gonna look different, not just for a month or two, but maybe a year or two. And that hurts to hear me say that. It's gonna be awhile before things are normal, if they're ever totally normal after this. Anyway, so that's what's going on at Brook Hills. We're thinking about coming back while we wait on our building, and look forward to getting some things started probably in October.

- Okay, thank you, Jay. Jamie, you and I kind of represent some smaller churches. I think you can probably represent both of us well. And then we've got some questions coming in that we're going to deal with. Jamie you can give us kind of a picture both of really your church and First Tallassee both, in some of what they're doing. Kind of a smaller church and I guess we'd say a normative size church in our state.

- Okay, thank you, Daniel. The church where I'm serving as interim right now, it's a smaller congregation. We are having Bible study, small groups, and it's small group. We had nine there this morning. They're all adults in the sanctuary, socially distanced, wearing masks, coming in and going out. Once we get seated, we take our mask off. But while we're up moving around we ask everyone to wear a mask. But we're doing the Bible study on Sunday mornings. We have made provision for small groups for our children. We have just really one children's class. And we have them meet in a different building. And again, these rooms are cleaned once we use them. We only use them once a week here. Well, I say once a week, Sunday morning, and then we will meet Wednesday night. But it's cleaned in between then. As far as First Tallassee, my understanding is we're still, my wife is the preschool children's director there. And she came on board about maybe three weeks before this hit. So it has really been challenging for her, because they're not meeting. They've had vacation Bible school, and are doing things outside. We fortunately have the grounds that we can spread everybody out under tents and that kind of thing, to do activities, Bible studies, and all. That is working good, but at this point we're kind of like Jay in that we're gonna let the schools take the lead on the small groups. We've not set a time yet as far as when we're going to have small groups at First Tallassee. We're getting calls every day, my wife is. She got two just awhile ago saying, when are we gonna start small groups? So you really have a couple of counts, and we'll talk about this probably later on. You got those, and I think it's already been mentioned that said we should have started yesterday. And then some that says, how dare you even think about it? So we're all over the board right now. I think common sense prevails hopefully right now that we've got to watch the numbers, see when it comes down, find if we're in hot spots, things of this nature. Right now, of course at First Tallassee, we're having two worship services that are, again, doing the same thing, socially distancing, wearing masks, things of this nature. It's a variety there, but as far as the small groups, Sunday school, we're not open for business like we would like to be.

- We're in the same boat. Again, smaller church, this morning we had 15, with four guests, okay so. Normally without guests, we may have as many as 15 folks. We do not have anyone younger than 61. And that's basically my wife and I. Everybody else is in the, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health, in the at-risk category of 65 and above. We joked that a young adult is about 78 in our church. We're meeting for worship only, we're meeting in the fellowship hall. Because one of the next questions we're going to answer, and Jay has answered this somewhat in the chat room, is the issue of how do you sanitize between group meetings? And I'm gonna answer that just simply for our church. We have only the one meeting. So we go in Saturday before. First, we limit the number of things that people can touch. So where we normally have tables and whatnot set up in the fellowship hall, we reduce it down just to chairs. And so we sanitize all the surfaces that would be touched, doorknobs, chairs, so forth and so on. And we do use a spray disinfectant sanitizer in there. We have one bathroom that we sanitize. Because we encourage people, I think Topper mentioned this earlier, be prepared to come and be there for 45 to 50 minutes, and hopefully not need the restroom. It's there if you do need it. But because of the sanitizing issue, and we don't have somebody that can just stay with it and all, because we're just not that large. So Nell has asked, "What are you doing in order to be safe for the next group to enter for the next service time?" Jay, you kind of gave an answer there. But go ahead and share that with everybody that may not be seeing it.

- Sure, when David Platt was here, he would preach about an hour. And so we wound up with worship services at 9:00 and 11:00. And our worship services were, you know at that point probably an hour, 35 or 40 minutes total. With Matt Mason here now we've kind of settled in to about an hour, 25. But with this COVID crisis hitting, once we got past the online only, and started coming back on campus, we intentionally work to shorten that worship event, so that we would have an hour in between to sanitize the room. I don't know what those machines are called. You've seen them on TV cleaning airplanes and stuff like that. It kind of takes two people, one hauling some equipment, but the other one spraying it. And it does a fine mist and kills germs on all of the surfaces. I was talking to someone in my small group last week, And we were talking about that. And they said, "Well we didn't know all that went on. Somebody needs to show a video or something." So this morning I actually walked into the worship room when they were doing that and shot some video. It would just give people a lot of comfort to know this worship room is probably much, much cleaner than your home. I think that's encouraging to people. But we're trying to have things set up so that people don't have to touch any doorknobs coming in. We have greeters who hold the doors open. People can just walk through all the way to their seat. We did start out assigning people different sections. We would have a greeter, and as people would come in and we put up these new section signs, they would go like, "Section A, if you guys would find a seat in section A, if you'd find a seat in section B." And of course every other row is marked off with some tape, so people can't sit in front or behind directly in front or behind one another. And so those are some of the precautions that we're taking. And of course, with the statewide mask ordinance, we're trying to be good citizens. Of course, we... What was said when I drill down and ask, what are we gonna do if somebody really refuses to wear a mask. Well, our greeters are gonna pass them off to a pastoral staff member. The funny thing, I just laughed, it sounded like our position was we're gonna wear them down verbally until the service is over anyway. Don't you love Jesus? Don't you love these other people? You're always screaming it. Although I don't know what we would we do. I heard there was one guy that kind of wandered off way, way away from everybody else and pulled off his mask. And of course, that was fine, nobody could see him, and he was probably 50-60 feet from the next person. We've had good compliance with wearing masks. And one thing I've found in a few events that I've done, if we set the example, and ask people to do it. One of the things I'm communicating a lot with our small group leaders as we're coming back, let people know what to expect, and do not surprise them. Because that I think is when we're going to get into trouble. You know another amazing thing, you know I'm probably venturing off a little bit. Wow! How we react to the coronavirus can really create some controversy in our churches. All the way from some people who think thinks this thing is a hoax, to people on the other perspective who, hey I'm gonna be a hermit in my home until 2022. And so, you know that and everywhere in between, it's gonna be a significant amount of time. But more importantly than that, we as leaders need to think about ways to promote unity within our churches, so that we can keep the ship together moving in the same direction. And I think good communication is one of those things. Let's be leaders. Let's tell people what we're doing, and why we're gonna do it. And that way, even if they disagree we can say, hey we're doing this for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and it's not comfortable, but let's do it. I think leadership is really important in this time, as well.

- I think that is, the key part. Leaders are gonna be second guessed. So don't put yourself in the position to be second guessed, lead. Make the decision, lead by example, be an encourager. Be somebody that can understand. Again, with more of an elderly congregation we ask them of course to wear masks. Because we're not only good stewards of the kingdom, but supposed to be good citizens here on Earth. And love one another, care for one another, bear one another's burdens. And so we do it out of respect for each other. We do say if you're one that can't wear a mask long, wear it 'til you get to your seat. And as long as you're safely socially distanced, some of those will seek the further away type seats. Then if you need to pull down your mask. Because some of them do have difficulty breathing anyway. We had one come the first week that was a guest who had COPD, and he could not wear a mask. But he was understanding, and he stayed in the back. So no one had a real issue with that. He wore it until he could get away from everybody, and then do that, so that's respectful. You know a lot of churches are just having to do the old muscle power on sanitizing. And when it comes to the restrooms they have an attendant there. So after somebody goes in, they quickly go in spray, wipe down as best they can. And I think at the end of the day you give your best effort. We're not gonna be perfect, we're not professionals at this. But we give our best effort, because we care about our members, we care about our guests. Lea's asked some questions and we want to move on to those. Her first question. She gives us a little bit of background, they're providing one in person Sunday school class, for both youth and young adults. Of course, the social distancing and protocols in place there. They're also broadcasting Sunday school, and worship on Facebook Live. But she's wanting to know what others are doing right now for Sunday school, small group meetings. And looking for ideas on how to continue to support Sunday school program that we might reach the most people. And Jay, I'm gonna throw that to you, because of the panelists you're the more tech oriented person there, and I think you have some more. Topper's already mentioned they are live streaming, Hunter Street worship, we'll come back and see what they're doing related to Sunday School. But I'm gonna let you jump on that one, first, Jay.

- Okay, one of the things that I read into the background and want to comment about. And I realize I'm pushing into maybe some comfort zone here. I would say this. Sunday school is not primarily about content. I had one youth pastor one time in a meeting he pointed out how many different events and Bible studies we would go to. One morning, we'd got Sunday school to have a lesson, go to morning worship, have a lesson. Church in the afternoon would have a separate Bible lesson. Sunday night worship have another one, men's Bible study Tuesday morning. I think it's important to realize the role of each. Now, the Bible is center in Sunday school. Yet, let's realize how important. One of the things I teach my small group leaders, based on Hebrews 10:24-25, that passage talks about meeting together. But up above it it talks about encouraging one another, and right below that it talks about spurring one another on to good deeds, and good works. And so one of the things I think we might have some Zoom fatigue is when we use Zoom for a lot of one way content. So I'm encouraging my leaders to try to find ways to get people talking to one another, and encouraging one another. And it might take having that tech person that Daniel talked about. Or it might take, you know if we're running the meeting ourself, maybe playing with Zoom, or whatever format we use, and learn how to do breakout rooms. What you can do as you're in a lesson doing a study, you can say, "Okay, we're gonna break out and take five minutes and I want you to discuss this question." You might have 20 people, 20 different screens on your computer, but when you break out you would have maybe just three or four like this, and people can interact. And right now so many people are not interacting as much, they're secluding more in their homes, particularly older adults. If we can give them opportunities to interact, that's something that's really, really important, that encouraging one another is so important. So I'm trying to equip our people to use the breakout rooms. Or you can even have different smaller meetings on different nights. Some of our groups are having their, they might get together for a Zoom study, but they'll have the men get together on Zoom on Tuesday nights, and the women on Thursday night. And just go ahead and share your prayer request. Have it be an interactive time. So bottom line, that's my encouragement to you. Whatever creative ways you can find to make this interactive, rather than just another one way communication without Bible content. Because if you think of it now, we're competing with a thousand different awesome pastors and teachers on TV that we can tune into. They can tune in somewhere else and get a better Bible lesson. But being able to talk to people they know and love, and share prayer requests, and encourage one another and interact, that's something that's really, really important. A number of our groups are getting together for a driveway fellowship. I have a Sunday night group that meets in my home, and we've moved outdoors most of the time. Granted, last Sunday was pretty uncomfortable. It was borderline for me as far as being too hot, to meet in the driveway. But we're trying to do that some, and sometimes we can go inside and socially distance if we've got the right number of people there. In whatever you do I encourage you to find ways to make our small groups, or Sunday school interactive. More like the experience that they had when they were here.

- Yeah, I think those are some good points, Jay. What I hear the most is what you refer to as Zoom fatigue, and the way to overcome it is through engagement. Some even in Zoom now they're giving the first 10 minutes to just kind of go from person to person. You can as many as 24 up on the screen all at once, depending on, if you're using something other than your iPhone, or whatever. So they can see the faces. If you can think about 24 pictures, that could even be couples. So there could be 48 faces on at one time. But just to take the time and let everybody say hello, we're doing fine, pray for me about x, that kind of thing. Because think about it. When people come even to Sunday school at church, there's some fellowship time that goes on in the hall. And then there's some fellowship time that goes on inside the classroom. And that is one of the driving forces. And then I like what you said, and I was on with somebody else who said this past week, I think it was Ken Marler in fact that said, their young adults had picked up on the fact that people were getting tired. So they began to do Zoom in groups of five, six, and seven. So that they would have just some meet and greet kind of stuff on Zoom. And find some times. Again, the Hebrews 10:22-25. "Stir one another up to love and good deeds." So being encouragers, exorters to each other. 'Cause a lot of people are getting depressed, and they're getting lonely.

- One other interesting thing, Daniel, on the Sunday night group, back when we were just doing Zoom for awhile. I'll tell folks at the end, "Okay we really finished with the lesson in small group time, but I'm just gonna hang out here. We're gonna leave the Zoom open, and whoever wants to hang out and just talk about whatever you want to talk about feel free." You know that everybody stayed on for 50 more minutes, not 15, 50 more minutes, just to chat. And so that was good.

- Yeah, my wife teaches school, and they had to teach online. So they would have 15 minutes between class. And her students would beg her to leave it on. So for that 15 minutes, or 10 of the 15, they could just talk with each other like they normally would out in the hall. Let me kick it over to Topper. I think you would want to weigh in.

- I just wanted to know down a little bit further what Jay's been talking about, I think he's right on target. And you use the word engaging. And I think that's a key principle word for us in our teaching is engaging the learners and getting them involved. It shouldn't just be 20 or 30, or 35 minute presentation where they're sitting there and listening. We need to figure out ways of getting them personally involved so that they can handle it and deal with it, and be challenged by it. Because that's truly how learning will take place. And then you'll get a change in behavior. And they'll be able to apply it to their lives. I think as we look at Zoom fatigue, as we've been calling it, quite frankly I think Zoom fatigue is pointing out something really in a very positive way that's been going on for a long time. And that goes back to what I just said, 'cause typically in most of our groups when we meet the home groups are a little bit different, because it's more casual. But a lot of times the on campus groups will sit there and you'll have a person that will lecture 35 or 45 minutes. And everybody else just sits there like a bump on the log, and they don't make a comment. You may have the same three, or four, or five people in the group that make a comment from week to week. But as far as getting whatever amount of people in that group, the 12 or the 20 involved in some type of grappling and engagement, they're just sitting there. This Zoom fatigue I think, it's pointing out that we do need to think of creative ways to get the learners involved. And I think Jay is right on line. I think for those of us that are leading groups, particularly using Zoom, or GoTo Meeting, or whatever the format is that we're using, we need to tech up a little bit ourselves, and learn how to use the breakout rooms to get folks involved. So really, maybe the greatest challenge is not for the learners, but for us as leaders to move out of our comfort zone, to begin to facilitate that type of teaching. And so I want to encourage us that even during these times where we have been so challenged with this COVID-19. I think God is using this as a great tool to help prepare us to be better equipped in the future. So I just want to encourage us. The other day I was going through my ancient files, and I found a little teaching preparation plan that I had put together, I don't know, it was probably 20 years ago. So I peeled it out and I looked at it, and I updated it and so forth. Basically, it's called a fast track Bible teaching preparation outline. You just flip it over and it's how to prepare your whole lesson, kind of like in a microwave format. But it just gives you a little bit of an outline. But one of the key elements in that outline is that there's about two or three opportunities in the Bible presentation for the groups to discuss, and then be engaged in small groups. So if you have a group of 15 or 20, you might break them down into three groups of five, or four groups of three, or whatever, and give them a few minutes to discuss. Like Jay was talking about a little while ago. Then bring them back and say, "Okay, now what did you talk about?" And then from there you'll get feedback, you'll get popcorn reactions, more people involved and so forth. Then you'll have an opportunity to come in without them even knowing it and add to that, because you've studied. And then give them a little bit of a mini-lecture. And then go right into the next group involvement. So the bottom line of something like that is you pick out the one spiritual nugget that you really want them to get, and to take home and to apply. And it's not a whole lot of content, like what Jay was talking about awhile ago. It's just one thing, if they can get that handle and get it, then you can really move on down the road in their discipleship, as far as them becoming more and more like Christ. And applying what we want them to apply to their lives.

- Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. So many times we prepare so much, that we prepare too much. And they can't even process all that they've heard. And so to be able to say, here's the big idea, the big takeaway. Went to a church and consulted with them for awhile, it was described that we know we need to start new groups, we have no bench strength. Don't even know if we started one, they look like what we already have, which is content driven. Long story short, we went and created multiple groups in the fellowship hall, and we enlisted somebody. We just called them them the table host. Didn't call them a teacher, just table host. And we're going to have a person kind of master teach, but we're gonna have you ask some questions at your table. Make sure everybody gives an answer. The question might be, how would somebody you work with answer this question? How would they respond? Which allows you to test out your own answer without saying it's what I would say, just kind of what you've heard. So it created a safe zone. Well needless to say, over time the master teacher would say, "Well, here's what the Bible has to teach about that. Now take a few minutes and react to that at your table." Needless to say, we started a lot of new groups with table hosts going, "I could do that."

- That's super. Can I say one other thing to Lea about, she was asking about what some of the other churches were doing, and so forth. And to kind of hitchhike on what Jay had mentioned a while ago. At my church I know we've had a couple of videos on Sunday morning kind of showing what some of the small groups are doing, 'cause it's something you don't see. You don't even know it's going on, because it's happening. But we had some of our older groups that could meet any time. Their favorite thing was to come up to the church parking lot, because we have a big parking lot, and it's got a whole bunch of shady spots in there. And they would come up there early in the morning, and bring their coffee and their lawn chairs, and they would just put them in a giant semicircle, and sit under the shade trees. And they'd have their lesson on Tuesday morning. And then we've had some other groups just like Jay. They were meeting in somebody's back yard. We had this one guy that had this, like a two acre back yard. And they would meet over there at 6:30 in the evening when it started cooling down. And they would bring their lawn chairs, and their drinks and space out. And they'd have their Bible lesson that way. One other group, again, because the church is vacant all during the week, would schedule their larger rooms and set them up. And a group could come in at any point, any time during the week and use that room, as long as it was scheduled and they knew they were coming. They'd have a building unlocked. And they could come and use that room, have their small group and then go home. And they wouldn't provide any childcare, or anything like that. I think Jay mentioned this, or you mentioned this, I can't remember, but like in a coed group we've seen some of the groups that have children, that the husbands would come one time and meet, and the wives would keep the kids. And then the next time the husbands would keep the kids and the wives would meet. And they'd take turns doing that.

- Yeah. Okay, go ahead, Jay.

- If could share just one word of encouragement. We're in this season of time where, you know, there's just a lot of depressing things, and life isn't like we used to have it. And we're having to figure out a lot of different things. Just one encouraging story from our groups. In one of our adult small groups, there was a lady who attended, and her husband never attended the small group when it was on campus. Well, when we went off campus, obviously she was just attending her Sunday morning group via Zoom. And he was off camera. And then after a couple of weeks, he was kind of in the picture with her. And he would interact a little bit. And then fast forward a couple of weeks later, he's starting to ask questions, and get involved in the group. You know, just thinking about that, I feel sure when we come back on campus he's kind of been made part of the group now, and he's gonna be there. Let's look at the opportunities that we have, not just the opportunities we've missed. And so they are two areas. We have the people in our household who, it could be a little bit easier invitation now. They're probably already in the room, the invitation could be easy enough as, "Hey would mind turning off the TV and participate in this with me?" You know, that's not a lot of sacrifice, you can still do it from your jammies. And then, there might be people that we know that we could just forward the small group link and say, "Hey, I would love for you to participate in my small group with me, here's the link. We meet at such and such time on Sunday mornings." I don't want us in all of this to lose our outreach focus. And just realize that there are actually some opportunities created.

- In fact, some of this is allowing people that have that fear factor of coming on campus, to be able to just connect with friends. Of course, as a state missionary we're always calling pastors and staff members during the week and on the phone. And I have heard some neat, neat stories like both of you all have shared. Even this one pastor said, "You know, we record ours." He also can do music. So he said, "We moved out to our patio and it's covered." And he said, "So we'll sing a few songs and then I'll teach and we'll interact," and he said, "And then I noticed my neighbors starting to bring their lawn chairs out." And he said, "The next thing you know they're all just kind of in a big circle." And so he said, "Neighbors I couldn't get to go to church with me, are now in church with me. As I'm doing my Sunday school class and starting with the song stuff like that." Lea also asked, and I'm gonna kick this over to you, Jay. Because Jay, you all may not know he's communications leader for a group called DNA, which is all of our discipleship ministers in the state, or have responsibility for adult discipleship in the state. And so he has heard several of these. Lee is asking about what online platforms are your churches using for registering of worship service space, small groups, et cetera? So what platforms, Jay, are you hearing most commonly used?

- You know, our staff is large enough sometimes we're siloed. We're using one that's excellent, but I don't even know the name of it. I can find out for you, in fact I'll try to find out during this time and put it in the notes. One other piece of software that I use is called Wufoo, and I know, by the way, that's W-u-f-o-o, I'll put that in the chat notes. You can also set a max on there and put a link on your website, you know, a worship service for a certain day. It'll keep up with tracking. One tip I would give you on tracking that is really, really important. For our worship events we've got a capacity set right now at 500 in each worship service. We're averaging about 250. So we really don't need it to control the size at all. But what we're using it for is tracking. And if somebody tests positive in one of those worship venues, we know who is there so we can send out an email just to tell them, hey we want you to know, somebody in that worship venue tested positive. So it's just a way of keeping up with that that's helpful for our people a little bit better. Anyway, I'll try to find that out and post it in the chat room.

- I know of one format, I think I'm pretty sure. When I was at Westwood we set up a church app. And we have a church app just like most of the larger churches do, at Hunter Street, where we can register our attendants. And we can request a spot for the next worship service, and so forth, and register for that. But the one at Westwood, if you contact Rick Swain, he is the executive pastor there. Ad I believe the name of the company is just called PushPay. And they are a group that help churches develop their online giving platform. And from that there is an app that is available that is available to the church that has all kinds of good information that you put on that app. Like summer outlines, and news, and giving, and all kind of stuff. I really do like that app. They work with a church based on their giving. There's something on there I forget how much they guarantee that your giving will go up once you start using that app, but there's a certain percentage. And so that first year or so it's almost paying for itself, what they charge for administration costs.

- State Board Admissions quite often, and Jay has put up some links there. Or actually, Lydia has put up some links to Wufoo and PushPay in the chat room. State board most often uses Wufoo, as well, for a lot of registration for different events. Of course, the Zoom webinar comes with, you just set it up for registration. It really doesn't limit except if you reach the limit of what you pay Zoom for. I can take up 100 on my current account. The State Board has one that can take up to 500. So you can do that and then just max out. Wufoo I think overall, is probably one of the simplest ones out there that gets used a lot. There are some others, and Jay may find more to tap into. If you're responsible for adult discipleship in your church, and any of these that you need more answers on, if you'll just send me an email and say, "Daniel, could you ask the communications office there at the State Board," and we'll see what we can do to assist in that. But Wufoo is what we primarily use at the State Board. And then Lee says, "How do you bridge the gap with older members? We have members that miss the interaction. They're intimidated by online options, whether it's Zoom, Facebook, Google Meet, et cetera." And Lee I'm right there with you at our church. Again, most of ours are older, doesn't mean they're not on Facebook. But some that are on Facebook are real uncomfortable about anything video on Facebook. For the longest time I did have a vocal problem, and so I had to stop, I reached vocal strain right after Father's Day, speaking too many times. And I had to kind of give it a rest for a few weeks. But I was doing a daily devotional. So it was easier for them, because it was about five or 10 minutes, instead of trying to do 30 or 45 minutes. And they're suppose to watching a screen or something. We kind of did some things devotionally five days a week, instead of me preaching on Sunday on Facebook. And then several of our members do have either a child, a son, a grandson, or even a granddaughter that goes to another church that's online, or on TV. So they will join in with those kind of environments that they're more comfortable with. But the other thing I would ask before I kick this over to Topper, is I would add that a lot of our churches in adding these on campus classes. The initial classes are for the older generation that tends to want the interaction. But they do not do all the social media stuff. And so they need to be on campus in person. So several of our churches right now are having at least an on campus class. It may not be on Sunday, it may be on Monday, or Thursday. For those that are senior adults, allowing them to come into their fellowship hall, and social distance, masks the whole bit. But at least they can have their group time together that way. Let me kick it over to you, Topper, see what else you've heard, bridging the gap for those that are older, or not on social media.

- I just have to echo what you just said, what I've heard and what I've seen is that many of the churches are doing a space walk with their facilities, and they're choosing the larger education rooms that they have. Usually if you use just 12 and divide that into your square feet, that'll just tell you what 100% occupation of that room, under a normal circumstance would be. And then you take 80% of that for your top number. For instance, if you had a 16 x 24 room that would 384 square feet divided by 12 would be 32. Which you could fit 32 people in there at 100%, and you take 80% of that, and it's 25, that's normal. But now when you social distance that, instead of having 25, you may only be able to get 12 or 15 in there, you see what I'm saying? From the way that you stack the chairs. And so most of us may have one or two, or more rooms larger than maybe a 16 or 20 x 24. So I would find those large rooms, and I would put them on a schedule, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way through the week at a certain time. And encourage my older adults to sign up to attend, and then I'd have some rules. Like you got to wear a mask, you got to sit in the chairs as they're seated apart. If you want something to drink you bring it yourself. Just bring it in an insulated cup or whatever. But there's not gonna be any food, or anything that like we're not gonna touch. We'll have some stuff there to wash your hands if you need to, and restrooms will be available if you need them, but no childcare, just come on. Then the first few times I would have a staff person or someone that would be a host to be there to kind of make sure that everything was going like it should. And then if they continue to meet and everything, hopefully you can just kind of pass the baton to them once they get the rote straight. And just turn it over to them and let them come in and meet. Another thing would be sanitizing the rooms in between their use, and that sort of thing.

- Yeah several will schedule it out where they have plenty of time to turn the room over, as far as sanitizing everything. Jay, I notice you have put something in the chat room that people can pick up on that might help for senior adults. And if you want to say a word or two about that, and anything else related to that.

- Sure, the first thing I want you to encourage you to do is not say no for people. We might automatically think, oh our senior adults can't do that, they're gonna be intimidated, they won't be able to do that. I've spoken with some colleagues who were pastors that, felt like their discipleship guy just said, no for the seniors, and was frustrated with that. I've been pleasantly surprised how tech-y our seniors are. I don't think it's that we have you know, really an advanced group of seniors here. We're finding out that they were already learning how to use tech to talk to their kids who live in, grandkids who live in St. Louis, or Phoenix, or things like that. They want to learn this, it's often a help to them. We've even done a, well honestly, we've done three or four church wide senior adult gatherings on Zoom. And there was one time, Daniel you said 24 panels, we had two whole pages of senior adults, some of those were couples who logged on. I think we had 70 or 75 one day. And we had them, had our pastor come on, and just do a devotion for them, and encourage them. Last week we were gonna do a tour of the building, I was gonna walk through the new building with them. And I tested it the day before I found out we had some wifi desert places. I went ahead and just walked through the day before, after I found that out and recorded it. And so I played a video tour for them that I had recorded. Then we took Q&A. And so there are lots of things we can do with our seniors. Early on one of the things, as soon as the coronavirus pandemic hit. I dove in and was looking for resources that we could find. And one of the things I had used before it's called freeconferencecall.com. You actually can use that for free. But once you call the number you put in a five digit PIN, and then it puts you in a room. But what you can do is go ahead and subscribe for $3.95 month. And it'll give you a telephone number that doesn't require a PIN. So in other words, here's the deal. You could give a regular 10 digit number to all of your senior adults, meaning a phone number. And say, hey we're gonna meet on Sunday morning, at 9:00, all you have to do is dial this number. And so they could use their phone, and once they just dial that 10 digit number they're in. They're in with everybody else, and the teacher can just talk and do that. You might find out that that is easier. We did have two or three groups try that. And then once they got brave, they went ahead and drifted over towards Zoom once they felt like they could do that. But we did have a couple of groups start out doing that. Had good results from that, but they decided they'd rather see one another. So they migrated toward that. One of the free services we found that I liked a lot was call Jitsi, J-i-t-s-i dot com. And it's very similar to Zoom. But it's free and it doesn't have a 45 minute limit. If finances are an issue you can use that. Of course, there are some other things I think we've named. The Google Meet platform, if you've got Gmail, it's pretty much right there on your screen and ready to go already. You can meet that way. There are lots of different resources. Some churches are wondering whether to provide accounts for their people, or whether to have them get their own account. And look at it this way. Zoom is probably the best option, and it's less than $4.00 a meeting, it's about $14.95 a month. And if you meet four times that takes the cost down. If you look at it that way, that's not a lot to pay. It winds up being better if a group has their own account. So if you haven't gone that direction yet, that's probably what I would recommend to you. If you have the church coordinate that you just throw a 3rd party in there and it can be a little bit more of a mix. I do want to say whole-heartedly what Daniel said up front about having another person do that. With the number of groups we have here. My first three or four weeks into the pandemic, I was spending almost all day training people on Zoom, and answering questions. Finally found one of our young singles who had some time at home taking care of her parents to be our coordinator. And I turned it over to her. And she would even log on with groups for their first meetings, or for people needing help. And there were times I was in a meeting with her, she would disappear, she was on the phone with somebody helping them work through some Zoom things. I couldn't have done that and led the meeting at the same time. And if nothing else, even if you're a small group with more than five or six screens of people, it's great to make somebody else a cohost, so when the husband or wife, kids are running through, I've had dogs, all that. They can just mute the person for you, so you don't have to worry about that. I do strongly encourage, and it can be somebody else in your group. And one last tip before Topper speaks. I would say this. The leader of the meeting the teacher, the facilitator doesn't have to be the Zoom host. Daniel, you were talking about involving volunteers. Go ahead and ask somebody to load up the meeting, be the host, and the teacher or leader just sign on as a participant. That way all you have to worry about is content. One of the things I've discovered is when we're worried about content and hosting the meeting, when something goes wrong it's just really hard to deal with both of those.

- One of things I was gonna say, Jay, you made me think about this in sharing all those great ideas was that I have used Zoom myself just to make personal phone calls with people. If you have it all you got to do is send somebody an email invitation and then when they get it, they just click on it and it comes up on their screen. Like a couple clicks and there you go. You can actually use it to call people in your church and check on them and have actually a face-to-face conversation with them.

- That's excellent.

- I think we need to do more of that particularly during this time when a lot of people are still isolated and they don't get out. So I would encourage you to do use it for almost like a Facetime on your phone. But you got it on your computer and you got a big picture up. Actually, one other thing if you're going to do that and you're in Zoom, use the personal meeting room. That way the link is the same every time. And if you want to meet with somebody just you can kind of have that link somewhere in a place where you can just cut it and paste it and mail it. Say, hey, let's meet at 10:00 tomorrow morning. That way using the personal meeting room feature of Zoom makes it easy.

- Those are excellent ideas. And the more we can do those kinds of things. The follow up comment I'll give again, a largely senior adult church. In fact, I went there four years ago. They asked me to stay, 'cause they had already calculated that they would have to close their doors in two years because of finances and so forth. Four years later, we're still there, we're still meeting. And we planted a church inside the church. So we're learning how to share space. The other church is not able to meet at all. They meet online, they meet on radio, they're able to get with Frazier Network with television. They do Facebook Live, and so they are, because they work primarily with a community that is, real people are, many of them, are living on sometime the government assistance. In fact, one of the hallmarks of the church is they're there to feed the hungry, to minister to the poor, and to hear the gospel. That was the unreached people group in that community. It wasn't about race, it was about people that no church was really trying to do anything. We've just been overwhelmed at how well they've been able to do that. So they had to find a lot of ways, because most of the people in that community don't even have wifi. Many of them don't have a television. So that's why they're also on radio. So they're doing everything they can to make it possible. But at the same time my senior adult church, one of my faithful listeners is 93. Another one is 90, another one is 87. So you know, they can get on there, and then Lydia sent me a text to remind me that it's a great ministry for some young adults in your church to contact one of these senior adults and say, "Would you like for me to set it up, so that you can view your Sunday school class, and I'll do all the tech for you. I'll get it set up, I'll come by your house, we'll social distance, I'll get it set up, do whatever you need." And what a great way to minister to some of those. 'Cause I can tell you that the 93 year old, and the 90 year old, and the 87 year old all have that person. They got them set up, they said all you have to do is at the right time hit right here, and you're good to go.

- You're saying a great ministry in the church, this would be a gig spot. I think so.

- Another great ministry for those grandparents is to call that child or grandchild and get them over and say, "Now I'm gonna need you here to watch this with me, because something may go wrong.

- Absolutely, absolutely. What a great way to involve neighbors and friends. In fact, we've talked several times, Lawrence Phipps, I call him my pastor still. We learned a lot of times when you have a need, when you're gonna do business, we tend to default to people that we know that are saved. Every now and then it's smart to reach out to somebody that's not saved, and enlist their help. And I don't know how many times I've done that, but my son used to rehab and flip houses. I knew a guy that was unchurched. He was a master electrician. So we would call him every now and then, could you come give us some advice? He came and did more than give us advice from time to time. One of the last time we had him over the house, he was talking about the mission trip that he'd just been on. So what a great way to engage some people. So sometimes it may be somebody at work, or somebody that you've known in the past, they know that tech-y stuff. Have them come over and say, and would you stay in case something goes wrong, great idea?

- If I could mention one thing I posted in the chat. For Brook Hills, I wrote a couple of different guidelines, one for on campus groups, one for off campus. And these are dealing specifically with safety. And for instance, I'll just give you one quick example I thought through. When the Sunday night group meets in my home, of course. The meeting is long enough someone's gonna need to go to the restroom. I've provided a number of individual wipes in a little packet in the room. And I ask them to wipe down all the handles once they leave the restroom. If you think about it, there's the potty handle, there's the sink handle, there's the doorknob, and the light switch. You know all of those things get touched. It's kind of funny the first time we met I told them, I said, "Guys, I'm writing these things for my church trying to feel out all the issues, so we can make sure we can get all this right." Described all of that. Well the first girl that went to the restroom, she brought her wipe out to show, "See I did it, I wiped down everything." And then some other suggestions on there, like you had mentioned, we just want to get away from food currently, certainly no buffet lines. My Sunday night group we would do food every week. We've done some where you just bring your own. Just some guidelines like that. If you find those helpful that's at brookhills.org/leaderresources. You can find ones for on and one for off campus groups. Okay, and I'm gonna respond to something that Nell that has put there in the chat, it's almost appropriate. If you will look in the chat box, down where you type your message, you're gonna see three little dots in a box. If you'll click on that box one thing it says is save chat. So all these links that Jay has put in there, if you want to be able to review them later, rather than trying to frantically type them right now you can put save chat, It'll ask you about folder or whatever. But usually I just save the chat, and I go back and find it pretty easily and download. The other thing is the question they'll ask is this being recorded? And the answer is yes it is. Because we know some were not gonna be able to join us live and would want to come back and see this. And even some that did join us live we want to come back and review and look, and say, well what did he say about this or that? Maybe have somebody else watch it. So you will be able to see this in the next few days. Going to the State Board website, which is a-l-s-b-o-m, stands for Alabama State Board of Missions, a-l-s-b-o-m dot org, forward slash Vimeo, V-i-m-e-o, Vimeo. And you will be able to catch all of these, even there's one going on right now for singles today. You can be able to go view it. You can even view ones you didn't sign up for. So any of them that went on this week, there were four for single ministry. There was four for Sunday school leaders. Lydia has that in there, you can go to vimeo.com/alsbom, or alsbom.org/vimeo, either direction, and be able to get those and review. So you may even see one next week and you signed up for it, and then something happened, life happened, and you couldn't see it. You will be able to catch all of these on Vimeo a little bit later. And then to tell you of another site Jay has put in there. He does one called greatgroups.org. And he speaks with a lot of his group leaders about topics that are pertinent to all groups, it's a podcast format, it's on there. OnegreatSunday.org is our video site. And there are fresh videos for all age groups in Sunday school, and Sunday school directors. This year I asked the staff at Louisiana Baptist Convention to tape those videos for us. We're trying to kind of share it around to some other states. It's a service that we, as Alabama have been blessed to provide for our state, and we let others use it. We've had plenty this week from Mississippi and some other states jump on to these. So you can go to onegreatSunday.org. Also, kidzlinkal.org, k-i-d-z-l-i-n-k-a-l dot org, if you have specific questions about preschool children, whether it's Sunday school, vacation Bible school, Bible drill, discipleship, music, missions, all of that at kidzlinkal.org. And so you can find all of those now in the chat room box there that will help you. Let me tell the idea behind Pinnacle Alabaman. Pinnacle Alabama is going to be for virtual training. Which means that you at some point have the opportunity to jump on live like you did today and ask questions like you did today, and we thank you for doing that. One Great Sunday is always video, not virtual, it's video training, which means they're pre-recorded and put up there. It's not raw footage like you get today with bottles and all that. They're not highly professionally done, but they are a little more professional. And you can't really interact. Sometimes they do have a guided lecture form you can download and follow along, things like that, but it's video training. And then eventually, even some of these that are being recorded in August and September will appear on One Great Sunday, as well as Vimeo. So we do want people to be able to go back and refer to these, share them with other people and all that. Thank you, Nell, and others for asking those questions. And so I want to move to kind of one more thing that we talked about earlier. And I just want to get, and I'll start with Jay, and then we'll move to Topper. And what is the best idea that you've seen a church do during this COVID-19? Or maybe the idea every church ought to be doing during COVID-19, Jay I'll kick it to you first.

- Well, the first thing that came to mind was when the pandemic hit we had a number of our members that would just call the church office and say, "Hey, is there anything I can do? Does anybody need food taken to them, anyway I can serve?" And so we started keeping a list of those names. And decided one of the ways we would use those for those who were willing, is to call all of our senior adults, and just make sure they're okay, make sure they've got family to provide them, you know, pick up groceries, different things like that. And so we wound up with a calling team of 20 people. And downloaded our database, and put the information in a Google doc. And also gave them a place where they could type out in that shared document, any needs that they discovered. Or if the person no longer lived there, the number was bad, or whatever. So we literally were able to contact hundreds of people using the volunteers. And I think Daniel, you've already mentioned this. Often when a crisis hits our church, our first thought is what can we do? If you're in church leadership, let's try to involve other people, and let them use their gifts, and service and time. We grow spiritually by serving. Finding ways to allow other people to do some of the work is helpful for us, and helpful for them.

- One of the things too, people were concerned about early on when the crisis hit, was giving. I had several mention that to me, and I said I think you're gonna be surprised. That people in a time of crisis have a giving spirit. And they want to serve, and they want to help. And most churches I've talked to have been pleasantly surprised at how faithful their members have been, and giving that they're either on budget, or above budget, or as good as they normally are at this time of year. Because people do see and respond to the crisis, so yeah, great idea. Great idea getting a bank of volunteers ready to go, and a bank of phone calling folks together too. They're mainly the people that are isolated right now that making contacts is something that they can do. Topper, what about you?

- So for me, the idea is an idea that's been talked about, and discussed almost completely the whole time we've been on today. And that is the idea of Zoom. I say that in that I come from the old days, back as far as the early '80s and Ford. Back on those days, one of the big things that we've focused on continually as far as our small groups ministry was concerned, was having some type of weekly touch point. Weekly training meeting, weekly worker's meeting, coddle, whatever you want to call it. So I think today that has pretty much gone by the way side, where we really don't have any type of a meeting during the week where we try to gather all of our teachers or key leaders together to evaluate what we did last Sunday, and what our plans are for the future. And how well we're ministering, and how we'll we're teaching and executing the plan that we have for our small groups. It's more of a hit and miss, each group is on their own type of deal. With Zoom, one of the things I have seen with a lot of the churches is that, Jay mentioned, he spent the first few weeks and month or so, just training his leaders on how to use them. Well you know you can get Zoom as an individual for free, and you can use the first 45 minutes in a multi-group where you can have as many people on, I think up to 50 people on there that's free. And then it cuts off. And if you want to have another meeting, you got to start all over again. If you can do a 30 minute meeting, and have all your leaders, you can record it, and put it online and that sort of thing. And we're seeing a lot of churches that have gone back to some type of a weekly huddle where they're meeting together, their leaders are leading it. They're communicating, they're evaluating. And I think that's really cool. It's kind of helped us to see that in our day of technology there are ways of getting back to doing the principles. And it's almost like any type of a sports team. My goodness, we wouldn't have a football team that showed up on Saturday without having practice all during the week to get ready for Saturday. Yet we're gonna meet on Sunday, without having any discussion or anything, and here we go. This is the most important business that there is. Anyway, I think the possibility of having a weekly Zoom meeting with our leaders, for just 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or whatever is an outstanding opportunity.

- I think you're right. And that's gonna lead us really into the final question, this might not even be a fair question to put you to, but Topper almost answered part of it. I want you to share with us one thing that as the crisis subsides, I don't know that I'll ever completely, there won't any going back to quote, normal. I even question the idea of a new normal, it'll probably be a new different. Jay said early on, where we used to try to plan six to eight months, we may be reduced to six and eight weeks at a time, or two weeks a time. We're probably gonna go through the new different phase at least for some time. What is one thing that you've seen, and Topper you kind of said this with Zoom, and being able to meet with leadership. But one thing that you've seen start during the crisis that you pray continues. And then one thing that you've seen that stopped that you wonder if it'll ever come back, or look anything close to what it used to. And you can answer 1/2 of that, or the other 1/2, or both halves if you want to. Topper let me kick that to you first, 'cause I think you started really with the leader meeting.

- Let me answer 1/2 of that and then I'll kick it over to Jay, and I'll come back and answer the other half of that. One of the things I think that I would like to see, I think is gonna hang around, and that's what we've already alluded to. I actually had coffee with my small groups leader this past Tuesday, and we were talking about this very thing. Again, we have been pushed in, and he is a good example of this. To using technology and doing some things that have pushed us out of our comfort zone, in order to stay current and stay in contact with our folks in our small group. And that is the use of Zoom, or GoTo Meeting, or whatever. And most of the groups, and I think Jay would attest to this as well, that many of our groups when they start meeting back on campus, see a lot of great value in continuing to Zoom their live broadcasts of their Bible study on Sunday morning, even if it's back in their classroom. Because that gives you an opportunity to reach out to some folks that are not gonna come, or may still be a little hesitant about coming. So I don't think everybody's gonna come back. I think it's gonna be a very gradual return back to campus. I don't think everybody will come back at the same time. Some folks might not ever come back. And so the opportunity also to talk to a potential member, a prospect, or something like that, and say, "Hey, we're gonna Zoom it. Why don't you just join us? You don't have to say anything, or anything, but you could be a part of the group and kind of give it a test drive from your home." And then you continue to work on them, and call them and contact them. And maybe you can use that as a bridge to pull them in and bring them into the group. To me, I'm excited about the possibility of continuing to use and expand technology as we go forward to reach out and to get out into more pockets where the people are.

- Okay, Jay?

- I'll start out with things maybe to, that we don't keep doing. I think it's an opportunity for us as churches to hit the reset button, particularly with programs and events we do, that take a lot of time and a lot of energy. And we need to ask ourself what are we really accomplishing with those? And there are a few that I could look at and go, mm, I'm not sure we want to invest that amount of time or energy in that based on the return that we get. And I'll tell you one thing that we'll keep. It just so happened that we were moving toward doing our Great Groups podcast, you know, right as the coronavirus hit. My cohost and I were really bummed out, because we had this long list of small group ideas we wanted to do. But we had to keep coming back to, hey what's we're doing now. Here's how to handle the coronavirus in your groups. Here's how to do Zoom, and sharing all those type ideas. The one neat thing is that you can record something once, and have people listen to it on their commute in, or as they exercise. I will be doing more of that in the future, because we have two really big small group leader gatherings a year here at Brook Hills. And we can get excited because we have a room full of people. And I'm usually a glass half full kind of person, but sometimes I look at those meetings, and I see a lot of people who weren't able to be here, regardless of how much warning we gave them. Hey, this is coming up, it's gonna be good, we want you there. Somebody's got business travel, somebody had this, somebody had that, and so. For us to be thinking and imagining different ways to deliver training and equipping at a time when they can get it when it's good for them, that's a win for us. I'm certainly moving more toward that. In fact, in the building that we're setting up as part of our small groups ministry, we're gonna have a room that is kind of just set aside and always set for audio and video training recording. We're excited about having that studio, and it's something that's gonna enable us to do even more in the future in that vein.

- All right, I agree wholeheartedly with what you all said. I think the use of technology is here. There are some things that we haven't been able to do, some of the meetings that we normally would do on campus, I don't think they'll ever come back to campus. I think we have found a better way to be better stewards of time. And even Zoom causes you sometimes to be a little more focused and on point. And so I think some of those things have probably gone away, and will not come back. I think there are some things that will continue, not to the extinction of what happened before, but I think online giving is here to stay. Many churches during this time have discovered that. It's a great tool, they're fine tuning that some. I think online giving has now arrived, and it is here to stay for most of our churches. There are still gonna be some that like to make out their check and bring to the church. And there is nothing in the world wrong with that. But I think there are some areas of technology that has taken hold now. And I think the good thing Topper already mentioned it, I think for those of us that have served in the roles that the three of us have served in, we're never going to accept no as an answer for training, anymore. Because we can provide the training 24/7 now. If the meeting in person is at a bad time for you, that's okay, we've got this option. Or we can just completely meet online, and it can be recorded just like this is, and I can hold you accountable. One of the reasons we're doing Pinnacle Alabama is we're leaders. And leaders are learners, and we should always study to show ourselves approved. And there is no longer an excuse. We can train our leaders, and serve our Lord, better than ever before. I want to thank everybody. I want to thank of course, Jay and Topper for being with us today. Jamie, we'll even talk well about him, though he had to slip out. Thank you, Lydia, for being our tech guru. Let me pray, and we'll be dismissed. Father God we do thank you for these leaders that have joined us today online. For Lee, and for Nell and Phyllis that have been here the whole time listening, and learning, and growing, and probably going to go and sow some seeds of what they've learned, to bring honor and glory to your name. We thank you for everyone that gives of their time and their abilities to serve you through Sunday school, through small groups, through ministries that get the word of the Lord into the hands of people. So bless them, use them, multiply them for your glory, as we pray together in Jesus' name, amen.