Rev. Phil Lund  0:05  
impatient here. All right, so here we are, what did I call this productivity? Versus possibility? Okay. And let me just put this in context for you. I have started to do some startups for part time ministry, which is something that we normally don't do that something that's been reserved for full time ministry in the UUA. And I'm trying to find ways to do part time ministry, startups. And one of the things I found is that by the time I get there to do the startup, the congregation hiring the minister who, you know, I mean, the contract minister, they've already got a kind of fully formed sense of what they want and what they think they need, before the minister even gets there. And we're missing that opportunity. And this is, to me one of the places where the possibility comes in, we're missing that opportunity to kind of negotiate what are the ministers gifts and what are the congregation's needs? And how do those things kind of work together? So what I'm going to present to you I'm kind of envisioning as something that would be part of the preparation process, you know, something that might happen the year before a congregation hires a new part time minister, or if a congregation is moving from full time to part time, that this would maybe happen the year before to where they could just start to make room for the possibilities that part time ministry brings. And the the thing that I really caught me was I get the sense of from some small congregations and their relationship with the part time ministers that it is that they're, they're really are coming to it from a productivity approach. You know, we're paying you so much we want this many sermons, etc, etc. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna get into this now, I've got a screen to share. And I've got some PowerPoints. And I'm just gonna go for it. Okay, so, got the zoom, PowerPoint up.

Gotta go to share screen, click on that. I'm going to commence sharing my screen. Okay, here we go. So,

I need to embiggen this. There we go. I'm gonna put this in play. And there we go. So, um, let me say the two books that have influenced me the most about when part about small congregations and part time ministry are one Jeff MacDonald's book, which we just heard Jeff, with his great presentation for us. His book really, like I think I mentioned, I could only find one other book about part time ministry, you know, so this one was very helpful for me. But the other one was this book by, there we go, Book by Brandon O'Brien called the Strategically Small Church. And Megan, I don't know if you're the one who recommended this to me, or Renee Ruchotzke did, but it was just a great book to look at. And I warn you all, if you're interested in looking these books, these are written by authors who come from the Christian tradition. So you kind of you know, have to do that translating that we do. But this Strategically Small Church, from Brandon O'Brien, he talks about smaller church is sometimes being better than a bigger one. And he, he brings up how some larger churches, see some things that are going on in small churches, and they actually try to emulate those things. They try to figure out how to get them into programming. And those things are smaller churches are our local, obviously, they're very much of the place that they're in their personal and their intimate. So these are one of the four things he has on his on his book cover there, intimate is one of them. He also talks about how congregations like this can provide space to nurture close relationships across ages, and also that they can facilitate a higher level of commitment for lay people. And I think we heard about that in Jeff's presentation about you know, that's one of the things when you have part time ministry is you need the lay people being involved in ministry in a way that they may not be involved in a larger church, and he also talks about how church budgets are can be more effective because of greater efficiency that you know that the congregation is able to, to perhaps do different things with their budget that a larger congregation might have difficulty doing. So he talks about being intimate, nimble, authentic and effective. And I certainly agree with the authentic part to those small congregations I know of they are very individual in them. So, you know, they're, they're just all different. And one of the things that is consistent though, is in that difference, there's this kind of authenticity, that's there. So these two books have really influenced a lot about how I approach my work with small congregations. Now, let me see here. All right, I am.

There we go. There is my advancing the slide. So what I wanted to share with you is when when we're thinking about adding, part time minister, or more, we're either going from having full time ministry, to part time ministry, or if we are a congregation that doesn't have any ministry at all, and we're thinking about getting a part time Minister, you know, the first model we look at is what full time ministers do. And I've got this list from the UUMA guidelines, the UU Ministers Association guidelines that talk about ministers in the Perry set a setting being responsible for assessing the needs and resources of congregations in these many dimensions of community life: worship, preaching administration, pastoral care and counseling, rites of passage or religious education, adults and children, arts and aesthetics, small group ministry, theological reflection, social witness concern and action, connections and local community, outreach and growth, right relationships and community building and district and or regional and UUA affairs. And you know, when we think about a full time minister, not having enough hours in the week, to do ministry, I think is when we when we see all of the stuff together, and that it's almost you know, too much for a single person to do. And I think one of the the worst things of congregation can do when they think about part time ministry is kind of assume that a part time minister is going to be able to do all these stuff, all these things half time, because there's the reality, they're not going to be able to do all of any of these fully, if they're worrying about doing all of these within a halftime thing. So one of the things we have to do is, you know, start to think about the things. And this is Jeff's contract that he showed, start to think about the things that the minister should be able to do, given the time that you know, we want them to put into it, what they can do, and what they might not do. And those would be the things that the rest of the the laity might pick up in doing those things. But here's the thing. Ya know, if you look at it that way, I'm focusing on a few things make sense like this, right? But here's my fear about that. Let's say we're talking to and this remember I mentioned about, I've seen congregations hire a full time minister, or put a search out for a part time minister with getting this very clear idea for what they want from that minister without really having that opportunity to meld things together to find out what those ministers gifts are and how they match up. And so what I have become aware of is sometimes congregations will think, Well, this is what we've got. And, you know, this is how we're going to know whether and the thinking is along the lines, whether we're getting our money's worth. And so did we get all the worship and preaching that we want? Did we get the hours of pastoral care that we want? Did we get the adult RE opportunities? And was the minister out in the community enough and and did they participate in the local interfaith group and have they been attracting new families and it gets kind of limited to the things that that original concept that the the leadership put together, came up with, even before they met their potential, you know, part time minister, and I kind of talked about that. I kind of think about this as being this contractual approach, a transactional approach, and one that's focused in on productivity. And, you know, I've even heard of boards wanting to know how many hours the Minister is spending writing a sermon each week, and I've noticed situations where the contract was, like, you know, you'll visit three congregants a week, you know, and having to report on all of those various details. And to me, it seems to be really focused on productivity. And I would say there might be situations where a congregation might benefit from this. And it would be a congregation that really only wanted certain things from their ministry. Like they wanted somebody to be in the pulpit two times a month, and they want somebody to visit people, the you know, who can't make it to church on Sundays, and just have this very limited sense of what they want the ministry to do, and to be, and it's kind of a, you know, just maintain the status quo. And I'll, I'll just say maintaining the status quo in a congregation in this day and age, is pretty much admitting that you're not going to grow and you probably will eventually die out because religion, the approach to religious community, and people's involvement in it has just changed so much in the last 10 15 20 years. And then it's only been accelerated because of the pandemic. So unless the congregation understands that, okay, if we're just looking for the preaching, and the pastoral care and very limited amount of ministry, actually, from our part time Minister, that it's it's just maintenance of the congregation more than anything else. So this kind of productivity approach just it doesn't, it doesn't open itself up to the possibilities we've been talking about. So the kind of ministry that does open up to the that those possibilities is one that's covenantal. It's relational. And the end result of that is that it is opening itself up to these possibilities that we've heard Jeff talk about. And I'll just note that in full time ministry, the UUMA way back in 1985, changed their guidelines to include the use of covenantal language, rather than more of that of labor management relationship when they're talking about the responsibilities a minister has to the congregation and vice versa. And I think this is something you know, that's gotten into the DNA of how full time ministry is approached, or at least I hope it is. But because, to be honest, because we haven't been focusing on part time ministry and working with both part time ministers and congregations that want part time ministry, I don't think we've, you know, been offering this kind of approach in a way that we could be. And, you know, Jeff's book just made me realize just how much we can do and be in our communities when we approach part time ministry, as he says, part time and thriving there and the possibilities of part time ministry.

So let me see. So I found this phrase in the UUMA's covenant that they that that we ministers have with each other. And I was thinking, you know, this just really for me, is just like at the core of the kind of relationship I would love to see. Myself personally, if I were in part time ministry, the kind of relationship I would like to have with the congregation and that the congregation would have with me that we would be trusting each other to labor earnestly together for the well being of our community, and the progress of Unitarian Universalism. And so when I say having a covenantal relationship that we're starting with this kind of promise to make to each other that we will labor earnestly together for the well being of our community. And for me, I think that would be such a welcoming foundation as a part time minister, to begin working with a congregation, but we're going to do this together, it's we're going to be working together, we're going to be earnest about the work we do with each other. And it's going to be for the well being of our congregations.

So, rather than worrying about how much time a minister is spending, writing sermons, or how many, how many people they visited a week in pastoral care, the evidence that we're looking for that the ministry is going well, not just the minister, the part time ministers ministry, but the whole ministry of the church grows out of this kind of covenant. And the way I'm looking at the possibilities of how we assess that happening in our congregations, it's something I've been thinking about a lot, because to be honest, again, we at the UUA haven't offered a lot of resources for assessing part time ministry, most the resources, we have talked about full time ministry. So if we're going to assess part time ministry, assess whether, you know, it's what has worked, and what hasn't growing out of this kind of covenant with each other. I found a resource that I really, really like. And it's from Gil Rendell. And it's been out for quite a while, almost 20 years. But Gil Rendell, who used to be an Alban Institute consultant, he has something that he calls a performance planning, meeting. And it's a meeting that the the leadership and the minister would have multiple times in a year, rather than waiting until the you know, the end of the one year contract term to decide whether or not to retain the minister but to be assessing the ministry throughout the whole year. And Rendell suggest asking three questions to look over what's happening, what's happened over the last few years or the last few months? What actions have you taken? What discoveries have you made? And what partnerships have you built? So what actions have you taken, these could be details of performance over the past three months, it could include how much time you've spent working on Sunday services, how much time you've visited, people. And this staff person should briefly include appropriate details and specifics. So it's not like that information isn't shared. But it's not the the basis of an evaluation. And this, again, is done as an ongoing sort of thing. We're not waiting till the end of the year to do this. The second question, What discoveries have you made? This should be an account of formal and informal learning over the past three months? And what are the new insights? And where did they come from? And so I hope you can see this is beyond than just maintaining the status quo. This is hoping that the ministry is going to be learning and growing and gaining insights about the congregation, about the minister, and you know, their own personal insights and insights about the wider community. So asking these that question every few months, I think, is helpful to have more of this covenantal approach to ministry. And then the last one is what partnerships have you built? So Gil Rendell asks, what new relationships have been built or old relationships strengthen, it is important for the staff person, that the staff person take responsibility for building their network of relationships. So when we think about, you know, you know, asking a, Minister, okay, you're going to preach, you're going to be do worship two times a month, that's fine. What kind of relationships are growing out of that, rather than just saying, Have you written your new sermon for us and presented it on Sunday morning? You know, what kind of relationships have that has that Sunday morning experience been building for you? And how has it been deepening already existing relationships? And the same thing for you know, being out in the community, you know, rather than having, oh, you need to write a column once a month for the local Pennysaver. That might be fine. But what kind of relationships, what kind of partnerships have been growing between the minister and the community because of the work you do? So that's looking at the past few months, and then Gil Rendell also talks about looking into the future. What's going to happen in the next three months? What is your main focus? What are you planning to learn over the next three months? What new partnerships, new relationships or strengthening of old relationships are you hoping to build over the next three months? And so this is a way to start to get a sense of what the what the, you know, what, what the ministry means, and how, how is it going to be focused and what the the parttime minister is planning to do. And of course, this is done, you know, in a shared ministry, sort of with the leadership. And again, it's focused on partnerships, relationships, strengthening of old relationships. And I personally think this is really particularly important for part time ministers who may not be a regular part of the community, they might just be coming for, like a long weekend, a couple times a month. And if they aren't actively trying to make these new relationships and strengthening these old relationships, they're not, they're not they may not get around to it. And I think this is the kind of ministry we hope for, when we have part time ministry is that they are part of our community. And they are aware of what the what's happening in the local community. So.

So this is why I really think thinking, having this out there as how we're going to evaluate the ministry of the church, over the course of the year, really reflects that kind of covenantal. And, and Relational Approach to the ministry, the shared ministry of the congregation. And that this is where all those kinds of possibilities that Jeff talked about, come in. So for me, what this leads me makes room for to then is when we look at this long list, this is still a good sense of what may need to happen in a congregation. These are the dimensions of ministry that we want to see in a congregation. And if we kind of move away from from just thinking, you know, we want that we want, we want, we want a 25 minute sermon, every two weeks, you know, we want the full worship, experience, we want you to visit so many people a week, you know, we want you out there social witness concern, all this other stuff. If we if we isolate those parts of the ministry, in such a way that the part time minister doesn't get those opportunities to do some other things, we're missing the opportunity for say, rites of passage, maybe you start to get new families. Finally, maybe there's some children who need some children, some child dedications that you haven't before, and then the congregation needs to work out, you know, well, is the Minister going to be involved in this is this one of these things that we're going to be doing as laypeople. Maybe, maybe there's something that comes up in the community that would benefit from people getting into small groups to reflect on it. And maybe that would be an opportunity for a minister to bring their gifts, theological reflection, you may not have been asking for this as part of the regular duties, but you want to make room for that to happen. Maybe there is perhaps some conflict that arises that needs to be dealt with and your your part time minister can bring some of their skills and gifts there. And as we talked about earlier, maybe there are some things going on on the regional or the UUA level that you need your minister to, to be engaged with. So rather than having that transactional, contractual, productivity approach to ministry, having one that is more covenantal, more relational, and open to possibilities, I think allows the kind of flexibility way back when I talked about O'Brien's book, where small congregations really can be nimble, nimble, and you don't want to tie your part time Minister down where they can't, you know, can't be part of that nimbleness that comes with with with being a small congregation. So I'd like to just share with you my I learned that this thing

just recently, my wife my wife is a teacher and she got this from One of her students in a paper I had never heard of it before. But it was from a book by a French philosopher Jacques Rancière called The Ignorant Schoolmaster. And he tells a story of a of a French educator Jacques Jacques Cousteau, who taught Flemish speaking students, French, but he didn't know Flemish. And he developed a method where the students were kind of responsible for learning on their own, bringing their own natural skills to that and any head three questions that I think I could see being asked by the minister, and the leadership, perhaps in preparation, or in conjunction with these kinds of ongoing reviews of the Church of the ministry, just to get a sense of what's going on, and opening oneself up to the possibilities. And the questions are, what do you see, what's happening? What's going on in the church? What's going on in the community? Just actually, what's happening? have new people been coming in? Is there been some new local legislation that that the congregation needs to respond to? Has there been some event that is kind of dominating the news cycle in your community? What's going on? What do you see? And then what do you think about it? Just collectively, what do you think about it? And what do you make of it, and I can see, I see these questions kind of powering those opportunities for possibility between for the ministry of the church, to collectively kind of just keeping your eyes out for what's going on in the community and, and together trying to make sense of it without any again without any preconceived ideas about how things like this can be handled.

So. So that's my, that's my vision for part time ministry, and congregations to be prepared to bring somebody in to have enough room and the flexibility that those those the authenticity, the nimbleness, the effectiveness, you know, those possibilities that small congregations have, doesn't get kind of, you know, covered up by having just too much of a, you know, transactionally oriented approach to part time ministry, and really open it up to be a covenantal or relational sort of thing. So I'm just sharing with you what I wish, just, you know, some of the things that congregations might consider, before they, you know, even get into the part time ministry search, so they can be open up, open up to the kind of relationships between a minister and a congregation that could just, you know, have the effect, I think that we want to have have, which is tending to the well being of our individual communities, our our UU congregations, but also the well being of our larger communities to and that our UU values can be lived out in a way that they're visible, and people know who we are, and know what we're doing. So I'm seeing some notes in the chat, but um, why don't we just Yes, Megan, I'm going back in time now looking at chat there. And Megan loves that book. Which book was that? The Strategically Small book? Megan? Yes, thumbs up. Okay.

There we go. All right. Yeah, it's a great book. And like I said, that was the first book that really opened up. For me the idea like small congregations have these gifts that they can bring to their communities, that those large mega churches wish they had. They wish they were that authentic. They wish they had that kind of local feel, you know? And then Jeff's book just kind of just made me think how can we make sure that part time ministry adds to those those things that are in the O'Brien book? So? Yes, it would be helpful to learn how other congregations have moved from part time ministry to being lay led. And short time period. Yes. What is the role of Minister of the ministerial committee in a part time situation? I think one of the things would be to especially in a part time situation to to be a place where that where the minister if especially if they're not in The committee in the community where they can come and kind of get acclimated to what's going on, you know, every every few months, you know. If they're not going to be living in the community to come and kind of get a sense of what's going on. And so asking some of these questions that I'm talking about might be a great place for a ministerial committee to do that.

Marian  30:23  
Could I ask, because normally, the minister is the one that names the committee, but a part time minister would have difficulty.

Rev. Phil Lund  30:30  
Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it would definitely have to be a shared thing. And I would I would be looking specifically, if I were a part time Minister, I would say I want people who are going to keep me kind of in touch with what's going on. You know, I would really look forward to those meetings with a committee like that to just find out what's going on not just in the church, but the whole community, you know, good question. Good question. Yeah. Yes. And definitely, this is a this is a conversation in, in corporate performance as well. Yeah. And so thank you, Megan, you were gave us a nice resource there from leader lab. 25 minute sermon. I know, yeah, I just put that out there to you know, I put that out there as one of those kinds of restrictions that, uh, you know, a group before they even talked to some ministers like, well, we're gonna want a nice hearty sermon every Sunday, at least, you know, a good 25 minutes, you know, and like, okay, different thinking different things can happen on Sunday morning. So let's see, you know, if you have a part time Minister coming in, let's see how that might work. You know, let's not, let's not think we need this, this giant question. And the last three questions would be good to ask board and committees during the year ttoowo. And yes, I love this idea of like, let's just keep checking in. And I'll tell you, things, you know, let's just all admit it, things are happening so fast in our world, that, you know, we we really do need to stop and and look at these questions. You know, we really do need to kind of share those. And I mentioned small groups, that's a great place to bring to have conversations like this. And that might be a great place where a minister where a minister has some skills around small groups, that you wouldn't want to lose that opportunity. Because those, you know, really can really help strengthen the community. Yeah, congregants that may not appreciate small congregations. Yep, I will tell you, you know, when I came, I started working. I'm looking at your comment, Barbara, it's a direct message. But it's, it's kind of just talking about the mentality, I think we've had in the UUA. And, and it was definitely here, when I started over 20 years ago with the Prairie Star District. You know, the idea was, okay, you start a fellowship, you meet and Sundays, and you grow, and you can afford a administrator and a religious educator, and you got a minister, and then you got a building. And that's what it means to be a congregation, you know, which, to be honest, the UUA was growing until about 2009. And in some ways, you could look at that, as you know, encouraging them. But in hindsight, I look back and I see there were many, many congregations that were around in 2002, that aren't all that different in size than they were 20 years ago. Right? Because it's not for anything that they lacked, you know, it's that that's how they're kind of fitting into the ecosystem of their community. And there's just a lot of that both of those books, there's just a lot that congregations of under 90-70 50-20, you know, can offer their communities. So I totally agree. You know, we we need to kind of change that attitude. Somebody wants to wanted to share something, I

Speaker 3  34:05  
have a question and the question, so how can we change that attitude? I mean, I, you know, when we talked about the budget, not allowing a full time minister, because it's about 65 to 70% of our income. And the congregants have said, we want all these programs, but who's going to support these programs? Okay. They're common comment is, well, we'll lose our we'll lose our membership if we don't have a full time minister. And, you know, to me, we just bought a new building. 10 years ago, the minister was hired to, quote, grow the church and 10 years later, we're at the same hovering thing. People leave people come but yeah, this is a community that's a Catholic community in South Bend, Indiana. It is not going to be a big liberal community like I went to when I lived in Houston and participated in a big congregation. Yeah.

Rev. Phil Lund  35:08  
That's those are. That's a good point. Good questions wherever I think. And Megan, maybe you can give me a thumbs up on this. I mean, that's one of the reasons we've started to meet as a group of congregational life staff to focus on small congregations. I think we intuited the right thing a few years ago, and we started that because there's anything growing in mainline denomination, denominations, it's the number of small congregations. I think Jeff mentioned that right. They're just more and more small congregations. So this this actual this event, actually is a I like I said, I am hoping I'm hoping that this is going to raise awareness in more areas in the UUA, that that, that we need to be paying more attention to small congregations, we need to be presenting other models of what you know, it means to be a congregation. I think we are moving in that direction. And that's kind of that's kind of, you know, that's that's my that's why I keep working with the UUA I just, I love small congregations. And I love these possibilities. I love making opportunities for people to work part time ministry, if that's what they need. And I no, I really see this. So, Barbara, I'm hoping that we do we do change this mentality. And I think this is this is part of doing that.

Pamela? Oh, and thou art muted. It,

Pamela  36:50  
many people would like me to stay that way. Excuse me. Um, we've talked a lot about ministers and part time ministers. And when you're a small congregation, we've been growing, even though we've had no minister for quite a while now. But we have been growing some. But how do we keep our people from being? To do all the stuff we want to do? It takes people Yeah. And people get tired. I mean, you know, you've got to building and grounds you've got to worship and arts, you've got a membership committee, you've got to this committee and that committee, and let's have a social justice committee, and who's going to do all those things because people are getting really tired. 

Rev. Phil Lund  37:35  
I'm glad you brought that up. Dan Hotchkiss who's another former Alban consultant, I mentioned, Gil Rendell, as one to Dan Hotchkiss had a recent blog post about doing a realistic assessment of how things are done in your congregation that kind of, don't look at your job descriptions, don't look at your bylaws, don't look at anything, those just sit down and say How do things get done? So you mentioned all those committees, right? Pamela? So like, Okay, we know, we have a building and grounds committee, right? But is it really Fred, who's coming in and doing all of that stuff? You know, you know, so how to really get a I mean, to get that realistic view of how things are actually getting done? And I think that's an invitation then to start maybe looking at, you know, how, what do our bylaws actually have to say, you know, how many committees do we actually need?

Um, you know, how can we, how can we invite people in to to do well, my, David Pyle, my supervisor, he actually says, How can we get less work out of more people? How do we how do we get more people involved? So the work is spread a little bit more, and I think that is a challenge. But that personally, that would be one thing that I would, if I were hiring a part time minister, for at least a couple of years, I might say, hey, we really need help with this, you know, so when we're looking at your 20 hours a week, you know, we would like to spend some time as, as a group, working through this to try to get realistic ways for people to participate in the congregation without burning people out. You know, and it's part of a real rethinking, I think of how we gather, you know, and how we work together. And

I think the good news there, though, yeah. Megan shared the article, Reorganizing. Now that You're Smaller, from Dan Hotchkiss. I think the good the good news, well, we just did this, Stacy and Ellen shout out to you too. They As they shared their their job descriptions for committees, they were very concise. They let people know exactly what they were going to be doing. You know, I think we that's part of that assessment. You know, what are we asking people? And how much can we ask? I think the good news is, as people come in there look looking to participate in something they're looking to be, especially a small congregation to, they're not coming to hide in the back row, or in the balcony, or whatever mega churches have, they're coming, you know, to be part of a community. And if we have the expectation, that being part of community means participating in some way, and here are all the ways that you can participate, they're going to be more appealing. If they're, they're not just we be on the building and grounds Committee, which means meeting, you know, once a month here, and then you know, coming and doing the church cleanup, you know, with you and Fred and all that other stuff. But we can find ways to give people, you know, opportunities, participate, that make them feel good about doing it and not make them feel overwhelmed. I think that's gonna take some work to figure that all out. But I, that's what I see in the church of a future, you know, is that we're offering those opportunities. It

Pamela  41:21  
sounds good, but so many of those members are members that have been there for 25 years, you know, all those places, they've done all those things. And

Rev. Phil Lund  41:30  
yeah, so. Yeah,

Speaker 5  41:33  
actually, our church did. Our board, actually, couple years ago did an evaluation of how much is the Minister doing and how much is done by volunteers. And, and we came out with very few were done by the minister was done by the interested. Volunteers who have the time, are aging, you know, we evaluated that something like 70% of our income is coming from those over 70. Yeah, okay. So that is the problem. And, yeah, so

Rev. Phil Lund  42:11  
I'll just, I'll just say, new people are coming. That's the good news. I work with small congregation, I'm hearing about new people, I'm hearing about new members, I'm hearing about new families, that's great. As the culture, the larger culture is feeling this pressure of more conservative values in in our communities, we can stand out as a place that expresses progressive values, that's going to be attractive to people. And as I said, you know, one of the best things you can I didn't say this, but I'm going to say it this way. And one of the best things you can do for new people involved in the congregation is, is be clear about what your expectations are. You know, and if those expectations are that, that this is a, this is a commons, we all contribute what we can to this, you know, and we're going to be asking of you to do some things, I think these new people are going to be willing to do that, especially in small congregations, because they're not, like I said, they're not looking for cover, they're not looking for the balcony to hide in, when there's a big production on stage. You know, this is a community that they want to be involved in. But it is going to take a shift, all of these things we're going to talk about are really going to take a shift for us in small congregations, because we don't have the staff to help us, you know, do these things. So Barnaby, we're at time, but if you have a quick question, I'll take it

Speaker 6  43:39  
down. Very quick question. How much of a problem are people noticing COVID exacerbated of people are volunteering like crazy if you ask them to do something on the spot, but people are not volunteering to make commitments? Yeah, that's what's changing the culture. And that's what drives people who are trying to organize crazy.

Rev. Phil Lund  43:59  
Yeah. And you know, that's, that's a, that's a trick, like we know, is like, you know, have, you know, you know, you might ask somebody to do something specific. But you also have, well, if you can't do that, can you at least do this, you know, and if you can't do that, could you at least do that, you know, you you give them something they can do, it might be increasingly smaller, or decreasing the amount you're asking, but you, you, you, you give them something to do. So I think, for me, that's kind of how I would approach it is like, Okay, we need somebody to take care of x, right? But if I'm going to ask you, and if you can't do that, well, we do need y to be taken care of as well. And it's not quite as much as taking care of x and we do need z which might be just bring creamer for coffee on Sunday, but you know, it's something we need done. So that's just my quick answer to that and I and it looks like our break up rooms. Our breakout room is breaking up. So thank you all for participating. hating so good to see you all. And I'll see you in our next segment in progress, all right, all right. I'm, I'm here and I heard myself. Okay, so

thank you all for being here still, I mean, we're getting worried we're getting a nice group of people participating. Here's what's coming up, we're gonna take a break a little longer break than we had before, this might be your chance to actually get that peanut butter and jelly sandwich or whatever it was you were longing for. So till 10 After the hour, okay. And then when we come back, we're gonna give you all chance just to get into some groups and share some thoughts about, you know, what your experience has been today, what's on your mind? What do you have questions about still, what do you have hopes for? Okay. And then we'll gather back at the half hour and maybe hear back from y'all. And kind of close out then. All right. And I if I, if anybody will complain about if we leave, if we get done a little early, I'm happy to stay with anybody who wants to stick around till exactly the hour, but otherwise, we might get done a little early. Okay. All right. So let's be back by 10 After all right.

Thank you all.

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