[00:00:00] Remember somebody from my childhood, it was one of my best friends' stepdad, he was a writer. And so I was, you know, like asking questions of people and stuff. He said, writers write. You have a daily habit and discipline. You don't just hope that you're going to get this wave of inspiration. And so you got to build it in. And some days are going to be a slog and it feels like torture. And other days a lot is going to come, but you have that habit so that there's, you know, the progress over time.
[00:00:30] Welcome to episode 463. You've sat in that meeting. Everyone's staring at each other. Nobody wants to say the dumb idea out loud. Creativity isn't a personality trait that some leaders have and others don't. It's a process. Today we walk through practical tools to get better ideas out of your team faster. That's today on The Reclaimed Leader. Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker. And I'm Jesse Skiffington.
[00:00:58] We're two pastors in the trenches who are passionate about church health for greater gospel impact. We share the ups and downs of ministry, strategies that work for us. And some that didn't. Best practices and practical tools for church leadership. The goal? To help all of our churches flourish. Let's get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast.
[00:01:22] Jesse, it is good to be back as always. We just had a big nor'easter here in the Northeast. This is big news. Yeah.
[00:01:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watching it from out here on the West Coast, it was clear. It was a next level kind of storm. And we've kind of had fall creeping in on us too. It's like I love the beginning of fall. It gets a little cozy. And I was writing my sermon. The rain was coming down. I had a good cup of coffee. I was like, all right. I like it for about three weeks. And then I'm just like, right. So here in the Northwest, we got a long, this is going to be June before we see the sun again. Anyway.
[00:02:05] But it's good. But, you know, we talking off camera and we covered a lot of ground today, but just a lot of stuff going on in the church, a lot of decisions, a lot of things to figure out all at the same time. And I don't know, I don't know for, you know, for some pastors who are starting or you maybe have big dreams of what you're hoping for your church.
[00:02:27] I hope every pastor has big dreams for the church. But I think it's easy to get discouraged or to forget that this is a process that takes time and you never really arrive. I mean, we all have. Yeah. We get to different places and we're excited. You experience successful ministry and, you know, it's exhilarating, but you're always, it's always changing. It's so dynamic. And I think that's good because if,
[00:02:57] if our job is just to sit on cruise control, I don't, I think we're kind of missing it. Yeah. You know, that being said, it can be exhausting. Yeah. But so many of our issues can be solved by just having a good process. Yeah. And that's the thing that took me a long time to learn as a ministry leader, just how important process is. And that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about, you know, everybody's waiting to be inspired. But if we're just waiting to be inspired, you might be waiting a long time. Yeah.
[00:03:27] That what if inspiration is part of your regular rhythm as a church, then you got a better shot of being inspired more. Yeah. You had to build creativity and room for new ideas into the rhythm of your planning and staff meetings and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That's just something you wait around for. And the biggest, the biggest time I learned this was, gosh, now that's like a year and a half ago when I started writing the book.
[00:03:55] Yeah. So when they, when you all, everybody's going to be an author, you're going to write a book and you, you get your publishing deal. It's very exciting. And they give you the deadline and they're just like, okay, you know, we're expecting your first draft by this date. And I remember when they gave me that contract and they said, this is when your first draft is due. And it was six months away. And I'm thinking, oh, that's great. You know, I've got all, I've got time.
[00:04:24] Boy, I tell you what, so that for that first month, I don't think I really wrote very much. Yeah. And then it dawned on me like, oh man, this is going to take, this is going to take a while. And I was always the kind of writer, Jesse, where I would just kind of wait for the inspiration. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I realized quickly that no, no, I had to attack the inspiration if I was going to get this thing done.
[00:04:49] So, so I had a regular rhythm. I, on my days off, I would come to the office and make sure the outer lights were all off. So nobody knew I was here and I would, and I'd start early in the morning and just start cranking away. And so I'd, I'd be able to put in about maybe six hours a week and, and start cranking it. But the funny thing is the more I was writing and then I was writing in all different times, you know, I'd come home and I'd write a little bit or, or whatever.
[00:05:18] But if I had sort of disciplined time set aside to work on it, the inspiration started to come naturally. And not at first, it took some time, but once I kind of got into that rhythm, that's when it came. And I found this to be true in the life of the church as well. Yeah. That's, that's really, it's an important insight, Jason. Um, I remember somebody from my childhood, it was, uh, one of my best friends, stepdad, he was a writer. And so I was, you know, like asking questions of people and stuff.
[00:05:46] He said, writers, right. You have a daily habit and discipline. You don't just hope that you're going to get this wave of inspiration. And so you got to build it in. And some days are going to be a slog and it feels like torture. And other days, a lot is going to come, but you have that habit. But so that, um, there's, you know, the progress over time, like anything else. So a process really is about progress over time or a predictable habit or discipline or practice. That's going to move you in a direction.
[00:06:15] And it, without that, we just kind of will end up sitting still eventually and not doing a whole lot new or really not wrestling with the big problems. So I think this is really important. And you, you put brainstorming into this. And so help me understand what's the thinking there. I mean, we talked about your book and writing and things, but how does this intersect with like the rhythms of church life? Yeah. So, um, I think as you're going through your ministry year and you're thinking about how
[00:06:44] are we effectively engaging the people in the orbit of the, of the church, wherever they are, how are we engaging them with the gospel? Right. How are we engaging them in the life of the church together? And if you're being honest about that evaluation, as the year goes on, you're going to discover some gaps and, uh, or some things that you're just, it's just not going the way that you
[00:07:09] feel it could not, not even should, but just could, Hey, I feel like we can get better at doing this or, or man, there's a real gap here where we're not addressing that at all. The only way we're able to do that is we build it into our rhythm. So for example, our leadership team meetings, we meet every week except for weeks where we have an all staff meeting. So every Tuesday is our rhythm and, uh, we get together and we look back at the week before
[00:07:35] or since the last time we met and we evaluate everything we did. And we, and in that evaluation, we ask the question, you know, if something comes up and like, oh, that didn't really work. We right there on the spot. Okay. Okay. Let's think about that for a minute. What do we think we want to try that could be better? And, and we're so trained in this, that this is a natural part of our weekly review, but brainstorming is always a part of what we're doing.
[00:08:02] Even just, even if there's nothing that's happened between Sundays, except worship, we always look back at worship and we say, oh man, this transition was a little clunky or this could have been better. Well, what can we do better? What would be something that would help us? And because it's in our rhythm, everybody feels free to engage. But I think if it wasn't, it'd be a lot harder to generate ideas because now listen, when was the last time, last time that you had a brainstorm session, uh, amongst your leadership in your church?
[00:08:32] Uh, I remember there were times early on when I tried to have a brainstorm session and somebody would come up with an idea. And this is the thing that causes brainstorms to fail before they start is the senior leader talks first. Everyone anchors to that idea and there's no separation between generating ideas and judging them. Same three voices always go first.
[00:08:59] And anybody else has any other idea, doesn't feel like they have room to speak or somebody says something and it's immediately shot down before even being really considered. That's not the best culture for, for brainstorming. So again, you have to bake that into your routine in your, if you're Presbyterian, your session meetings, your other meetings, um, as well as your, your team meetings. If you have a staff or if it's just you, uh, and you're a solo pastor, how do you get some
[00:09:27] people around you to do that on a regular basis? Um, how do you do that? How have you found Jesse to sort of make it part of what you do as a church and to allow room for people to, to, how do you have a green light session where people can be heard? I think you just to kind of agree on a set of questions that we're going to apply to the stuff. As we talk about what happened and what we want to do, we say what worked, what needs improvement, what would we do differently?
[00:09:58] What wouldn't we do again? We just kind of brainstorm around that. And then I think sometimes though, um, and that happens in our staff meetings primarily, uh, also happens at our session level for kind of bigger picture stuff. But one of the skills that I think I've gained as a leader over time is teasing out ideas from people that don't, aren't that front three, right? They're not the ones with an immediate thought or idea or verbal processing.
[00:10:23] And so learning to say, and as we're talking about that, you know, what, what did you see that worked? What needs improvement? And Susan, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Um, you know, I know you were there and, and, uh, just curious what, what you thought. So then you're kind of bringing in some of that. Um, so there's a skillset around that too, but so for us on staff meetings, we, um, we rotate our staff topic. Like, uh, so, so we'll always do our kind of weekly evaluation, like you mentioned there,
[00:10:51] but then on second, uh, Tuesdays, it's about, uh, strategic thoughts. Like where's our strategy working and not working and kind of going there. And then on third weeks, it's about team development and what's working in our culture and our team. And, uh, a fourth week is typically about professional development, skill development. Where do we need to help people with that? So we try to change the, um, even the environment of the conversation, like what part of our
[00:11:18] organizational life are we asking what's working, what's not working, what needs improvement, that kind of thing. So, no, that's good. I don't know. It's a lot, but no, no, it's good. But I think it's, again, how do we get it into the regular rhythm of what we're doing? So here's, here's a tip. We'll start with the tip. Number one, um, is separate those two things, separate your brainstorming from your critiquing. Um, just have two separate blocks where we, where you're up front. That's what you're saying that you're doing.
[00:11:46] So first block is, okay, this is a true green light session. It means, you know, there's no, we're not evaluating the ideas. Well, I just want to hear all your ideas on this. And we do this a lot. I'm actually, I'm about to do this for our next capital campaign, which we have to do because we have to raise a lot of money for our HVAC. Um, so next Monday, we have, we have other things on that list, but that's, that's the biggest ticket item. I love it. But we sent out an email, an invite.
[00:12:16] We're gathering people, everybody who's helped with former campaigns. I sent them a message. I said, look, I am literally not asking you to help with this campaign. What I am interested in is I want to hear all of your ideas of what you think we absolutely should not overlook as we do this next campaign. I want your wisdom. So we're meeting at someone's house. We're going to gather so far. There's about 20 people have RSVP. Yes, we're going to be it. And we're just going to brainstorm. And that's so, so important because it also generates a sense of buy-in from the people
[00:12:46] in the congregation. Yes. And, and you're just hearing ideas and you say it up front. I'll say something like, Hey, I just want to hear ideas. It doesn't mean like we're going to run with all of your ideas or anything, but this is really helpful in informing us on what our next best steps are going to be. Yeah. And then have a separate meeting where we then critique and say, okay, now we're going to have a meeting where we're going to kind of figure out how do we whittle down these ideas or put these ideas together so that they're the right ideas for us at this particular time.
[00:13:16] Yeah. Spot on. And I think one of the best things we can brainstorm about is what are the criteria that we're aiming for. So it's like, so what's most important as we're thinking about this? What are the, the criteria that we want to use to whittle down all these amazing ideas that we came up with last meeting and, and try to hone in on the core of what is going to be most important. So, you know what, I don't know what the criteria are. That's part of the criterion, criteria, I don't know, whatever it is. I don't know.
[00:13:45] It's criteria. Yeah, there you go. And so what are those, those things, those kinds of guideposts that narrow down the options. And so, yeah, that's part of the brainstorming too. And some people will naturally think in those terms, other people are like on the ground idea people and kind of bring all that together. But I like your idea of doing it in two phases. Like there's nothing off limits here. And now we're going to kind of frame it in a little bit closer with what's going to be actionable here and what we're going to be forward with. Yeah. It's good stuff.
[00:14:13] Then tip number two is the leader talks last or if not last. Just not first, right? Yeah. Like if you're the pastor or the team lead or you have somebody else leading it, you know, just share your own idea at the end, not at the beginning. Because what you say, whether you mean it or not, carries so much more weight to people that they'll feel like they have to agree with you or they'll be like, oh yeah, that's a great idea.
[00:14:39] And let's run with that when that's not always lends itself to good brainstorming. So just understand as a leader. Yeah. A lot of weight. As you're doing that, you're going to hear a lot of ideas, right? And you're going to be like, oh, I like that piece and I'm not so sure about that piece. And so when you go last, you can also kind of bring some of that together into something totally cohesive and kind of take the parts that you think are going to work and the ones that are not and kind of sort it through.
[00:15:06] So I think leaders, we tend to have that kind of lens to be able to do that on the fly and take complex information and kind of distill it down. So what I'm hearing us say is yada, yada, yada. And I don't know about that, but what if we, and so you kind of bring it together to when you go last. So it does, you're not relinquishing control is my point there. You're still going to have this say, and it's going to carry a lot of sway, but you're also, as you rightly put it, you're not going to stomp on open brainstorming by putting your
[00:15:35] idea up there first. And then it's just radio silence because people are like, well, I guess that's what we're going to do. And I'd say this, here's just a little suggestion that I found helpful because we often get a lot of introverts in the room and they never want to talk right away. Yeah. So I'll have everybody in the room, I say, you know, first write down one idea just on your own as you're thinking about this problem. And then give them a few minutes to do that. Then you could call on people. Sure. And, and to share what they wrote.
[00:16:04] And it's a way of just getting the ball rolling, which is very helpful. Or sometimes I'll do like in our session, I'll do groups of three. I'll be like, talk about this when in a small group, and then we'll bring our ideas back. And so it kind of, yeah, you're right. Those introverts, all those people who are not going to be outspoken kind of have that room to do that. So I think that's, that's wise. And, and then let's talk about tips for us as leaders of things that we can say. I think there's a few.
[00:16:30] One that I know you talked about in previous episode is what else? Yeah. Say more about that. Yeah. I love that question. Actually comes out of coaching some, some of the coaching training I've done with John Tarek and Eco and our kind of our world over here. But really it's just asking good open-ended questions and what if, and what else. And if you ask yes or no questions that shuts brainstorming down immediately. So what if, or what else, or, you know, what did we miss? What else haven't we thought of yet?
[00:17:01] Or, but that what else question is so much fun. And it often, and try it Jason, and I know you have, and I know others, you should, if you haven't, but some of the best ideas come on like the third, what else? I know. And, and, and you were like, am I like going to drive people crazy with this? What else question? Um, but if you don't, it kind of like, there's a last thought that's waiting to be expressed. And that might be the clarifier or the one that's like, oh, that's it.
[00:17:30] Or, man, that's really close. So what else? And you can tell I get a little fired up about the what else question, but what else is so good. And so our staff will roll their eyes at me or session sometimes. And they're like, we're done what else thing right now. Like, but it is, it's important. And we do that on purpose. So it's like, well, what else, what else aren't we thinking of? Or what else would make this even better? Or what else haven't we thought of yet?
[00:17:55] So that is, I think, uh, and it's just been a hugely useful tool, especially in the brainstorming lane to really just kind of dredge out all the thoughts before we move on. Yeah. I think also it's helping people to see different possibilities. Honestly, I think one of the biggest challenges in congregations is that most congregants, I don't mean this in a, in a mean way. I just think it's, uh, we're so used to how things are that congregations seriously
[00:18:25] lack imagination. Sure. They can't imagine another reality than what they're experiencing and leaders to sometimes, right? It's totally, totally. So I think it's even helping them understand, Hey, we can adapt or modify the way that we do things. Like, for example, if we think, let's say December's too busy because we got all of these things going on and we're asking all of these things of people, are we missing it? Because people's lives are already more busy in December.
[00:18:55] What if we combine these couple of ideas to try to hit the same mark? Like what if we combined our Christmas follow-up or a Christmas ramp up with our small group launch in January? Like, what if we try to do accomplish those two things together instead of running them separately? Well, then our resources would be pulled together. Maybe we'd be more effective, but it's, it's helping people see other possibilities than what they're used to. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:23] What if we were a church that did that? Yeah. I love that question. I mean, that's one of your best questions. What if questions also, I think good questions generate better ideas. So really thinking about, well, what are the things at play here? What are the factors? What are the criteria? Who is involved? Who aren't we thinking of? Like all that is going to help, you know, I get, I think back to the rolling Sunday stuff that we did a number of years ago. And it really came out of a series of really good questions that we asked over time.
[00:19:53] How are we going to do all these things that we want to do on Sundays? And what's it going to look like? And what if we tried this or that or whatever? But it was lots of questions that then began to bring about, bubble up some ideas that were then where, you know, we're like, whoa, we've never would have thought of that had we not really asked a lot of good questions. So yeah. What else? What else, Jason? What else? No, it's good. And then, and then I think another way that you can help in those meetings to generate some
[00:20:20] brainstorming is you could borrow from outside the church, outside the building. What does a coffee shop or a hospital or a school do that solves a similar problem to ours? How do they welcome new people? How do they manage the things that they manage? I mean, one, a really cool example of this was, I remember at one point I was reading a book and I forget what it's called. I think it's, it's something about like, kind of like the Starbucks experience, but it, it wasn't the, it's not onward. It wasn't.
[00:20:50] No, it, no, it was a different one, but it was just talking about like how to do, how to engage people and have good guest services. It's sort of like along the lines of what we heard about Ritz Carlton and Horst Schulte. And all of that stuff. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen, and even like Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out burger, you know, part of it's not the food, it's how they handle their customers. My pleasure, Jason. My pleasure. Right. And that's, it's part of the experience. So I think it's, how do we look at how they solve those problems and what could we
[00:21:20] as a church learn from them? And I'd even say this, those of us in mainline denominational churches, how do non-denoms do that? Cause they do that exceedingly well. Right. And how can we learn from them? Cause they have that figured out. And what are some things that we would try? Like maybe we're not going to do a fog machine and skinny jeans, but maybe we should have coffee out and ready for people. You know what I mean? Yeah.
[00:21:47] Or have a really nice, you know, follow up process where there are people feel like a genuine connection. So yeah, I think that, you know, one way to kind of phrase some of those questions is it maybe even to create a scenario, kind of an imaginative scenario. Think about a time when you felt welcomed really well. Yeah. That's good. What was that like? And what was good about it? Or think about a time when you weren't welcome very well. What was that like? And what do we want to avoid doing?
[00:22:11] You know, it just, I think that creativity is also part of the environment that we create for more creativity. So, you know, just thinking of ways to, to draw out more ideas around a topic or a problem and you can use illustrations to do that, you know, or whatever. Steal shamelessly, adapt faithfully. That's right. I love it. No, it's like, I mean, listen, we all get ideas from one another, but you know what I mean? Look at how outsiders solve your problem. Yeah. And adapt it to fit your context. Totally.
[00:22:41] I mean, there's nothing new under the sun, right? That's biblical. So like find what's working and adapt it to your context. Yeah. And here's another thing that, you know, I'm big on. And this was, I wrote about this in the book. Most churches wait too long to take action because they're waiting for the perfect ideas and you're going to wait too long because they're never going to be perfect. Or you think, oh my gosh, this is too big. How are we ever going to do that? How are we going to change worship? Are you kidding me? That's such a big deal.
[00:23:10] Well, instead run a small, low risk experiment. Consider it a ministry lab. And we've in many episodes talked about this, how we've tried stuff that flat out didn't work. We tried other things that worked incredibly well. We would never know which one was going to be which. We just had to be willing to do it. And if you could just take like a low risk thing, like I think a tip would be give it a one Sunday test or a one month test. Sure.
[00:23:37] Before committing to a brand new structure that changes everything or process, try it once on a small scale and debrief immediately afterwards. Yeah. And use idea language. This is an idea. We're going to try it. If it doesn't work, we won't keep going. If it does work, we'll probably have to tweak it. And like, it's just being honest with people and then also meaning it when you say it's just an idea. And if it doesn't work, then you got to go back, you know, or whatever. And you evaluate it. Like what worked? What didn't work? What surprised us?
[00:24:06] What do we need to adjust? Yeah. I think in thinking about what gets in the way of churches moving forward with the new ideas or taking risks, I think it's partly to there's a fear of making people mad. And, you know, I mean, and that's the whole carry new off, you know, leading change without losing it, the 10%, you know, all of that, you know, it's worth going back and reminding yourself about that. Yeah. That don't let a few loud voices hijack the church's mission.
[00:24:33] But I think when you suggest doing small scale experiments, that helps alleviate some of that because it's like, no, this is just an idea. We're going to try it. And then you don't, you miss some of that, the fervor of those adamant voices against because you're like, no, we're trying this, this over here. We're just, you know, we're going to see. And then they get to have something of an experience of it and maybe go, okay, that wasn't as bad as I feared or, okay, you know, I could handle that or something.
[00:25:01] So I think you're wise to do small experiments and see and test and try things and evaluate. It's just, it's good thinking. Well, and I think another thing to do is how can you, how can you address the fear in the room right from the beginning and maybe diffuse a little bit? And I think that's doing, instead of a post-mortem, how do you do a pre-mortem? Pre-mortem. Yeah, for sure. Before you launch, ask your team, imagine this fails in six months or this fails in six days
[00:25:31] or whatever it is. Why do you think it would have failed? Let's name the risks out loud in advance. Yeah. Or what we're afraid might happen. Yeah. But then here's the other thing that most people have asked. What's the best thing that can happen? What's the best thing that can happen? What's the worst thing that can happen? But certainly what, what, what might happen that's amazing and blows our minds. I mean, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that helps just diffuse it before, before it kind of becomes toxic. You know what I mean?
[00:25:57] You notice how sometimes people are so nervous, they sort of, and I don't think it's most of the time intentional, but they kind of sabotage it because they've already decided it's not going to work. Self-protection of some kind, maybe you, without even knowing it. And I think when you can show your work too, we asked a lots of good questions. And a lot of times when we introduce a change, we'll produce a fact sheet of the questions that we asked to arrive at the answer we, we are going to try. And not everybody buys into it, but a lot of times that helps. They're like, oh, now I can see some of your thinking here.
[00:26:26] Oh, you were trying to do this. And that's how you got to your idea. So, you know, lots of ways to get at that. But I, you know, it's part of the deal. That pre-mortem, it's kind of a fun experiment. And I don't know if you've never done it, you should, you should give it a go. Yeah. And then kind of lastly, I would say, just make sure that you think about how you're collecting people's information. We talked up front about having everyone write down an answer and then you can call on them to get that.
[00:26:55] But sometimes the best idea in the room, like you said, it's on the third, what else? It's often held by the quietest people or the newest or the person that doesn't have the longest tenure. And it's like, it takes a little to get that out. So maybe even just collect ideas differently. Just think about giving people room to write ideas as well as speak them and find ways to do that on a consistent basis.
[00:27:22] Because some of your best thinkers process better on paper than out loud. Usually I don't process on the fly. I will have already processed before I go into a room because then I feel more comfortable speaking to it. Not that I'm not open, but I feel like before I say something, I want to have thought it out. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's really wise. Yeah. Do your pre-work yourself. And brainstorming is so important, but it's also something that we need to give our attention
[00:27:51] to before we're in the room. You know, we need to have kind of sat with it and thought about it and understand the problem and then be open to other input and ideas. But yeah, you don't just walk in cold and be like, well, let's figure it out. Right. That's something we got to be attentive to as we're going along. And I think one of the things that I noticed is when we're doing brainstorming well or kind of consistent evaluation or asking lots of good questions and generating ideas for improvement
[00:28:19] or change, that's when we get traction on the ground. And I noticed that when we're not doing the brainstorming piece well, these ideas just live on a piece of paper somewhere because they're not connected to the real problems we're trying to solve in the life of the church. They're more like, what if we're a church that whatever? And it's like, well, so we're kind of asking some of the wrong questions. And I noticed I go, we probably didn't do that well when all I have is a couple of pages.
[00:28:49] I'm looking at one right over here of our of like, you know, a foot pad with a bunch of ideas that never went anywhere. I'm like, well, what happened there? So then the follow through process is a whole nother deal. Maybe we'll come back to that. What do we do with all these ideas and this consistent evaluation that we're doing to make sure that we it does show up in real life at some point and we're actually going to try some things? And maybe, Pastor, you're wondering, you know, what what list of things are we going to brainstorm?
[00:29:18] Again, this fall, we have a free online kit for you. Just just ask some diagnostic questions about what's going on in your church. Reclaimleader.com slash kit. You can get that for free. If you subscribe to our newsletter, you already have received it. And if you are a subscriber and you missed when I sent it out, just send me an email and I'll make sure that it gets to you. But it's just a way to identify what's the list of things we need to be paying attention to, especially right now. Now there is still time before Christmas to make some critical adjustments. Yeah.
[00:29:46] And I imagine now as we're heading to October that we're going to start talking about Christmas a little bit because, man, it's almost here, dude. It's like it's crazy fast. It's so fast. Yeah. But anyway, thanks, everyone, for listening, pastors. I know that you have a lot on your plate and I hope that our conversations every week help you to discern and to be inspired and encouraged and to know that you're not alone and you're
[00:30:12] not crazy for all the things that you're thinking that hopefully we're naming at the same time. But that you feel like this is all part of what God's doing through all of us together, which is pretty amazing. And I'm always reminded of that, Jesse, because oftentimes ministry feels so lonely. Yeah. Or it feels like you're out on an island, you know? Yeah. Or even when you're hearing a bunch of ideas like we've talked about today, it's like, man, there's so much to kind of think about and understand and apply.
[00:30:40] And, you know, I'm just like, what is that one thing from this conversation that you could include? Like, maybe it's just in your weekly conversations with your staff or key volunteers. It's just like, let's build in an I wonder part of our meeting. I wonder if. And who knows? You know, like maybe it starts small and grows from there. So, Jason, I always appreciate the thoughts. And, you know, it's so much fun. We've been talking a lot for a lot of years. And it's had a huge impact on how we do things here at Marine View.
[00:31:09] And I know, Tower Hill, you guys have grown over the years and applying, trying to apply and applying what we talk about. And so this is a leadership classroom for us. It's sort of the testing ground for ideas. And we're trying to figure it out. So grateful for all of you listening in to be on the journey with us. And, you know, we're here. We're just trying to move the needle a little bit for the kingdom in our small way. So glad to be in it with you. Well, thanks, everyone. As we always say, ministry is hard. It is so much better when we do it together. Take care. We'll see you next week.
[00:31:38] Thank you.