HowToBuildCommunityPartners_BApinis

Fri, Jun 23, 2023 7:01PM • 1:02:17

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

church, partnership, community, phase, nonprofit, partner, school, years, organizations, question, meeting, nonprofit partners, conversations, give, relationships, feel, impact, campuses, helpful, sustained

01:11

Over the last couple of years, probably the most common conversation thread on our team has been something like this, we know we're making a difference, are we making a lasting difference? We know where we know we're having an impact, but are we having a sustained impact in our in our community, and in our city? Really early on, I'm gonna go a little bit deep here. The reason that's important to us is because we are committed to making a sustained impact in our community. And one of the things that we're learning about this about making a sustained impact is that it requires understanding that different circumstances require different response. So different circumstances in people's lives require a different kind of response. And so we want to move people from relief to rehabilitation to development. This is kind of a commonly held on or understood spectrum of poverty alleviation. By the way, I'll show a bunch of slides and diagrams, none of them will be up here very long, but all of them are on DRIVE conference.com/city, there's eight documents there, some of them will see now some we won't get to essentially form our intersect playbook. So all this stuff is there available, available for you. But we want to move people in our community who are hurting or our communities themselves when relevant from relief, where thee's a crisis that's happened. And the basic needs are what's required for survival  rehabilitation, where their lives are stabilized again, and restored to sort of a pre crisis state. But nobody wants their life to stop at stable, right? Nobody wants a community just be stable. We all aspire to more. And so we would love to and as a team, we think how often can we be in that development space where it's not just about stability, but it's about thriving, it's about flourishing, it's about helping people helping communities identify and achieve their aspirations. It's a big backdrop. First, what some of what we mean when we say sustained impact. Let me read from here, the introduction at the top of your of your notes there because we're committed to making a sustained impact in our community. We partner with existing nonprofits, instead of pioneering or competing, and we take a fewer, deeper approach to doing so. But not only do we want to make a difference in our city, we also want to help our attendees grow. We want to help our attendees grow from ignorance to awareness, from awareness to engagement, and from engagement, to lifestyle. In preparation for this talk, I found myself asking, What have I learned over the last 10 years of doing this? What have we, as a church learned over the last 15 years if we could do it all over again, if I could pop in a time machine and give myself a little bit of a roadmap? And honestly the the outline was shared with us was the answer to those questions. It's it's something of a roadmap. It's something of a basically phases of community engagement. And these phases point us toward towards sustained impact. We've also identified a question that I mentioned multiple times today that guides us as we work through these phases towards sustained impact. The question is at the top of this document, where are we as a church uniquely positioned? Where are we is a church uniquely positioned to come alongside existing work in our community in such a way that it makes a lasting difference in people's lives, and a sustained impact in our community, you'll hear, you'll hear us come back to that. But if we keep that we feel like we can keep that question in front of us. We're heading in the right direction. To be clear, I hope you hear this even in the approach of if we could do this all over again, we have not gotten this right all the time. There's still a lot that we're wrestling through, there's still a lot that we're struggling with. I'll as we go throughout this name of busts, bunch of best practices we've identified and a bunch of pitfalls. Just assume that every pitfall we've fallen in, we know it, because we've been there, and we're working on it. And we're working our way, working our way out of it. And I'll also acknowledge this, this is by no means the only way for church to engage the community, it's how we've opted to do it, I will at the same time, say, and I'm not prone to over accentuating I believe in this more than ever before, I am more excited than ever before. And I'm looking at my team get a motion, I think I'm more excited than ever before about where we're headed. I believe more than ever before this, this works and this and that this matters. The first phase, but let me say this. So of course, my hope is that somehow through this year, we'll find some best practices, maybe you can find yourself in these phases. And it helps you identify a couple of things that you can do to make a difference, even if it's not adopting more, more of this model. But the first phase is listen and understand. So listen to your community. And understand your neighbors realities. This is a posture we carry. It's not a stage we complete. And by the way, that's going to be true of every phase, you don't leave this behind. You don't like Okay, done listening and understanding. And that's true throughout all these phases, every added phase you go to you're adding it to the to the work of the previous phases. And throughout this phase, really what you're doing is you're building, you're building a network, you're building a network of relationships, we found it really helpful to have relationships, conversations, and all that and all the sectors of your community. That's a government, education, business, nonprofit sectors, simply networking and meeting those people few simple questions asking them, What do you love about our community? What are the challenges that you see in the community? What are the existing work that you see going on in our community, you start doing that across the sector's, and you'll start hearing some common themes and start realizing, Oh, I get what's going on. And not just some of the surface issues, some of the underlying challenges in our in our city. An observation, an unfortunate observation is honestly this phase is too often skipped. I'll come back to this. But one of the pitfalls is that churches if we name a pitfall we fall into it ourselves, that churches often jump to the next phase straight into straight into some activity, and don't take the time to really listen to and understand their community. And I think one of the reasons for that is because we're really quick to be satisfied when we see needs, we see a need, we assume we understand the need, and we assume we understand the need, we assume we know the solution to that need. But if I could make this personal for me in a second, and you will very easily I believe be able to translate this to your life, I can stand on my side of the fence and look over into my neighbor's backyard and see that he needs to mow his backyard. I can sit on my back deck. And he doesn't even have to know I'm there. And I can observe that he needs to get to control that anger problem. I can just hear it from the back deck. But it's not until I moved from my side of the fence to talking with him in the front yard that I realized and it could be something as simple Oh, Brian, the mowers broken. Sorry, Friday afternoon, going to buy a mower will have it sorry that it's untidy. Right? Or far more substantively, it's not until I'm talking with him face to face, that I learned his mom's dying 1000 miles away, and he feels hopeless about it. nothing he can do about it, or his wife lost his job, or son's gotten into car accidents recently. And all of a sudden, all those assumptions that I had, from what I could see on my side of the fence feel totally different. And honestly, we know this, only then only then are we actually able to start being good neighbors. Right? While you can see your neighbor's needs by looking over the fence, we can only understand realities of close understanding realities requires relationship. And so this phase is too important for us to skip. So while you're finding your network of relationships in this phase, look, for those who are already listening, look for those in your community who are already listening, build relationships with those who have already built relationships before you pay attention to those who are already partnering. And because you don't leave this phase, if and as your church is in future phases, figure out how to keep this in front of you. One of the amazing ways that some of our teams have done this. And so proud of this is they've carved out some time annually to do what they call a listening tour. It never feels urgent but it's super important. They say hey, we're going to meet with each of our nonprofit partners and it is not to plan any initiatives. It's just to listen. What are you doing? How are you doing? What are you wrestling with? What are the challenges you have? What are you excited about? How are you feeling about our partnership these days? And you'll find yourself progressing naturally to the next phase, when you're ready to respond opportunity, you'll have a conversation, it'll probably be with us, it's gonna be with a nonprofit or a school, and all of a sudden an opportunity has come up, wait, there's a gap there, we might be able to do something about that. Wait, a bunch of other churches are doing that I think we could do that. Also, there's an event coming up, could we be part of that and you think maybe there's an opportunity to engage further. So the next phase is engage and explore, engage in relationships and explore opportunities to work together, you'll find yourself leaning into relationships, it's relationships that you've already started, you'll find yourself not just getting to know the community broadly beginning no organizations in the community and people that lead those organizations in the community. This sounds really basic, but I say it because it's made a big difference for me when possible meet with the organization at their facility. I can't believe how much more I get to know about an organization when I meet on their turf and their terms about their history, their programs, about what they value about what they say the valuable versus what they really value, about what they're good at and where they struggle.

11:02

Through this part of the process, it's probably worth starting to think about vetting criteria. You're simply asking yourself the question, what do we want to be true about the organizations that we partner with in the community, we've got a set of vetting criteria, the wind for that vetting criteria, or the wind for the vetting process. For us, it's just we want to have great confidence in great relationships with great nonprofits, we've got six criteria. Again, you can check this out on your own, these have guided our process and withstood the test of time over 14 or 15 years. These are what we want to be true about the organizations about the organizations we work with. And as you're getting to know, other organizations. Another thing that seems really basic, but be sure that you help them get to know you also, probably like you feel a lot of the time nonprofit leaders, school leaders don't have a ton of margin, they don't have a ton of margin to partner well without a significant lead in from us. So this can be as simple as when the time is right, inviting them to your church. If it's appropriate. That could be a Sunday, but it could also just be during the weekday, Hey, come on over to our property. We'd love to show you our church, we'd love to show you our facilities. Sometimes when I was on the frontlines of North Point Community Church leading intersect there, I would say to leaders in some of these first conversations, this was just me sort of knowing our quirkiness versus maybe our perception and I would say almost verbatim, you might have a perception that we're like this innovative, fast moving organization. We're not fast moving. We're really strategic and intentional. So the way that that would affect you nonprofit leader is if you're going oh, we need 20 volunteers this weekend called NorthPoint, we honestly don't really have the systems to help you there. But if you need 200 volunteers in a couple of months, we actually might be better suited do that. And I don't even know if that's still true at NorthPoint, you could ask him or her about that. But you get my point, there's something about you particularly where you go, Oh, we can help them get to know us, and what it might look like to partner with us. With some of these organizations, we'll move past just engaging more deeply into the relationship where we're actually exploring those opportunities to work together. Another pitfall that I would offer here, and this goes back to a version of the realities versus needs. And that is, we need to be careful to not elevate activity over impact. Right, where we jump too quickly into doing something without being confident that it's really making a difference. If we if we peel that back, we have an assumption that being helpful and making a difference is about activity. And we actually know from personal experience, that's certainly not always true. And if we push back even farther, sometimes really, that activity is about what we how we want to feel, isn't it? For honest, there's this like, oh, I want to feel helpful. And we just need to elevate our commitment to making a sustained impact over our desire to feel, frankly, anything. And if we do that, we'll avoid. We'll avoid that pitfall. What can we do to help? Super simple question, probably not the ultimate one. But at this point, it can net some of those some of that low hanging fruit as you're looking for a simple, simple way to partner with an organization in your organization. Again, I know this sounds really basic, but I've learned that a question is a way better foundation for partnership than a statement. Way better to start with. What can we do to help, then we'd like to partner with you. And I learned that from a nonprofit leader, executive team of a large nonprofit in the city was sitting with him years ago when he said, you know, Brian, and I was grateful to hear him say later, this was not an indictment against us. He said, Brian, most churches when they asked us to partner with them, I really just want us to be their local missions pastor. And what he was saying was that most churches are asking us as a nonprofit to commit resources to something they're not willing to commit resources towards. And if I may, we can do better. Right? We can. We can do better than that. You'll meet Adrienne in a minute. This next quote is from her husband, Derek, who's a principal at a local elementary school, he said and he was talking about organizations broadly, not just churches. When an organization Brian comes and asks us as a school to partner with them. They're usually just asking for free marketing. They want us to put a flyer or a coupon they're creating more work for our teachers to put Lie on a coupon and all of our folders and are calling it a partnership. So you may meet with more skepticism than then you think in that through this process. Another really important best practice is communicating intentions and managing and managing expectations. This is one where I have more stories than I care to share a lot of the hardest conversations I've had have been breakdowns here, I haven't been clear enough, I haven't been direct enough, I haven't followed up to make sure that we're on the same page on things. And the purpose of this is to avoid both over promising and creating expectations for the nonprofit which, of course, will lead to frustration and disappointment down the line, or over committing ourselves too early in the process. Anybody here ever gotten into a? It's good, it worked. People love it. Now, I'm not sure it's as good, but people love it. And hard to get rid of. It's these early steps of the process where the pull is the pull is, it was so great, we're gonna do it until Jesus comes back. And you're like, Wait, did we just really lock ourselves in on this thing forever? So I'll play through a scenario. And I might say something like this verbatim. So imagine a scenario where you're sitting with a nonprofit partner, you're exploring a first partnership with them, maybe it's a 5k, they're doing a fundraiser 5k. And you thought, I think we could provide some volunteers that 5k, maybe some runners for that 5k, I would say almost verbatim, something like this, I might pause the meeting and just say, you know, I just want you to know that as a church, we're here to stay. We're committed to figuring out how to make a difference in our community. But we don't know yet what that looks like. In fact, we don't even know what that means for this relationship. But we're really glad to be here today, exploring this partnership with you. Here's what we can promise. Here's what we can promise. Let's work on this 5k together, and then evaluate afterwards. Are you open? Are you open to that? And I'll say that to those two things. Again, I know some of these things seem basic, but I can't believe how many things that is prevented by just saying, can we just work on this and evaluate afterward? Without any promise or commitment? Otherwise, I'll sometimes even say, Hey, I know, I know, you're not asking about money, I don't hear you asking for money. But I know that that's an important part in the central part of your organization work, I just want to let you know we as a church, we hope to be really generous to our community. But we don't know about that yet, either. And don't know what that would mean for you. But again, here's our commitment. Let's work on this together. And let's evaluate afterward. And of course, this, as I mentioned, helps avoid that other pitfall of over committing to something, the truth is that they know you have an agenda, they know we have an agenda. And I think it's just important that we make it plain. I was sitting with a principals several years ago, and I don't know her to be a person of faith. And I felt that there was some I don't know if skepticism is the right word, but she was trying to fill us out. And so I leaned in and just really intentionally tried to put all our cards on the table and even purposefully use the word agenda. Like when you use the word agenda, you kind of make it clear, you're not hiding anything, I can tell you what our agenda is. from a faith perspective, we just think that good things happen in the hearts of our attendees, when they engage in their community. When they love their neighbors, we use the phrase gifts of love, we think good things happen. And our attendees win the gifts of love. So if you're able to provide opportunities to engage our attendees, you're helping us win, you're moving our mission forward. But and then this would be another best practice. But please don't ever give us anything that's not helpful for you. I can tell you this, we are not interested. If it doesn't move your mission forward. We're interested in real genuine partnerships. So please feel free to say no. And I would urge you from the beginning of partnerships, give your nonprofit partners permission to say no. And I do it over and over and over again. Please, if this is not helpful, tell us no weed. Nobody's got time for that. As you progress through, here's another practice that I gathered from one of my teammates who does this way better than I do. She said, I think it's really important in this face to make it personal, that as much as you are able get personally involved. And these nonprofit partners, and she was telling me stories of how she saw in hindsight, looking back at her work doing this, how she was able to miss these pitfalls, to avoid these pitfalls to navigate tensions and to solve problems so much more quickly, because she was personally involved at the nonprofit she had an understanding and even personal relationships with nonprofits. Another best practice through this phase is evaluate honestly. And of course, that means both evaluating the nonprofits you're working with and ourselves as a church. I won't hit all of those questions, but the top two questions who is willing to say no, and who gives us honest feedback. Those to me are two of the biggest predictors. In my years of doing this that I've seen, those are the two of the biggest predictors of healthy partnerships, the ability to give and give and receive honest feedback and a willingness and a willingness to say no. As I mentioned, we need to re evaluate ourselves through this process. How are we doing? Are we still listening and seeking to understand as a church and are we responding to what we hear Hear from these nonprofits? Do we have a humble posture? What have we learned about ourselves? How are we stewarding the resources that we have when my coworkers shared a great story of precedent with a nonprofit partner? And finally kind of hearing from them like, hey, well, you know, the food drives are okay. And as soon as you hear that, you're like, Okay, come on, tell us tell us more. And she had kind of already seen it. Way more food than was actually helpful for them, not the kind of food that was helpful demand for those services at their place was going down.

20:33

And the church loved it. And we'd figured out ways to engage our students in those food drives. It was not an easy change. But we pressed through persistence said well, okay, if we could do something else, what would we do? Is there something else that we could do? Well, we have a thrift store. And we're always looking for really great merchandise, not trash. But if people had great and it was really specific coats, shoes and jeans, what else? Nope, just that. I mean, what else no coats, shoes and jeans. So we changed, we did a drive for coats and shoes and jeans and very intentionally trained the congregation, I don't know how well they did. This is not a trash drive. Imagine you're the recipient. Give what you'd be proud. Give what you'd be proud to turn over. So this engage and Explore phase, I think it starts really fun and exciting cuz you start to get engaged in the community, you start seeing the potential of your involvement, you start feeling connected, you start feeling like you're making progress. But in truth, what I've observed is that through this phase, it actually starts to get overwhelming and chaotic, overwhelming, because the needs in all of our communities are massive, right? There's a lot of hurting people in our community, a lot of difficult situations with not easy solutions, more than any church can do in a short and medium term. And it gets so overwhelming, because are chaotic, because if you started to say yes, and build relationships, 1234 nonprofits and started to do 123 or four things with each of those nonprofits, it's all of a sudden, like, there's a lot of good, and it's hard to know which way to go. And you'll find yourself ready to progress to the next phase as you gain clarity on where and how you want to invest in the community where and how you want to give your focused attention. I'll note here that progress through these through these phases is gradual. In my experience, it's much more helpful to think in terms of years than even months, as you move through this remembering that the commitment is to sustained impact in your community to make a lasting difference in your community. So that leads you to the next phase, which is narrow and build narrow your focus build partnerships. And this phase is sort of the opposite, it starts painful. But it becomes rewarding over the course of the phase, it starts painful, because as you start to narrow the focus, you have to say no to good things. You have to start slowing down or stepping back from some great nonprofits in order to be able to narrow your focus. But it really becomes rewarding. As you see increasing impact through in depth partnerships that you get that you get to build through this phase. It was in in this phase for us or version of this phase, as we were walking through that we realized it was helpful for us to provide some additional definition to our partners. And so now we've got capital C, capital P community partners, and capital c capital, our community relationships, community partners, fully vetted. We're going long and deep with you community relationships, we're glad you're in your community, we can't promise anything. Stay in touch. With us, a phrase that I use all the time with community relationships is patience, and persistence, keep persisting in your communication. But please don't expect communication back. There may be a long time we're getting them. We're open. We're glad you're here. And then here, this was a commitment, a sort of an MOU church commitment to community partner and a community partner commitment to the church as we would formalize some of those partnerships and said, Okay, let's let's provide some definition to what there are. The need for this phase, of course, is that as I already mentioned, no church can do it all well. So it's just a matter of narrowing your focus. And you may find in this phase that you're kind of looping back to the previous phase and coming back when you when you start narrowing, it might just be I don't know about how we're going to narrow all of this. But I do know we want to work with this organization. I don't I don't know everything we're going to do. But I don't know all the organizations we're gonna work with. But we know we want to be in this space in our community. And so you start to narrow the focus and you can and you can come back to that. Over and over again, we've chosen to narrow to three things housing and homelessness, children and students. And then there's honestly a third, that's a fill in the blank for any one of our churches if they wanted to do something additional. I think in this phase, it's really important, obviously, it always is, but I think there's something in this phase where it's really critical to be prayerful and seek unity. That if the goal is sustained impact through your church in the community, alignment among your leadership now is critical, or you bought in on where you as a church are going to invest and where you as a church are going to engage. And this sort of feeds another best practice which is just that the best partnerships are owned or not owned by one but shared by many. You know any any partnership is going to start with one person at the church probably you knowing one person at the nonprofit. But our but our partnerships are strengthened when it moves from being interpersonal, to organizational. When a bunch of people at your church staff and attendees know a bunch of people at the organization and they care about each other, and they care about each other's mission and they advocate for each other. And it really fuels the partnership, our team has done a phenomenal job of finding a lot of ways to do this. One simple way that Blair did this, in Hamilton mill church was she said, Hey, let's do our staff meeting out at Eagle ranch. So they just moved their staff meeting this beautiful property, the nonprofit partner was happy to host them, the new executive director to devotion to staff. And now that whole staff team feels way more connected to a nonprofit partner, and way more eager to get behind the next promotion next initiative that we work with them on. At all of our campuses, we've done staff service days, we take our staff and the staff goes and serves with a nonprofit. Maybe it's interacting with some of the people that the nonprofit serves, serving alongside the staff of that more connected with that non nonprofit partner. When we do a collaboration with for instance, or Kidman, where we collect snack boxes for local schools, we would be sure that we include Kidman, staff and delivering those snack boxes so they feel connected to the elementary schools. We really encourage our lead pastors to have relationships with the executive directors, the nonprofit partner, our care ministry regularly refers people who are hurting that come into our church to the same nonprofits that we our ministry works with in the community, we make sure that care knows those people and sit down and they talk about the referral process. And they talk about the vetting process, so that they're setting everyone up for success when they do those handoffs. Another pitfall will be is simply kind of falling into a view that a partnership is going to be limited to, to money and volunteers or money and volunteers and resources. The truth is churches, we have way more to offer than that. We've come up with seven assets that churches can leverage for the community. This is a great list for us that one, it has provided just idea generation for us, we just look over this list and go where could we take a partnership next? Well, what do we have? What are the assets that we have to bring to bear to the community for that partnership? Secondly, it's been a great evaluative exercise for us, how are we stewarding what God has entrusted to us for the good of the community? Thirdly, it's actually helped us tell stories I was thinking about you, Michelle, maybe you could tell the networking story you told at lunch, where you connected a couple nonprofit leaders, this framework helps us realize there's things to celebrate, that aren't named maybe the typical things that we would think about celebrating, but that are ways that we've had had an impact in our city. As as we're building partnerships, I imagine that you're filling out I really wished I had a hand to Venn diagrams, you guys know Venn diagrams that you had to Venn diagrams that you're filling out as you're building a partnership. And the questions are grossly oversimplified, but you'll you'll get what I'm going after the first Venn diagram, it's what do we have? And what are their gaps? And the second vital Venn diagram is the opposite. What do they have? And what are our gaps? And and both of those Venn diagrams are essential for a healthy partnership, because another pitfall is believing we're the giver, the other receiver, right? And if that plays out over time, that's not even a partnership. That's just an arrangement of transactions. We want a partnership. So what are the assets that we have? And what are the things that would help make them better? And and where can we marry those things together? And what are they as a nonprofit great at what are the opportunities and assets that they have? And what are we looking for as an organization as you start filling out those two Venn diagrams, you've got some phenomenal partnerships, and it gets into territory that you could never have imagined. When you first started working with that organization.

28:40

I several years ago, had a conversation with a gentleman named David wills, He leads National Christian foundation, and we had the chance to put in front of him are vetting criteria in our vetting process. And he said to us, you need to be able to tell your nonprofit partners at any given moment, why you need them at least as much as they need you. And we've kept that in front of us to go no, this is a partnership, this is mutually beneficial. This is not a one a one directional relationship. As you progress through this phase, you'll find that your vetting criteria becomes a vetting process. We've got a document a little spreadsheet here. Happy to answer more about that in q&a. And we've also established ministry values. These have been very helpful for us in guiding our decision making and helping us evaluate what we do. It may not be necessary for you, but those ministry values for us have been some of the most foundational strategic language that we have. If any of you were in a mirror and Rachel's breakout yesterday. They talked through these in some detail, again, may not be helpful for you, but they've been very helpful for us. As we move here to the the fourth, the fourth and final phase I do I do want to make a disclaimer for these first three phases. Over my 10 years of experience I can I can speak with a great degree of confidence. My disclaimer in this fourth phase is we are still very much figuring this out. So, and and our team can can tell you about that we're still figuring it out we are, we're working through it. But, but we're happy to share what we're learning and what we're thinking what we're trying. And I can say that I'm confident of this, you'll be able to progress to the next phase, this fourth phase, when you've gained trust and influence in your community, the fourth phase is deepened and sustained deepen engagement, and sustained impact. And this work is made possible by the convergence of a bunch of things. It's it's years of experience in the community. It's really strong, healthy partnerships. It's strong partnerships that include deep relationships and mutually beneficial interpersonal relationships, and its existing community work. And by the way, that's not our church's existing community work, that's something already going on in the community. And then of course, then all of that mutual trust. One of the things that we're learning in this phase is that the expressions of this are varied vastly, from church to church, that it can look very different. In fact, you could you could see something going on at one of our campuses, see something on going to another campus, and not even realize that those are expressions of phase four of what intersect has been a part of, I'll give you a couple of examples of where we feel like we're able to start moving into this space, one of the things I would say is simply keeping that question in front of us. Where are we as a church uniquely positioned to come alongside existing work in the community in such a way that's making a lasting difference in our neighbors lives and a sustained impact in our community? More concretely, and Adrienne can tell you about this when she hops up at one of our campuses, we've played an integral role in the community and creating a scholarship for the descendants of black former residents, for these are the descendants of families who are forced to leave their homes, their property and everything behind in a racial expulsion over a century ago. And another campus we've had a long term presence in a particular community because of a number of nonprofits we work with there, and a really strong mentoring program we have in the local public school. As a result, we've been invited into some community development conversations, we've been invited into some business development conversations. And that nearby neighborhood, here at NorthPoint, Amira, and a bunch of folks from our global x team, and even a couple others are along staff are embarking on a project to resettle several Ukrainian and Afghan refugee families in our own community, we've brought a bunch of assets to that. And we say that we think we have the network to do this well, like we think we're positioned in this community, as well as anybody are gonna motional to help these families. Find a home here for however long for however long they're here. And then at all of our campuses, we work to leverage the funding that we're entrusted with that we're able to distribute through our be rich campaign towards projects that make a sustained impact. We're asking questions with our nonprofit partners that face in this direction that look in this direction. One of the examples tossed out was, and I'm not just saying this Atlanta mission has said this, but we were a critical partner for them in changing their strategy so that they could come up with tailored casework for for the folks that they serve. It was aimed at providing customized services to people to overcome the causes their homelessness, because it's not the same for everybody. Maybe it's poor health, but maybe it's job loss, maybe it's addiction, maybe it's abusive relationship, maybe it's a loss of hope, it could be some combination of those things. And we came alongside them and said yes, we will be will be seed funding for for adjustment in a strategy that helps you help our neighbors better that makes them more lasting impact in their lives. Done well, this is grounded, this is kind of going back to the very first chart I showed you, it's grounded in the principles of community development, there's no, there's no shortcut to or through this phase. It's only possible in this community development language here, when the realities of the community are understood when the aims or the aspirations of the community are identified, when the assets are identified and put to work towards that work. And those efforts are already already underway. Only then only then do we start to say well, what might we be able to do to help? In this work, we come alongside, we do not lead from the front. And you're ready to join this work, when you know the people in it. And so you can see that in this phase four, there is a long pathway to get to this point in your community, where you're at this deepen and sustain and sustain phase. I'll stop there and invite Michelle, Katie and Adrian up I'll have them introduce themselves in a second. But I'll just say this, there's a question as they come up, that's been guiding me. I know it's guiding me it's sort of a vision question. You're you're looking for that thing that that keeps you focused and keeps you energized. And for me, it's been a quote by Andy Stanley a really simple quote. And it's what's the story you want to tell? And when I said earlier that I was excited about this this process of preparing for today has gotten me more excited than ever that's about the story and more clear than ever on the story that we want to tell if you're at my be rich showcase yesterday bear with me for saying the same thing I said but it's it's written in my heart right now. Wouldn't it be cool? If the city was better because the church was in it wouldn't be even better if the city knew it was better because the church was in it. And wouldn't it be better still, if the church was known for making the city better? And wouldn't it be great if people were better because they engaged with the church. And it wouldn't be even better if people knew that they were better because and when they engage with the church, and wouldn't be even better still, if the church was known for helping people be better for helping people become exactly who God called them to be. For learning to love more, purely more genuinely are generously for living out their faith in Jesus Christ, for being better neighbors. And what excites me about this. And again, it's not it's not the only way, but I know you can catch my enthusiasm in it. This is not only these phases are not only a pathway for our church, to have deep sustained impact in their community. It's the exact pathway that we want people to take. We want people in our community to listen and understand to then engage and explore your mind putting that up there for record that next start to engage and explore, to narrow and build then finally, to be at a place where personally they have a deep and sustained engagement in the community. So thank you guys for listening.