Steve Staten: It has been fantastic to be here for the last few months.
You know your family when people start giving you nicknames.
Vicky has been calling me Columbo,
partly because I wear a raincoat.
Every time I've come I've brought rain.
It was rain Saturday morning.
And, but the other thing is, is like Columbo, I'll ask A curious question that
I think I already know the answer to.
And so, uh, but it has been, it's been warm.
I've received a lot of, uh, encouragement and respect.
And so today we were gonna, we're gonna talk about things that
are gonna be, uh, perhaps very inspiring, but there's a gut check.
Taking a look.
That's why you brought me in.
You didn't bring me in to give you wonderful platitudes, right?
So you brought me in to help do a reality check to look
underneath the hood of the church.
So, so if we could pull up the first screen, there we
go, let me come back here.
So this consultation report is a preliminary draft.
It's a high level, doesn't get down into the weeds like the other final report.
Well, I want to give you an overview because this is the end
coming to a close of phase two.
I'll still be working with OC through the month, you know, behind the scenes,
but this will be my last official time here until I'm invited back.
Um, if this was for the sermon part, if I, if you like sermon titles, it would
be called consider carefully what you do.
And that's a quote from a character in what we're about ready to read.
So in order to, um, be, be honorable, I am going to start the timer.
That's important, right?
So, okay, so we're going to look at a story, but first I need to tell you where
my consultancy started 12 years ago.
I wanted to know what are the primary options available to churches that
are navigating turbulence that comes with transition change and troubles.
And I found a passage that really was helpful to me.
It kind of gives like an arc.
Uh, what can happen in the story that we're going to read.
There's a prologue where there's no problem.
There's a drift where a problem is about to happen.
There's a failure.
There's alarm from the failure.
There's an assessment as a result of that.
Looking back, we need reset.
And then there's a stage of renewal.
So we're going to be looking at those kind of things through the
story of Jehoshaphat and Judah.
Now, the prologue, the Canaanites worshiped El, which means God,
and the Israelites worshiped El Shaddai, a specific God, and there's
only one God, and it's Yahweh.
Baal had a girlfriend, Asherah, who enticed people into immorality.
Ahab was the king, and Jezebel was the queen, and she was
the one who enticed people.
And so Judah opposed Baal and Asherah because they were on the
right side of history in all this.
These were their neighbors.
So then we come into a drift.
Jehoshaphat was king of Judah.
Judah was the rightful kingdom.
Israel was the schism out of rebellion that took place
after Solomon had passed away.
Jehoshaphat's son married Jezebel's daughter.
This begins to be a problem.
I mean, this is, was, how did that happen?
Right?
The two kings ended up bonding.
And the friendly Ahab pursued an alliance with Jehoshaphat.
Now the king of Aram, another kingdom, intended to assassinate Ahab.
Ahab said to Jehoshaphat, I will enter in battle in disguise,
but you wear your royal robes.
Well, why would you say do that?
So they'll get you, not me.
Crazy, Jehoshaphat became Aram's prey.
And Aram's commanders pursued what they thought was the king of Israel, but was
Jehoshaphat, nearly killed him, then recognized who he was, saw the ruse.
Ahab ended up dying by a random arrow, just fortunately, through
the prowess of God, takes him out.
But Jehoshaphat nearly lost his life.
This is failure and alarm.
We went from back history, to drift, to now a situation, really
bad almost happened, but it indicates something's really wrong.
And so next we actually have to talk about having an assessment.
Now this is really important.
I want to say every leader in this room pay close attention.
Each King who ended well in the old Testament had a
prophet or seer in their life.
Okay.
That's really important.
One from Israel, that was David, five from Judah, Asa, Jehoshaphat,
Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah.
And Josiah's seer was Jehu.
And like Jeremiah was told to, in his era, comes later, assay Judah,
which is the same word when you test silver to see if it's pure.
It's like test, evaluate the ways of the people.
And that's what a seer or a prophet does.
They're supposed to like inspect kind of a model for what a consultant
ought to be able to do, right?
So that's kind of why I'm here.
Now, let me tell you, let's read the story.
When Jehoshaphat king of Judah returned safely to his palace in Jerusalem,
Jehu the seer, the son of a nanny went out to meet him and said to
the king, should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord?
Because of this, the wrath of the Lord is on you.
There is, however, some good in you.
For you have rid the land of Asherah poles and have set your heart on seeking God.
Jehoshaphat catches his breath.
I'm not all bad, right?
Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem and he went out again among the people.
This is the time for a reset.
And to be from Beersheba to the hill country of re and turned them back to
the Lord, the God of their ancestors.
So he took it to heart.
He heard what the consultant said and he took it to heart.
He appointed judges in the land in each of the fortified cities of Judah.
He told them, consider carefully what you do.
because you're not judging for mere mortals, but for the Lord and who is
with you whenever you give a verdict.
Now, let the fear of the Lord beyond you judge carefully for
with the Lord, our God, there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.
In Jerusalem also Jehoshaphat appointed some of the Levites priests and the heads
of the Israelite families to administer the law, the Lord, and to settle disputes.
Now I wanna park there for just a moment.
One, two, three.
Jethro gave Moses advice who Moses who was handling so many problems.
He developed a scaled level of competency and experience those over tens, fifties,
hundreds, thousands of whatever to handle conflicts and disputes among the tribes.
40 years later in Deuteronomy chapter one, Moses reflects on having done
that and he has a very specific criteria for what Dispute Handlers
would be and he implemented and he made it even more resilient.
This is what I believe Jehoshaphat is doing.
He's taking a page from the past and right sizing things by what
he knows will please the Lord.
And they lived in Jerusalem.
He gave them these orders.
You must serve faithfully and wholeheartedly in the fear of the
Lord, and every case that comes before your people who live in the
cities, will have their blood shed?
Or other concerns of the law, commands, decrees, or regulations.
You are to warn them not to sin against the Lord, otherwise the wrath
will come on you and your people.
Do this, and you will not sin.
Now this gets really interesting.
Amariah, the chief priest, will be over you in any matter concerning the Lord.
So there's a spiritual authority, Amariah.
And Zebediah, son of Ishmael, the leader of the tribe of Judah, will be over
you in any matter concerning the king.
And the Levites will serve as officials among you.
Act with courage and may the Lord be with you, those who do well.
But here's the part I want to focus on.
Ishmael, the leader of the tribe of Judah, will be over you in
any matter concerning the king.
The king is now under authority.
Okay, so they have spiritual authority.
They have tribal authority that's even over the king.
And of course the king is the leader.
Which is usually a governance military, things like that.
So, Jehoshaphat humbled out, put himself in a situation that was
going to be best for the people.
Let's talk about the OC.
In August on the 18th of last year, James Willis informed the Ministry
Leadership Council that the OC staff will be requesting help.
There had been a problem with it.
It was a departure of a beloved staff member.
There was internal turmoil.
There were strong things felt in the South ministry and strong
things felt in the Korean ministry.
And so this was coming.
Two days later, there was an anonymous letter that was sent
Asking for a formal investigation into the leadership of the O.
C.
region.
And then a few, six days after that, the M.
L.
C.
received the official request from the staff and the elder.
And so then, we, we move into a new phase.
Okay, we're going to be moving into assessment.
So, August to January, the Orange County Service Team, which is
like a task force that was set up to respond to the two requests,
take them seriously, show respect.
That there's something up.
And then they moved into what would later be looked back and be called Phase 1.
Now, uh, of course, Robert and Michelle are on that group.
They're here today.
And others who have been in and out are on that as advisors
or part of the regular team.
We've been meeting about every week or two weeks since I've got involved.
Phase 1 was interviews, survey, various meetings, and an initial report.
Phase two organizational leadership restructure required
somebody to be on the ground.
I was interviewed by the staff and the Orange County Separating Group
along with the task force, the service team to be here for three months,
which would have ended in April.
We've added a month.
And so what we're doing is going into phase two.
My job is to review findings of phase one, make sure I fully
understand what they came up with.
And then to review correspondence, some that they received and then a lot that
I've received since I've been involved.
I've conducted interviews, about 50 people I've met with in various
configurations and meetings with groups.
Priority would be probing the South and Korean ministries out of
respect for the request from the staff and the anonymous letter.
Reconciliations.
Reconciliations can work like this.
There's reconciliations that are full fledged like mediations.
Then there's reconciliations where there's a facilitated conversation.
Then there's, uh, reconciliations that take place after a report comes out that
has the voices of so many people in it that they know they're being heard because
there's a real good solid narrative.
And it produces ah ha moments, and those ah ha moments make people go,
you know what, I had the situation wrong, I didn't have it quite
right, I'm gonna choose to forgive.
Okay, so that's kind of what happens a lot in my work.
I do mediations, like sit down, go back and forth, back and forth.
We've had some really great talks, even with the whole staff, where
we're able to go, okay, we turn the lights on, now we have a better
story because it's facilitated.
I'm an outsider.
It's easy for an outsider who has no pony in the race to have
those conversations, you know?
And so we've done that, and they pay attention to structure.
So typical discussion topics have been, uh, let's talk about the
recent developments that have been very difficult as perspectives
around congregational trust, legacy issues that impede the present.
Let me give you an example of a legacy issue.
It comes out of the software world, by the way, if there's a there's a bug
in a program like Windows one and then Microsoft didn't fix it by Windows two.
And it keeps carrying forth and they didn't quite recognize that it was there.
That kind of thing happens in software world lot.
There was a there were two ships requested to be built in 1904 in the Midwest.
They were gonna go from Chicago to the other side over in Michigan, and they
were gonna make a lot of money on this.
These two ships were in competition to see which one would get done fast, which
one would be faster, which one was much more luxurious and the advantage to be on.
And, uh, one, uh, existed for probably two decades before being
decommissioned, made money, did fine, hardly anything about it on the
internet, because there were no problems.
The other one was designed to hold, I think, about 1, 800 people, and then
they specced it out, added a deck so they could put, you know, 2, 600 people on it.
Then after the Titanic, uh, sunk in 1912, government regulations required
putting boats up on deck a whole lot more.
You can see where this is gonna go.
This was the SS Eastland.
Even before the additional deck for more housing, even before the boats,
it had a reputation for listing.
It'd be like this, like a bike, until you get moving.
Freaked people out.
Scared a lot of people.
In 1915, while they were loading it up, right in the Chicago River, it capsized.
They were trying to put 3, 500 people on that boat.
And 842 people drowned.
And so, there was search for scapegoats, trying to figure out who was the problem.
Was it the engineer not managing the ballast and whatever?
It turns out, They consulted the original construction
person that designed the boat.
He said it was not designed for people.
It was designed for cargo.
It should have been maxed out.
It should have been like 500 people.
That was a legacy issue.
So it had some past baggage that had designed a structure
that needed to be resorted out.
And I think that's the way the church is.
I have to tell you, I'm excited to say I was at a three hour meeting with the
board and the ministry leadership council.
And there's a major effort.
To rethink a lot of things in the LA church, including structure and
governance and health and major efforts.
I don't even know anywhere that, that, where they're taking it as
serious as what I've been hearing.
But this is important.
The, the Orange County Ministry culture was a, a big topic, and then
there were open-ended questions.
So let's talk about the positives.
I have felt a respectful disposition of members in interactive group settings
when discussing main areas in need of review and speaking about other concerns.
That's always a good sign.
There's a humility and curiosity among the whole OC community about
what assumptions and practices might need to change or do need to change.
The willingness of the entire staff to look at their own functioning over the
last few years Each individually fully engaged in the process and were helpful
when discussing elephants in the room.
And this is not so much a strength, but you should just know there were
no concerns of a legal nature like a scandal that were brought up.
Most issues were relational dynamics, structural processes, practices,
and the alignment of roles.
Now those things are significant because they can lead to hurt.
They can lead to bad judgments, bad decisions.
But it wasn't like secrets.
So let's talk now about my observations.
First one being, the death of the leader, Kevin Maynes, with the
mixture of grief and succession challenges, was significant.
He, first of all, he was a unicorn.
Nobody could do what Kevin did.
Okay.
And then there's a thought that maybe Kevin shouldn't have been trying
to do all the things he was doing.
You needed a bigger eldership, and a flatter hierarchy,
and more team leadership.
We shouldn't have that model.
Now, he was noble in his doing the model, right?
But that, we don't want to go there, and you guys already made that decision,
because right after he passed away, there was a sense, we want a team model.
We want something different.
We don't want to recreate that setting.
But it never really got figured out.
Legacy, structural and cultural issues over reliance on top down
authoritative model, which I just mentioned, uh, challenges around
making disciples and discipling.
And this is, this is not just OC or the LA church, this is widespread.
We have words that there's no Greek equivalent of.
Discipleship, discipled, discipling, Those have all sorts
of meaning and the meaning evolved.
It really started around the late seventies, but it didn't become like
crystallized into the regular language till probably 89 to the early nineties.
And just consider this for instance, when somebody says, I got, I got discipled.
Okay.
No, the, the word that's used twice, Matthew, 28 and Acts 14 in the Greek,
some version of that word, only twice in terms of a verb or an adjective, means to
strengthen, to train, to help somebody go after the object, which is Jesus Christ.
It doesn't mean correct, rebuke, humiliate, it doesn't.
And so, I've tried to go for long stretches where I
don't say any of those words.
It's hard when you're around a community.
That's all we're saying, right?
The earlier purity culture and its effect on young women, this
is significant, came to me from multiple places, but it's not just OC.
And it's actually an evangelical baggage issue in this current era.
But the version that I was hearing here was, be that young women were
being treated in a punitive way for the way they dressed, As if they were
being blamed for the lust of a male.
That is ridiculous.
The males are responsible for their lust.
Certainly, young women will need to be guided humbly and respectfully
and with great tact about making them aware of what can happen with guys.
But not from blaming.
Not from blaming.
And so the then the effect on parents from negative experiences with kids and
then seeing their kids not stick around.
I mean, this, these are like, that's what a, you know, the kind of significant
category ongoing conflicts and concerns among some of the ministry staff.
Uh, with the south ministry external from some leadership.
Towards some leadership in the South and there were conflicts within the South.
Um, and then the Korean ministry also external, uh, issues that
was, were treated as conflicts.
The lack of implementation of mediation or arbitration of unresolved
employment issues mandated by the L.
A.
employee handbook.
Now, this was boilerplate.
Like it's in every responsible, uh, religious body.
And so what you see up on the screen, this is being slightly
modified for going forward, but it's basically the same substance.
That this just is what you do.
You get help.
You're required to get help.
You have no choice but to get help.
And you have the right to make sure that the help that you get is unbiased.
It's a very neutral third party.
It may happen in the church locally, some other part of the
church where there's trusted, that can be an excellent resource.
It could be in a brotherhood of familiar culture and tradition.
Sometimes it's great to get it completely outside.
I had a professor that used to say, sometimes the Baptists need
it from the Catholics and the church of Christ from the Jews.
Okay.
And there's wisdom behind it, because it's usually not about doctrine.
It's about finding a third way, so you break out of either or
thinking, or to see how we come across to people in a conflict.
That's usually a big part of a conflict, how we come across.
But we need help, and they didn't get help.
Staff didn't get it.
Now, staff is humble about this, even admitting that, Hey, I forgot
about that, or I didn't even read that, or didn't know that.
There's a responsibility on both ends, administration, staff leadership,
and I think you should from time to time just rehearse scenarios
that could bring out the worst in us and ask what our policies are.
A low level of trust.
Part of it was related to growing awareness of unresolved conflicts.
And that happens not just in a congregation, that can
happen in a brotherhood.
That can happen.
There's been times in the past where I didn't even want to go to a leadership
meeting representing multiple churches because I knew for a fact that people
in conflicts, not living quite right, were in prominent positions of speaking.
And there were people in the room that were like rolling their eyes
or going to the bathroom a lot.
I've seen where people will put in their ear pods and listen to a
sermon from a denominational church, which that's okay, I do that too.
But in the middle of a leadership workshop?
No.
Related to how decisions have been made or how decisions have been communicated.
Sometimes the right decisions are made, and they would have got there anyway,
but there should have been collaboration and consensus building beforehand.
And there should be a communication.
Some of the trust involves some, but not all the staff members, and
some of it's been related to unkept commitments, which leads to hope deferred.
And I just want you to know, and this, putting this up on the slide,
nobody on staff resists this.
This is, some of it comes straight from the staff, and we've talked
about it in open settings.
The need for clarity on policy, authority, supervision, and covenants,
including how to identify and address potential conflicts of interest.
And the first part of it is about just making sure people
know, even congregational members know, what are the mechanisms if
there's a grievance or a concern.
Those kinds of things.
And, uh, but here, around the conflict of interest, there's a
thought out in the church world that you can't be in two roles.
Because there would be a conflict of interest.
And actually, that's not, that's not very accurate.
There's an advantage and a disadvantage of having multiple roles.
If you are, here's the advantage.
If you have multiple roles that are going to put you in multiple
groups, you become a ligament between the groups of communication.
It really is helpful.
Very helpful.
However, But if there's not a policy and an understanding and implementation
of recusal when there's a potential conflict of interest and say, I might
not be best to weigh in on this, I might, I might not even be best to be
in the room on this, or can we pass this on to somebody else so there's no
question about conflict of interest.
We've got to get better on that and that became a concern as well.
So I want to show you a slide.
This slide is about, uh, it's kind of a hyperbole.
And what I mean by that is on the left is a maze, which is how it
feels sometimes in organizations.
When we know, who do I call?
What do we have written on that?
Is there a manual?
Is there a policy?
You know, and what happens in the maze is sometimes There's an oligarchy, you
know, a few kind of control things.
There's an inner circle.
And there's just, and I'm not projecting that here, I'm just saying what
happens is, we don't know why we can't get a good answer or a good outcome.
But on the right side is when you have somebody can walk you through this and
super informed of how the church works.
Here's our policies.
Here's our handbook.
Here's our covenants.
And if you have a concern to report something that went wrong, that a bad
thing that happened, first of all, take it to the outside authorities.
If it's of a certain nature, right?
But also here's what we do internally.
And so to make sure we're being the best and here's how to handle it internally.
And so again, these are two extremes, but they, they, they communicate.
We want an open space and we want somebody wise who knows how the
church works, uh, you know, because we live in complicated times.
So I think that's really important.
The seven, there's an urgent need for more elders.
and other biblical roles and functions, including deacons and teachers, right?
So there's an urge in you, but we're starting with the elders, top priority.
If there was a robust eldership here, four or five people over the last
seven years, ever since Kevin had passed away, you wouldn't even need me.
And I would say, if there were strong, robust elderships in the LA church,
Sizable enough for the community.
I would have never been needed except for workshop training.
I've come in and five very serious, serious situations.
And so shepherding is a big part of it.
Governance, quality governance with the right people and those roles for that.
These moments in time.
Okay, so in the reset part of the Orange County, by the way, these slides
will go out, but um, There are three changes currently underway and six
recommendations would have been nine recommendations, but you don't have
to think about the first three here that are currently underway because
the movements are the ship is sailed.
We're moving in the right direction, but I wanna make sure you know what they are.
And then, of course, six recommendations going forward.
First, the development of elders and deacons.
We started that on March 3rd.
We created a process underlain to Mhm.
Biblical criteria, nomination, vetting, review, syncing with the L.
A.
Church, syncing with the service team.
We created a rep team of outstanding members within the Orange County
Ministry to run things off of.
And we've got the ball rolling.
37 names were put forward for an eldership.
Some of them, many of them were very few nominations, but, and then
many of them were many nominations.
Some have taken themselves out.
We have come down to seven that we are still working with.
And so many of those others would be great for deacons.
So, but anyway, this is well underway and I predict that there would be
round one, maybe two, three over the next, you know, six months or so.
But the first round would be probably in June.
Uh, and I will tell you how this ministry will be led in
my absence a little bit later.
The ministry is being reimagined from top down, which is church
history is full of top down.
We've certainly experienced top down.
We're moving to more gift based, integrative, team oriented,
and that's already happening.
I see it.
I'm in these meetings.
I can officially say, I'm leading this meeting, and here's
what I think we ought to do.
But it's not like that.
Because really, somebody comes in with, Hey, I want to be on top of this.
I want to be on top of that.
What do you think?
And a lot of times in our meetings with the staff, I'm just watching
same with the our fact meetings.
There's a lot of, like, really good chemistry going on there because
we're moving in the right direction.
Now, this might be the next three slides might be the most
important in this presentation.
We're going to talk about memorializing lessons using a metaphor.
The Japanese ken stands for gold and sugi means to reconnect.
A kentsugi master mends the broken ware with lacquer and covers it with gold.
The repaired pottery is even more beautiful and
sophisticated than the original.
Organizational consultants use this metaphor to make the point that sometimes
having been through something where people are broken, systems are broken,
the organization is broken, becomes such a great teachable moment that
you want to never forget it, you want to shine a light on it, you want to
point to it, you want to talk about it, so you become better because of it.
It's like a superior failure.
You're better because you had it, but you properly put it back together.
Okay, so we want the staff has been going through an exercise where I
sent them a five page document called memorialization facing previous
challenges with integrity and honor and had gut wrenching questions in it.
It's kind of a quiet time with gut wrenching questions reflecting
what happened in this ministry.
And so I think I got almost all of them in or I got them all in
and I'm going to be harmonizing.
These lessons and you they will be available to you either in the report
or as a separate piece, which takes us to something that's very related.
The first recommendation.
There has to be repentance and some sense of atonement, which some people
use it to mean we become at one again.
We become at one where we're fully crossing a threshold.
We close a chapter.
Because we figured out what divided us, what polarized us, what went wrong.
And so we're going to be using the findings from the exercise.
And then the staff members will stand before their ministries,
articulating the very personal version that applies to them.
And I'm going to recommend that the elders that we have, because
we may have elders, plural, by the time this happens this summer.
That even maybe some future elders and shepherding people are part of that,
probably a midweek, I don't know.
Um, but that there's ownership, real clear ownership.
I think two bad things can happen in something like this,
besides the obvious good.
One is an over apology.
And one is an under apology, second is an under apology.
Over apology hurts the person who's apologizing because later on they go
I just, I don't feel good, you know, and under apology hurts the community.
They feel like that person doesn't get it.
I've even delayed memorialization until sometimes people get professional
help, you know, therapy, whatever, from a christian perspective, because
these moments can be very intense.
Um, Trying to figure out, you know, what was done wrong.
The staff will express commitments to ensure that the same errors
will not be repeated in the future.
And they have to be really clear, articulate, because we
want to mean business here.
Close that chapter through repentance and atonement.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't.
Okay, so now, uh, number two, complete the team leadership model.
That's the team.
Staff has been working on something and they've got to pave some good
ways by reading good books on church leadership from the team perspective.
They even created a document that had a lot going for it.
I think they need to wrap it up.
I talked to Marcel, who I think has the document, the latest
version, and he's out of town today.
But I said, what I would suggest is that you guys come up with a two page version.
Because I think it might be like 10 pages.
Keep it simple.
And it's always divided into two things.
Perspective gathering.
When you're going to make a decision, you want to have good perspective.
Right?
People in the thinking.
And then you want to define the subject well.
Set up the team with the team leader.
Who are your additional partners?
What kind of style are we using?
Consensus building or collaboration?
Those are two different things.
And how are we going to communicate it?
Number three.
Each member, this is for everybody here, makes one another commitments.
I'm going to introduce a Greek word that may change your mind
about one anotherness forever.
Homothumadon is formed by two words that mean one and spirited and passionate.
And that is often translated in the book of Acts as all together or came together.
Bible translators have trouble with this word.
Because if they would really translate it to get the full dynamic
meaning, it would be multiple words.
It would be, Come together and be the greatest version of yourself and
draw the best out of one another.
It's, One in one is three.
You know, You know, it's that kind of a thing.
But the original hearers knows what homothumadon is.
It's a word that describes how people get unified as they're
going out to war, you know?
So when we walk into a room with other people, you know, a small group or in
fellowship, it shouldn't be like, hey, yeah, hey, we're here, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, there should be a togetherness, okay?
And so I wanna give you some charges here.
I think we should be in the habit of getting with people
we don't naturally like.
So that means if somebody sets up an appointment with you today, I use this
because you don't think you don't like me.
Um, live unoffendable lives.
Be devoted to one another.
Don't withhold your love.
Carry each other's burdens.
Assume the best motives.
Speak the truth in love.
And by the way, you should look at the passages because they say
it better than I possibly have.
I think, you know, If we come giving our all, don't withhold our affection,
don't withhold our contribution, don't withhold our gifts from the
church, and we're in, I think we're going to see some really great things.
Periodically review and pivot the culture.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time here, but the authors of this book,
Pivot, make a great case for there are seven things that show up when a culture
goes bad, and it's usually not all seven.
And you can probably figure out the ones that come from our history.
And then on the right side, these are the antidotes.
And so, uh, there would be specific ways to facilitate
having conversations about this.
I will have more in the report about it.
I think you should develop a renewal strategy for the dispirited.
My wife 20 years ago.
There's the person who's baptized who's fired up.
Then there's the enthusiast person who's grown, been around for a few months.
They become a new Bible talk leader.
And then after a while, they go through a bad experience and they get dispirited.
That might take 10 or 15 years, but it happens.
And then they get stuck and they get mad.
And the twos and the threes don't get along with each other.
The fired up Bible talk leader says, you're so into yourself.
Why are you not bringing visitors?
Why are you negative?
That's 1990s culture, but that's what happened.
And so the dispirited person will say, you're just so shallow.
You're just cranking numbers.
Again, we implemented this when that stuff was very real.
The mature person values all of the earlier three and the mature
person has been in all the threes.
And so they can have a gracious attitude and when we create the
space for the dispirited person to get well, they go on to maturity.
And so I could actually see groups led by elders and shepherding type people
and deacons where we create a space for our participants to be real, to
be heard, to be encouraged, to gain spiritual wisdom and receive guidance.
And I have a whole section in the report about that.
Number six, we need robust communications.
There are at least 15 areas when strong communications are vital.
In a plan to meet an unmet need, a disputed resolution, major expense,
possible hire, all these kinds of things.
We need robust communication.
This is an area that we could probably read five books on and
still feel like we need to read more.
Not because the Bible is not clear about how to do this.
The Bible modifies it wonderfully, but we are in such a sophisticated
age where computers and technologies and media and all this kind of
stuff, like how do we do it?
How do we communicate?
Who do we, and I think it gets complicated.
And it's, but it's one of the ways to get trust that might've
been liquidated previously.
Okay, so this is what happened at the end of the story with Josiah.
It's the next chapter, and such a great story that I'm going to
request that you read it on your own time, but here's the conclusion.
And the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace.
And it was a huge story that took place in one chapter.
And they were at peace.
I want to ask you, what will the story be for the Orange County renewal?
You And the Orange County Church found peace, dot, dot, dot.
Because there was more to that outcome for Judah, and there's going
to be more than just having peace.
Fill in the blank.
What do you think it ought to be?
Pay attention to the scriptures and get some ideas and be a
participant in a greater form of one another ness and engaging.
So.
This is where we're at.
Phase three.
I've got some good news here.
The Orange County service team recommended and along with the discussion in the
South last time and in collaboration with the our facts of the Metro
in Orange County of both regions, Robert and Michelle will lead the
South ministry on a halftime basis.
And they will lead the staff as well.
Robert will be the spiritual director and the team leader.
They will have a supervisory authoritative role, but this is
not about coming in with a pyramid.
This is coming in to continue the work, started with the service team, what
I've been doing, and this is a six month engagement that could go longer.
Okay?
And he will be working in close partnership with the elders when it
comes to mapping out his schedule and stuff, but he's got a good start plan.
Robert will be completing the elder process.
The 2023 survey from last fall, which you've not seen the results on yet.
Robert this month is doing an exact version of that with the, uh, quantifiable
questions and you will get released the findings of both side by side.
And, um, Robert will be collaborating with you and the
selection of a long time leader.
Uh, in the kind of collaboration processes we've been having these last few months,
so we are really coming around the corner.
Phase three starts June 1st.
That's when Robert and Michelle start.
I will be working with Robert and Michelle and the service team and
the staff for the rest this month.
And, uh, you know, if things get glitchy or weird just because, you know, let's
say Robert gets sick or something.
I'm a phone call away or a zoom meeting away, and, uh, I'm with
this story waiting, praying and encouraging till we really cross over
into full renewal, and I want to say it's been an honor to be with you.
Thank you very much.