← GrowLeader Podcast with Chris Hodges
GrowLeader Podcast with Chris Hodges
63 | Year-End Momentum
00:29:52
Ready to build momentum into the new year? Join pastors Chris Hodges and Matt Minor as they discuss how to "stack the dominoes" into the new year as well as how to navigate the often polarizing election season with grace and wisdom. They unpack...
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- [00:00]
A
And so we like to think about our calendar, like stacking dominoes so we don't do independent events or services. We're always asking ourselves, what can we do now that will knock down the next thing? That will knock down the next thing that will knock down the next thing so we can have what John Maxwell calls the leader's best friend. And that is momentum, sir.
- [00:25]
B
Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Grow Leader Podcast, where we grow leaders that grow churches by helping them reach their full potential. My name is Mat. Matt. So glad to have you with us today, sitting right beside my pastor, Pastor Chris Hodges.
- [00:37]
A
How are you?
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B
I'm doing really well. I love this time of year. The fall is my favorite time of year.
- [00:42]
A
I think it is mine too. But I hate winter so bad, so I wanted to slow down and really just kind of milk every. Every bit of fall that I can. But it's my favorite, too. I love the football. I love the. The colors. I love the weather. I love the holidays. I'm a big fan of the holidays, which. You're a big fan of the holidays.
- [00:59]
B
I. I love all the holidays and love. Thanksgiving's probably my favorite. Kind of interesting.
- [01:04]
A
Yeah.
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B
The food.
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A
A lot of people say that. Yeah.
- [01:07]
B
I don't know. But Christmas is also my favorite, so maybe. Maybe I like all of them, but I. I really enjoy candy corn, and.
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A
So I can't stand candy corn.
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B
Polarizing snack. I know that.
- [01:16]
A
It really is. Yeah.
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B
It's just wax with sugar in it. But. But it's fantastic. Excited about this time of year. We're having a blast in church life just with the direction we're going. Want to talk about that in just a minute. Something else is coming up this fall. There's an election happening pretty soon, just a couple of weeks away, and it's something we get asked a whole lot about. You get asked from leaders all the time.
- [01:39]
A
Yeah. So do you have another question instead of this one? Yeah. It's not a topic that I just love, honestly love talking about. I do get asked a lot by leaders. How are you leading in this season? We're a month away from this election. How am I leading in this season? And I thought I'd share a few thoughts. And so we were talking before we started the podcast today that there are gonna be some who say I said too much, and there's others that are gonna say I didn't say enough. You honestly, it's one of those areas that I don't think you can please people. But here's my take on the whole Thing. I think they're important. I think they're very, very important. I'm very much a patriot. I love my country and I want the best for America. So I do encourage people to vote. And. And I do encourage people. I think, in fact, Matt, I think it's biblical to encourage our congregation to participate in anything in the civic world. I think, you know, this. This whole notion of separation of faith and government is certainly not biblical. I don't even think it was the intention of the ones that they try to quote that quote. Get that quote from. So I encourage people to participate. I think Christians ought to have their voice heard in the civic area. Um, to me, though, when I think about elections and this is just my. My whole little take on it, I. I have a. Have the ability to separate the values and the policies from the person and the personalities. So I never think about who am I voting for. I always think about what am I voting for. So honestly, I have this ability to separate because the persons come and go every four years.
- [03:18]
B
Right.
- [03:18]
A
But the policies and how they lead our country, that's what stays. So I know there's some personalities sometimes that people aren't very fans of on both sides. I have the ability to sift through all of that, not get enamored with or discouraged with the personalities. I stick to policies. I keep thinking about the one that. And honestly, neither side. I don't even really consider myself a Democrat or a Republican because neither side fully represents my views. But I do vote policies that matter to me, things like the sanctity of life. I think we should do everything to protect marriage, family, and certainly our kids. Some of the things that are happening in the areas of gender and sexuality. I don't think we're protecting our kids enough there. Of course, religious freedom. I'm for anyone who's going to allow us to exercise our religious freedom. So we. My take on it is in this season, I try to teach enough of the scriptures where the values and these morals and these things that I believe are biblical before they're political or in the heart of our people. And so they know and I think now that they can go to the polls, informed on hopefully these values and policies and not get so mixed up with the people that are behind some of these.
- [04:41]
B
So the new book, Jesus the High Road Leader, we talked about it last month, in last month's episode, getting great feedback from people just. But one more time, just kind of reiterate the heart of that, why you and John Maxwell wrote it.
- [04:55]
A
Well, we've Lost our ability to disagree and still be civil.
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B
Right.
- [05:00]
A
And Jesus had this ability to be integrated into the religious world, into the sinful world, and they weren't disgusted by his presence. They were drawn to him, even those who disagreed with him. And Jesus had this ability to experience expressed value for people that he knew they were turning away from some of the values and the principles of scripture, and it softened them. Jesus was the one who brought radical teachings, like, if someone hits you on your cheek, turn them, let them hit the other one too. No one was saying that, and honestly, no one even still does that today, that if they ask you to carry this one mile, go the second mile with them. So there's all these high road values that do not have to take away your convictions or your beliefs. I'm a very sure person about what I believe, and even politically, I'm very conservative politically, and I'm very sure of those. But I do not have the right to mistreat the people who disagree with me or I with them.
- [06:05]
B
Right. I think if you're gonna be salt and light, and I don't. I've probably heard this from somebody in the past, but you gotta have some places that taste bad and are dark.
- [06:13]
A
Exactly. And honestly, our goal, our ultimate responsibility as believers is to share that light. And they're never going to choose the God we serve if they don't like us because we're the representation of that. So it's very, very important. I did want to give one more thought to the whole political world that I think pastors need to hear. And this is again, just my take. You don't have to agree with me. I'm just giving you my thoughts on this. There are some that I think actually have the grace to be way more involved than others. And I've watched them do it. I've watched them be very, very vocal. And they do it in such a way where people aren't turned off. Even people who disagree, like their churches do not dwindle in size. And I watch them do this and I think, man, if I said that, it seems like there'd be people who just couldn't take that. And I've actually come to the conclusion, Matt, that they have the grace of God on their life for that. And so I never criticize someone who's more vocal than me, and I never criticize someone who is less vocal than me. I think all of us, look, just stay in the lane that God's given you and stay under your own grace, stay on your own message. And so I don't ever let someone pull me into more or to less. I am Chris Hodges. This is who I am. And honestly, I believe in all the flavors of the body of Christ. I don't think there should be one standard expression of how we present the gospel. I think the truths of it all, the mandates of scripture, are very clear. But, man, let's let all the flavors of the body of Christ, not beliefs, but flavors. I'm for it all.
- [07:51]
B
That's amazing. I do want to continue talking about the fall and just looking at how we're doing church right now and even how you're planning for church before that, though, usually we take a minute when we start an episode to honor the partners that help make the podcast happen. We were talking before we started recording just how grateful we are for wif.
- [08:11]
A
Yeah. And that I didn't want it to be a commercial on the front end of the podcast every month. And I just. I asked you right before we begin, can I just do it this month? Can I just say to everyone that's watching right now how grateful I am for the Wesleyan Investment foundation, who does two things for churches and for all of us. And one is that they're lending money to churches where banks have said no, WIF has said yes. And I'm so grateful that there is this place that we can steer people to who need to do remodeling projects and who need to do building projects that you're. There's. There's a friend out there that is pro church. They're pro faith. They. They want us to succeed. And I'm very, very grateful to them, Matt, because they've. They have nearly $700 million worth of loans right now just with arc churches alone. So they're a dear, dear friend. And it's also a great place, you know, since we don't carry debt here at Highlands. It's also a great place that if you have money that needs to be on deposit, they're giving one of the highest interest rates in the banking world right now. And the money that's on deposit, they're just giving it to churches. This allows them to give loans to churches. So to me, it's a win, win, win. And not only for church investment accounts, but also for personal investment accounts. If you have some money that you want to gain some interest on right now, and this is all liquid, you can put it in one day, take it out the next so it's not tied up money. I can't think of a better place than the Wesleyan Investment Foundation.
- [09:41]
B
If you want to get more information about them, it's going to be in the show notes. We'll always put it in there. But also you can go to wif online.com growleader and do you want to take a second and just. And say thank you to the Studio C as well?
- [09:52]
A
Yeah, man. This probably one of the most significant partners for Church of the Highlands in The last last 12 months has been our relationship to this platform, Studio C, that's helped us build out our app so that every person's app experience is unique and tailored to them. And we love what our app has done now for membership, engagement, and how we're only communicating to people what's relevant to them. And we needed this platform to do it. And so I really wish every church had discipleship and then an engagement tool where they can track people's discipleship. And Studio C has helped us with that.
- [10:30]
B
Yeah. And I would say this. Cause I've had people ask me this, hey, Matt, do they have a platform or way to help us even as a smaller church? The answer is yes, they can help you any size in any size church. And it really has changed the game. Even how I'm able to leave my campus way I'm able to connect with people, it's helped us in a massive way. And so we are grateful for them. So the fall, as a senior pastor, what are the things that I need to be thinking about right now as we close out this last quarter of the year?
- [10:56]
A
Well, the reason why I want to talk about the end of the year and the beginning of next year in the October Grow Leader podcast episode is because pastors have to lead ahead of seasons. You have to be thinking about, praying about and planning, you know, November, December and January right now. So when I was thinking about what would we talk about in this month's episode of the Grow Leader podcast, I thought one of the best gifts I can give pastors right now is to help them navigate and plan for the opportunities, the very unique opportunities that we're afforded and toward the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. And I'm bringing it to you now, pastors and leaders, so you can plan for and pray for that beginning with our Sunday services, just the church services alone. So we have this principle that I want to teach you right now that'll help you understand why I'm going to give you how we're navigating the next three or four months of Sundays and we call it here around Highland, stacking the dominoes and if you've ever seen the stacking of the dominoes, and then somebody hits the first one, the first one hits the next one, the next one hits the next one, the next one hits the next one. You get the idea. And what it does, it creates this momentum, this wave of movement because you're using this to move that. And so we like to think about our calendar like stacking dominoes. So we don't do independent events or services. We're always asking ourselves, what can we do now that will knock down the next thing? That will knock down the next thing. That will knock down the next thing so we can have what John Maxwell calls the leader's best friend. And that is momentum. Momentum. So I want to talk to you about how to stack some dominoes of events, of topics you can teach on Sundays, of things that we can do to make the most of the holidays. That I'm telling you that if you get this stacking of the dominoes right, you're going to see this massive wave of momentum coming at the right times, which is at Christmas and at the New year. So what does that look like? Well, for us right now we're in this, we're in a series right now that will lead into our most evangelistic series of the year, which is called at the Movies. And a lot of churches now are using modern day parables to teach spiritual truth through movie clips. And this is a great opportunity. I don't know if I've ever taught pastors this before, Matt, but the reason why we do these in November is because we actually get to redeem two historically low Sundays. And that's the Sunday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
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B
So can you tell the story? Because we, when I first came on the team, we did these Midsummer.
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A
Yeah, we did. And now I'm again, if someone wants to do it at different seasons, that's fine, but I'm trying to grab momentum. So I'm trying to not only use it at the right time, but also redeem what would been historically the low time. So we realized that there are two Sundays that we will see almost a 50% decrease in attendance. What if we put our best series in that season when now we have about 130% attendance during those two weeks that would have been down to 50%. So two Sundays before Thanksgiving, the Sunday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after Thanksgiving is the three weeks of this series called at the Movies.
- [14:11]
B
And I think that's the brilliance of it, is the fact that it's not just should you be Doing this. Is this the right time of the calendar to be doing this?
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A
Yeah. So it's not just the what, it's the when. The timing. All this is very, very careful. Important too. And right before we show these three messages that are prerecorded again, that are using movie clips to teach spiritual truth, to which we're going to see this 30% increase in attendance on historically low Sundays, we also take the opportunity to take about five minutes and share vision about what our giving has already accomplished. So this is not new vision, this is what your giving is already doing. And we try to do it in story form to move the hearts. And I'm gonna get to that in just a second because the second focus of the fall season, I believe needs to be communicating vision and being prepared for year end giving. Because this is when people feel compassionate and honestly, a lot of people think about their generosity toward the end of the year. But coming back to the Sunday experience, first, the thing that I wanna teach the pastors that are listening and the leaders that are listening is that we're gonna focus on this season of evangelism at the movies, but also talk about generosity and show these features. But at the same time, Matt, this is a great opportunity to not miss. And that is Thanksgiving to do outreaches to feed people. So feeding people is important all year long. But it seems like we get a little bit more traction when we couple it with these beautiful holidays like Thanksgiving for Christmas. We have an outreach that's called Giving Hope, where we actually. This is so beautiful, where we actually bring in families and we let the families shop for their kids. So we buy all the toys. They get to shop for age specific toys. But we don't go into the communities and give kids toys. We want the parents to be the hero in the story. So we give the toys to the parents, help the parents wrap them, send the parents home so that the parents can give these gifts to their children on Christmas day. And it is beautiful. And we have all of this laid out for pastors and for churches. If you wanna run this play called Giving Hope, which we do second Saturday of December and help literally thousands and thousands and thousands of kids and thousands of families have Christmas. And again, let the parent be the hero in the story and then the church becomes the hero to the parent. To me, it's a beautiful thing.
- [16:35]
B
And I know all of our outreach expressions, they're. They're always for how we can serve people in the name of Jesus. So it's for the people outside of the church, the Thing that we also see, though, is the people that are in your church that are there, maybe a part of an audience, but not really a part of a team yet not engaged.
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A
Oh, they love it.
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B
That is their engagement point. That's where a lot of people serve for the very first time, is helping feed people for Thanksgiving or helping wrap presents for Christmas.
- [16:56]
A
Because we have people that help them shop, and then we have people that help them rap. We have people that help them load their car. I mean, it's. And then while they're doing that, the parents doing that, the kids are in a different room here in the gospel. So, I mean, it's just a beautiful day. But if you're going to do it in December, you've got to be thinking about it now, Pastor, what I'm trying to teach you from a leadership standpoint is that we have to lead ahead of season. So what am I thinking about right now in October? I'm thinking about December. I'm thinking about giving hope. I'm thinking about our Thanksgiving outreach. I'm thinking about evangelism. I'm thinking about redeeming these two Sundays that are historically low and making them weekends where now we're going to see loads of people. We're believing God, that loads of people are going to give their lives to Jesus.
- [17:38]
B
In a season where it feels like in the giving world, especially in the secular world, you know, if it's all the great nonprofits that do great work in the secular world, how do we as a church family get. Just get heard in that space of also being generous in that season when the whole world's trying to give as well?
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A
Yeah, well, that's the point. I mean, what would it look like if the church was known as the most compassionate group of people in the city? That's the opportunity for us to step into this season and really be known for that. Whether they agree with you or not, they cannot deny that we're there, that we're in the prisons, that we're in the, you know, helping the families that are in the greatest need. But again, we have to plan for that. And to plan for that, you have to have the funds to do that. And that's the second thing that I wanted to make sure that I teach every listener and every one of our pastors and leaders, and that is it's the best time to two things. Define vision and develop your givers. Define vision and develop givers. So right now, I am preparing what I call this ramp that's gonna lead to the second Sunday of December that we're gonna have an offering that we're gonna give every bit of that offering away to help those who are hurting and to help and to reach those who have never heard the gospel of Jesus. We're gonna give to all five of our legacy lanes. We have taught you about the five areas of focus, but that's gonna include messages on generosity. So the Sunday before at the movies, our evangelistic season, I'm gonna do a standalone message on compassion, generosity, and leading into the season where everybody's already thinking about it anyway, as the holidays approach, we'll have these legacy features, we call them, where we're telling stories of what giving is already doing to make a difference in the hearts of people. I'm gonna write a letter. It's a page and a half letter that says, look what your giving's already doing. And then I share, just in a couple of paragraphs, what we call the vision gap. Here's not only what we have done, but this is what we could do. Here are our opportunities and we'll share these in all these areas. And we're gonna have this special offering coming up on the second Sunday of December. So I'm giving em time and Matt, the reason why I give them this amount of time, because the Bible says that each person should give what they have decided in their heart to give. So we're not supposed to move people with fancy videos or guilt them into some response on this. I'm not against random and spontaneous giving. I just don't think we should be characterized by random and spontaneous giving. I think we should be more intentional and have more decided giving. And so when you prepare them like I'm preparing you, and you prepare them way ahead of all these opportunities, then they can make an informed decision. I think it's so much better.
- [20:29]
B
Can I ask you a question, just for the senior pastor that's sitting there and already feels late on this, maybe even preparing for how to share vision. What. What are some things that you would advise them to do?
- [20:39]
A
It's a great question. And the answer is you can't share something you. You've never defined in your own heart. So I always take the five areas. In fact, I had a meeting this week with all of our missions teams, our Highlands college team, our outreach teams, our prison. I sat down and said, hey, here's how I see what our vision opportunities are. Do you agree? And I don't want to give them the church pie in the sky, just, you know, off the top of my head. No, no, no, where are we falling short? What could this offering push across the finish line? Like, we're almost there, but we're not quite there. What are our opportunities to really do everything we believe God's given us the opportunity to do? So we talked about our building projects here at the church. We've talked about our opportunities with Highlands College. We've talked about the fact that we have a couple more prisons that we want to be in and what that would cost. And we have the opportunity and the leaders for. We talked about this Thanksgiving outreach, we talked about some of our missions opportunities. And now we have clearly defined vision. Cause you can never share what you have not made clear in your own mind. I wanna encourage every pastor to actually do that, to make it, to make it plain.
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B
And I think that a lot of guys, the vision, the building expansion or adding onto a, you know, a facility is the easy vision to communicate. I think a lot of guys are ready to share that. But the, the ministry opportunity of how you're reaching your city.
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A
And so here's how I do it. So if I was in a roundtable and I've done this in, in settings where I can get feedback and have conversation, which by the way, let me pause right there and say, come to one of our round tables. You want to, you want to be a part of the best learning environment that Grow Leader has to offer? Come get in a circle with 25 other pastors and let's just Q&A for two days. I promise you it's better than any conference and any even this podcast because we get to interact. But when I'm in those roundtable settings, Matt, one of the things I love to do is just ask a pastor if someone walked up to you right now and said, here's a million dollars, but you can't use it to build one of our buildings here at the church. I want to do something to impact our city. What's your answer?
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B
It's such a great question.
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A
And if you don't have an answer immediately, watch this pastor. You're under visioning yourself. Because there are opportunities to touch and impact our cities outside of our own facilities and buildings. And why shouldn't we be the vision carriers of those opportunities Right now? If somebody walked up and said, you can't put it in our city, man, I want to do something for the, for America. What's your answer? What do you do with a million dollars right now? And of course, I mean, I actually, if some. I had a business leader ask me that once he came to me we had lunch and he said, chris, I have some money I want to give away. And I started talking to him about all the opportunities. I began with some of the building projects and he came back and he says, what could we do to really impact America? And I said to him, I said, I don't know of a better way to impact America than to supply America with more healthy life giving churches. He goes, what do you mean? I said, we can actually fund church planting. And by the way, those same churches that we fund give to missions so we can even leverage your investment so that it's actually having a multiplying effect. And he said, I want to do that. And he ended up giving millions of dollars to ark. It was over a period of time, but he wanted to invest in church planting, of which that same money that he invested turned into tens of millions of dollars because those churches are all giving two missions. So that's what I'm talking about.
- [24:05]
B
I think it's just so clarifying. And I would say, and you do this. I've seen you do this. You invite your highest level leaders into that conversation, hey, what are we dreaming about? How can we do this? And you help guide that conversation.
- [24:15]
A
And I try to be very honest with them too and just. And not always skew it toward what I want because I have a couple of my own pet projects. I mean, we're in three building projects right now with the church. And then I'm very passionate about Highlands College. That's, that's where I'm putting my over and above tithe giving right now is toward Highlands College. But what if God's moving their heart to the world? What if their God's moving their heart to scripture engagement and translation? What if. So I just tell them all the different opportunities and I just trust God with the results. I don't try to manipulate it in any way. But you can't steer that conversation if you don't have an answer.
- [24:49]
B
That's great.
- [24:49]
A
So if you ask me, I have a million dollars I don't want to put in the world. Well, I'm saying, well, you know what, let's finish this Bible translation project. Let's invest in you version, for heaven's sakes, let's invest in something where we know it's touching millions and millions of people anyway. You have to have clearly defined vision. And then once you have that clearly defined vision, then you can develop these givers. And I'll finish with this by saying, Matt, that there are some opportunities coming up at the end of the Year to thank generous people. We actually have a banquet, a Christmas party, where we just simply say thank you with food and music and fun and fellowship to those who have been very, very generous to our church. The legacy Christmas party. We're happy to teach you how to do one of those. We actually have a legacy Sunday where everybody can participate in this offering that we're going to give away 100% of it to our five legacy lanes into things like that.
- [25:41]
B
That's a. There's a much bigger education around all of that. If you're interested in that, I would encourage you. We'll link this in the show notes. But you and Pastor Lee Domain did a project where you did a course. I mean, there are hours of teaching.
- [25:53]
A
Hours and hours, the Kingdom Builders Intensive, which will teach you how to build a legacy team and how to communicate all this.
- [25:59]
B
It's beautiful and it'll help you even calendar so that this time next year, you have a whole different perspective on how to stack the dominoes in that area. Okay, what else?
- [26:08]
A
So the last thing is so Sunday services being clear, making the most of Sundays, taking advantage of defining vision and developing givers in this generosity season. The last is prepare for Christmas and the new year. So hopefully I'm not reminding a pastor right now that Christmas is coming. It's only, what, 12 weeks away.
- [26:28]
B
12 weeks away?
- [26:29]
A
Yeah, 12 Sundays away. And then the New Year's 14 Sundays away. So this is the goal basically of attracting people with something incredibly beautiful. You can go and watch some of the Christmas services of Church of the Highlands candlelight services that last about an hour and five minutes that we actually, I just set kind of a goal for you that we will see double our average attendance. So whatever we're averaging, we're going to see a double attendance of that in our Christmas services. And it's so beautiful, so spiritual, such a great family event. You can feel the presence of God there in every way. I'm encouraging you to do some type of candlelight experience to attract new people. But watch this. Remember, we stack dominoes. And at every Christmas service, I say, in January's right around the corner, and we're getting ready to have 21 days of prayer. And what would your life look like if you actually started the year off with God first? Will you come back in two weeks after Christmas here and start this 21 days of prayer? So we never. I would never have a Christmas service without talking about 21 days. I would never have at the movies without talking about our Christmas service. We stack the dominoes we always let one thing feed into the next thing. And the last thing I want to say, I know we're running out of time, Matt, but I want to encourage pastors and leaders to develop some kind of beautiful candlelight Christmas experience. We're happy to help you. Let our teams know. We'll give you everything we know with that, but also want to encourage you to start thinking about the series you're going to do in January that you can talk about in December to get these visitors that are going to come at Christmas back to church in January. And I'm asking you if you haven't considered participating in 21 Days of Prayer and fasting to do so. And you might even want to do a series on prayer in the month of January. And we have resources, of course. I wrote this book called Pray First. We have sermon material for Sundays that you can teach on prayer and get your people stirred to pray and fast. We can also give you small group curriculum. There's all kind of resources we want to make available to you. But I promise you, leader, that if any of those are going to happen in an exceptional way, those dominoes have to be stacked. Now. The October pushing the November, pushing the holidays, pushing the giving, pushing the evangelism, the next one pushing at the movies, pushing Christmas services. That's pushing 21 days of prayer to the one year Challenge. Give us a year of your life. You see all this stacks and that's what brings momentum in local churches and it doesn't stop.
- [29:03]
B
I would encourage you to go look at the Highlands series calendar in February. It's Valentine's Day. People are thinking about relationships. We're having marriage conference. Like it goes on and on and on.
- [29:12]
A
And we're talking about the marriage conference and relationships while we're praying and fasting, every domino knocking over the next one.
- [29:18]
B
It's incredible. Thank you so much, Pastor Chris. Don't forget, we want to say thank you again to the Wesleyan Investment foundation and also to Studio C. They're incredible partners. We'll link all their information in the show notes for all the resources we've talked about today. Those will be in the show notes for any questions that you have, be sure to email us@infogrowleader.com and one of our amazing Real Life Human Being team members, we'll send you an email back. We'd love to get to know you. We'll see you next time on the Grow Leader podcast.