Keys to a Good First Session Webinar

Keys to a good first session is the topic tonight. What we intend to do is to be very concise about some very basic things, as it concerns meeting with individuals in a mentorship type of setting. What we intend here to do with this teaching is to kind of allow and bring that first session so that it’s not so daunting, not so scary because we are sure that you’re getting mentors in and out of the program in your local churches. People are signing up. People are saying, yeah, I’d like to do this. And that’s probably turning over frequently. This could be a little bit of a help to any of those people who have done that or might help them get their mind around what that looks like. What we’re going to do tonight, we’re going to have three different buckets. We’re going to do a little bit of information to inform. We’re going to spend most of the time on equipping you in this teaching, and then we’ll close with a little bit of motivation. So that’s a little bit about the layout.

The first informing piece, and we’ll be a bit brief on this as we want to shift discipleship counseling to the local church. ACCFS has done a great deal of discipleship counseling and discipleship counseling basically is that low hanging fruit of just walking with people, discipling, mentoring them as it’s through life. You can think about the heavy clinical counseling type of things, such as bipolar and anxiety. And some of those heavy lifting things ACCFS has always done. And we’ve done a great deal of this discipleship counseling as well. But we believe that discipleship counseling is most effective in the local church where relationships are lived, where there’s a community around a person where it is just natural.

And so if you can get a sense a little bit of our desire here at the agency to shift that discipleship counseling and help that shift happen to the local church. We will continue the chronic clinical counseling as well as I’m sure discipleship in at some levels and for some situations, but really we would like to equip the local church in this type of mentoring.

Arlan, do you have anything you want to say at this point? No. I just want to affirm that we see this as one of our roles kind of growing and expanding where we are providing curriculum, instruction, learning in various mediums, webinar being one of them to help you do your job in the local church and help the local church do its job well.

And I want to emphasize too, that we are always open to thoughts, concepts, things that you see that you would like us to cover at any time. Feel free to shoot us an email or give us a call either of us and share those ideas and we’ll work those in. We’ll get those incorporated.

Let’s move on now to the equipping part, keys to a first good session. What you see before you is a bit of, I guess it looks like maybe a belt buckle. But what we want to do is we want to start inside and we’re going to talk about basic counseling skills. So again, we’re trying to make this job of talking with people, mentoring people, discipling people, whatever word you like, and we want to make it manageable.

We want to help people see what it is and what it’s not. So, if you would like to think about this, we start in the very center here and we’re going to move our way outward in these concentric circles and talk about an initial mindset and what we want to do again, bring near the mindset of a counselor or the mindset of a discipleship person. Again, right now your mics are muted, feel free to make note of questions as they arise. And, once we get through, we only have a few slides here, once we get through, we’ll open that up for questions. I’m going to start with the initial mindset of a person who is a helper.

Okay. Is that. Your counselee is hurting. So now we’re using the word counselee, we’re talking about a mentee. We’re talking about a helpee all of those words, the same thing here, but the person that I’m helping is hurting typically. And so the initial mindset of a helper is that they appreciate that pain realizing that it’s not a simple thing to ask for help.

This generates within us a helper, a compassion, a love for this person. Okay. So that would be the first thing. And then going and realizing that it’s not easy to ask for help. So, we realize this, and that vulnerability is not easy. And so, we then appreciate their openness, and we support their courage.

In fact, this is a wonderful, easy, low hanging fruit way to affirm a person. We’re always looking to encourage a person if they have engaged in this relationship. Well, now you’ve got a reason to support them and encourage them because it is not easy. Something is hurting. Vulnerability is not easy. They are being open.

And so we can support that it’s not easy to ask for help. Now we move on to say, okay, again, these are all initial mindsets of a helper. I don’t know them or their story, a very basic concept that we take as we engage a person for the first time as we realize, and we admit, I don’t know this person, and this person is unique.

And their story is unique. It’s very easy to jump ahead and say, oh, I know what this situation is about. Or I know this family situation, or I suppose this must be the case and we can jump to those conclusions and the initial mindset is a reminder to us that no, I really don’t know. I really don’t know this person.

And I want to build that trust. So that’s a first type of objective that we have when we talk to people, I want to build trust. I think about it like money, putting it in the trust bank. I want, I’m going to need to, in this relationship, probably draw on some equity with this person. This is when I need to build that equity.

And so my counselee doesn’t know me either. And so, as we think about this first session, we can think about knowing them and their story. They also knowing us. Brother, Alan, jump in at any time if you have things that you want said, or have been left off here. Will do. As we move through the initial mindset, something hurts.

It’s not easy for them to ask. We appreciate this. We realize that I don’t know. We actually have a very freeing concept here in that I don’t need to be an expert and this is important, and this is very freeing to the mentors that sign up or agree to do that in our churches. This is wonderful freedom to realize that I don’t need to have all the answers.

I don’t need to know all this. Discipleship doesn’t require expertise in all matters of life. In fact, you may not have the same temptation as your counselee, but you have temptation, right? You may not have all the same disappointments, but you have disappointments. So, realize, allow this and allow those who step into mentoring in the churches to try to get out from underneath the heaviness of I don’t know what the answer is going to be, or I don’t know if I’m going to be able to give any advice at all. Okay. A counselor has in their mindset that they don’t have to be an expert. Certainly, love is a part of the initial mindset. Above all things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness Colossians 3:14.

I love that phrase, above all things, almost as if to say if we mess up on everything, but love is there well, Scripture says it covers a multitude of sins. It is a wonderful, as the Scripture says, the bond of perfectness. And so that love is imperative, and that love carries the whole relationship that we have with those that we help.

And then finally, the initial mindset having hope, leave your counselee with hope. So critically important when we have a first session. A first session in and of itself is hopeful. As we mentioned over here, we said, vulnerability is not easy. And so we appreciate that openness. And so we give them hope that they have even begun a first step.

They are being open to their need for help. That is incredibly hopeful, but always be looking for ways to comment on hope throughout a session. This puts something now a direction for our ears as we’re having a conversation with somebody, we’re thinking hope, hope, how can I comment hope on here?

What can I hear or listen for and then say, ah, this is a hopeful moment, or this is a hopeful concept. And we try to posit that hope in there as much as possible. Wonderfully the gospel is the gospel of hope. And so we carry that with us and certainly the gospel has its place here. As we think about hope. Brother Arlan, anything to mention on this slide?

The one thing I wanna emphasize that you have brought out, but when we think and work with mentors, one of the first feedback we get is people become hesitant because they feel like they have to have all the answers to a situation that arises. And I know personally myself, when I sit down across a table from someone, I can have that fear, that what if I get stumped or what if I don’t know what to say?

Or what if I can’t really have anything to offer and what I appreciate about what you shared is we can alleviate that fear. Our opportunity is to be there, to be available, to share hope and we will talk more about this, but to some extent, just point to the right resources when necessary, and those are roles that we can play.

It doesn’t do well if we have a fixit mentality. We have to fight against that a little bit. We have to live in that world of ambiguity, where sometimes things aren’t fixed in a short time. But it’s a very healthy mentality when we can get there and it’s a very freeing mentality as you said, Matt, that we realize we don’t have to fix everything, we just have to be available and care. And thanks for that, Arlan, and that is so true. And that is, that’s the wonderful hope. I think even of this teaching that hopefully, you brothers and sisters can carry forward to those who serve in your churches that some of these are basically the initial mindset.

Notice that all of these things in the initial mindset do not require any sort of further education in counseling at all. Let’s move on now to the skills. Okay. So now I have my initial mindset. I know what I should be thinking. Now we’re going to move on to some of to dos or what does that look like?

So, the first one to talk about here is simply the structure of a first session. Okay. So, sometimes you’re like, okay, well I’ve made the appointment, we’re sitting down for coffee or I’m meeting them before church or whatever that looks like. Now what? What does this session look like? Now, there are eight things listed here.

The numbers could be juggled up in different orders. There’s nothing sacred about the order. And there are certainly things that could be left out, but this gives us a little bit of a list of things. So the first one says, discuss preliminaries. Now, what that means is especially as you initiate a co a relationship, a mentor relationship.

Is it kind of important that you lay down a few ground rules. So we understand one another. Are we meeting, is the expectation that we meet every other week or once a month or every week by text or by phone call or in location or by email? Some of those preliminaries are nicely set out in front. Another example of a preliminary that’s nice, it’s helpful, is a time limit. So, for example, if you say our meetings are going to be one hour in length, then when you are bringing it to a close at 55 minutes, that makes sense to them. They understand that oh, we’re coming up to our 45 minutes, we’re going to bring this to a close and it gives you some freedom to do that instead of trying to cut off something that’s moving on and on an hour or two hours.

And you’re trying to bring this to a close. So, some of those are just preliminaries. Next is a counselee shares their story. Now, remember they’ve, they’re talking to you and now you want to hear what the issue is. So, this is probably the largest and maybe the most daunting part of that session, hearing that story.

Now, remember we talked about, you don’t know, we don’t know what the story is, and so we want to hear it from them. Now, there are some things that help some questioning, drawing out their story, for example, and there is a learning to do this. Okay. We get better at this as time goes on, but here’s a phrase, can you share with me why you desire mentoring?

Can you share with me what’s going on? What, you know, and you open that up for that person to share using open ended questions. So they would be questions such as, tell me more about that. Or you might say tell me why that is or why did you feel this way? And it leaves them with answering in sentences, answering in paragraphs rather than one-word answers. And it helps draw that story out. So questioning is one skillset for drawing out the story. I’m going to go now to listening is a huge part of the story too. And then brother Arlan, you can jump in after I’m done with these two. Making eye contact, for example and affirming facial cues are just huge things in allowing a person to tell their story. They want to know that you’re with them. Remember, we don’t know what the story is. So, we’re making eye contact with them. We’re affirming with facial cues summarizing what you are hearing. So, sometimes to pause and to stop and say, now let me understand you, right.

You said this. Yes. And you feel this way about that? Yes. Simply it’s good for yourself so that you are hearing them and it’s good for them to know they are being heard. So, summarizing what you’re hearing is helpful. Listening for possible goals that a counselee might have is very, very helpful.

And now it gives you a lens to think about this conversation. You might think, okay, what are some things that we could work on? So maybe you might be, as you listen to their story, you might hear them say something about trust. And so, you might think, oh, I wonder if this is a goal to build trust or faith.

Maybe they need, maybe they would have a goal to grow in faith or might be Bible reading or something. So, it’s a lens as I’m listening to their story, what goals do they have for themselves in terms of what would be helpful? What is the good end that they want? Listen for emotion. I sense some fear.

What are you afraid of? You might ask. I’m listening for. Oh, I see that they’re discouraged. And so we listen for that or they’re anxious. And so there’s another lens to be listening for what emotions are being evoked in their story. And then we listen for a person’s interpretations and implications of circumstances.

So it might be that the young person talks about an encounter with their father, for example. Listen to how they interpret that encounter and what they think is the result of that encounter. You know, did they assume that dad does not affirm them that dad does not value them. That would be an implication that they took from that encounter with their father. Try to be able to listen for, oh, this is how they interpreted that encounter with their dad.

And this is what they think is the reason for it and the result of it. Because often speaking into those interpretations and implications is one area that we can speak into as mentors and as counselors. Brother, Arlan, questioning, listening, all of this, having to do with a counselee sharing their story, what would you have to say?

I think the only thing I would add is there is this art to this. And as you said, I think Matt, it is a skill that some of us are born with, and it comes naturally. And some of us have to work with it and get a little bit better with it over time. So don’t be discouraged if that’s more your nature, that’s something you have to work at.

And be encouraged if it becomes naturally, but, there’s this art where you seek to understand where the other person’s coming from and you do almost an investigation where you go broad and you start to narrow down and say, oh, that, that trips something in my mind, maybe I need to follow up with that or that trips something over here and I need to be thinking about that. But while you’re doing that, don’t go too heavy, too fast. I mean, if the individual goes there, follow the trail that they’re going. But we also don’t want to scare someone away by trying to get it all figured out at once. I think it’s been said that sometimes the goal of the first session is just to have a second session.

And I think that fits here where we’re going to listen. We’re going to question, we’re going to seek to understand, but mostly we’re going to build that rapport and that trust bank so that we can get together again and dig deeper. That’s great, Arlan. And so he really commented on these first two bullet points as being maybe the most important making eye contact, summarizing what you’re hearing so they know that you are being heard again. That would be most important. Some of this as we grow. Now over here. So, we’re looking at the first structure, so they share their story. Something that’s helpful is finding out past counseling experiences, who else is speaking into this person’s life?

Okay. Maybe they have a very involved grandfather or maybe they are meeting with their minister or elder. And then you could follow that up. Is it okay if we talk or would that be appropriate? Sometimes sharing that and having a larger group of helpers is helpful. Maybe they’re not comfortable with that.

But if you find out that they’re counseling with their friends, you know, that gives you a little bit of perspective of what is feeding into this person. And, what other voices are speaking into their life, identifying the person’s goals. That’s very similar to what we talked about here.

Listen for possible goals but allow them to collaborate with you. What would your goals be? We might want some behavior to change. Okay. And so that’s a very broad goal, right? It might be, I don’t want to be addicted to such and such, but really there’s probably a great deal of many other goals that precede that one, such as getting into the Word or having an active prayer life or getting involved in and having companionship with believers.

So think about goals in a broad perspective and allow that person to collaborate. Where are we going to start with the second session when we come back and we talk again, where do we want to start? What do we want to, where do we want to go from here and allow that person to have some buy-in to the mentoring relationship. Always offer encouragement whenever you can.

That speaks again to this hope concept. Hope, always commenting on hope whenever you see it, certainly being open and allowing for questions, closing in prayer, all of those, and this gives you a little bit of a sense of, this might be a way to have a first session structure. For example, having a spirit of empathy, putting yourself in their shoes is really what we want to do.

And having that spirit of empathy, they will catch that spirit of empathy. And that will go a long way now in actually answering the most important answer. So that’s now this final one, the most important answer is simply for them to be heard, for them to connect with us and for relationship. And I want you to catch also the optimism of this most important answer.

We did not say the most important answer is to solve their besetting sin. We didn’t say to solve their addiction or solve this the most important that’s all. That’s all later, the most important first answer is for them to be heard, relationship, and connect, because then we’ve increased the probability of a second session.

And that’s exactly what brother Arlan mentioned is sometimes when we first begin these relationships, the number one goal is to put us in a position to have a second session. And that then lets me free of having to answer all the questions in the first session, having all the answers in the first session, stopping the mentee, whenever they say something that’s not true in the first session, realizing that no, we’re going to have another session where we can handle and unpack some of these situations. Brother Arlan, what would you say here before we move on?

I have nothing to add for this. I think you covered it really well, Matt. Okay. Then, we’ve got one more slide and then we will turn mics off and take questions or comments. And the last one is simply to motivate that relationships work. God is a God of relationships. He invites us into his relationship with he has with himself as a Trinity.

The gospel is much about relationships with Jesus and then he asks the church to be relationships. He calls us a body. And so relationships are defined. Relationships are defined by some responsibilities. The counselee has some responsibilities in terms of commitment, being proactive, consistent, being vulnerable or real.

That’s what we would look for in a counselee. But as a helper, we have some responsibilities, some confidentiality, expecting growth, looking for progression, offering that hope. Those are some of the responsibilities that we have. And really this relationship that you are engaging in, or the folks in church are engaging in is really takes it’s a spectrum from companionship, which is a friendship, to accountability where we’re now really specific about an issue in a person’s life to mentoring, where you’re really walking with a person through life. And so you can see here that the intentionality increases as we go from companionship, mentorship, Brother Arlan, you’ve given this a great deal of thought.

What would you add to that? I think I just want to encourage the church and to encourage yourselves and the roles that you have within the church to always be seeking and thinking, how can we be more purposeful and intentional in our relationships and how can we encourage others to do so?

It really that’s the power of the Body of Christ. We are called to relationship. And we are called to go beyond the surface into some of these deeper levels, and by nature it doesn’t happen. It takes kind of an intentional type of effort. So, I encourage you to encourage others in that regard, but also let’s not overcomplicate it in the sense that often this happens just by example. And, by sitting down at the lunch table, you know, we have a wonderful setup in church with noon lunch, sitting down at the noon lunch table with someone and just listening and questioning and being able to, as the Spirit leads, start those conversations with someone and see where God takes that. That is accountability.

And that goes beyond the companionship to those deeper levels. And I really believe that’s where the power of the body of Christ comes out. Thanks, Arlan. Okay, so we’re going to go on to now questions and comments. So, at this point, I’m going to turn off your mics here. I might go back to this image here, where we can see some of the things and a little bit of housekeeping items.

First of all, feel free to whatever questions you might have, if you want to. Feel free to have those. We will also be sending out because we are interested in some feedback. We’ll probably be sending out a Constant Contact, which is going to have a bit of an evaluation or a way for you to provide feedback upon this experience. Arlan and I certainly want to learn from it. We want to improve this teaching venue. And so, we would look forward to your comments there. If you don’t offer them now, but so you could look forward to that as well. If you do, speak up, if you would, again, mention your name and we can have a conversation as much as you want, I think everybody’s live now, go ahead.

Good stuff. This is very, been very informative and very interesting. And I think it’s some good stuff. So, do you see that it, is it something that you can pass on? Oh, I think so. I think very much so, in fact, you know, in sales, it’s a lot of that same stuff, you know, it is kind of interesting how it ties down a car salesman and you know, that’s what you’re doing with people in a sales situation is building their trust and asking questions and listening.

There are a lot of similarities. Sure. A lot of differences too, but a lot of similarities. So we will be, Arlan and I will be sending out this PowerPoint along with a very helpful article that some of the content in this presentation came from by Lauren Whitman. And we will be sending both of those out in our mentorship email coming out Wednesday.

So you’ll have those in your hands. Matt, I would just like to ask, so let’s talk a little bit about the spirit of empathy versus sympathy. How do you keep from going kind of into that sympathy versus the empathy? Was that James? Yeah, sorry. That’s James. It was no problem. I’m just looking at mine.

Well, the difference between sympathy and empathy by definition I guess, would be sympathy says, I can imagine that’s difficult, or I would have to imagine that that’s difficult. Empathy says I understand that that’s difficult. So, empathy, I would say requires a little bit of vulnerability on your own part.

Not that you share whatever your trial is, but you identify your trials with their trials rather than being very third person saying, I cannot relate, but I imagine that’s difficult. That would be sympathy, which is wonderful as well. Does that make sense? And Matt, I think the other thing that I would offer too, to that question, which is a great question, is sometimes we can, you know, Scripture calls us to speak to truth and love.

And I think of the empathy being a little bit more on the love side, where we can enter into their world, we can appreciate where they’re coming from. We can, you know, feel their pain, so to speak. That’s a little bit more of that truth piece and the love piece can be the sympathy piece where we feel alongside them.

But if you get those out of balance, you can start to just say, well, you know, that’s really hard. I can’t expect you to do any better and I guess we’re just going to settle for 80% here and move on and commiserate, you know, almost together. And so, I encourage that, you know, grounded in the standards of the Word prayerfully discerning how to speak the truth in love and empathize. Yes, love the person, but also keep that truth piece there where we keep calling them to a higher standard. One of the points in the accountability is that you expect progress. You almost demand progress that we aren’t going to stay at 50% forever. We’re going to slowly, by God’s grace over time and with encouragement, keep moving up that ladder.

And I think that’s a key concept at this point too.

Question brothers. This is Todd, in leading at Bluffton North, you know, we’ve gotten to that point where we’ve putting people together and I guess we’re trying to figure out a little bit, what is our role once that happens? I mean, we really have had great feedback from people, but at times I feel like maybe we’re supposed to be doing more.

We connect them. They go, we don’t want to be under their feet, but I don’t want to feel like I’ve just like we’ve pushed people out and they’re kind of on their own too. I mean, like. I don’t know if there’s a right way to manage this without, you know, we send out the emails that you send us.

We’ve had maybe one meeting after we had done this for maybe nine months just to get some feedback from them. But there’s times I feel like, you know, maybe we should be doing more. I don’t know. I’m just, we’re just maybe looking for your advice or your thought. I appreciate that, Todd, and really if anybody else wants to weigh in on any of these questions, feel free to do so. We see this team of people here as being in the trenches, so to speak, and might be able to speak to your question, Todd. Some low hanging fruit, Todd, that I would say is keeping the issue elevated in the minds of people.

It’s very easy to come out as we did. The Bluffton North Church had a weekend. We had the training and there’s a bit of hype in that time. And then like everything become busy. Things seem to fall off and just the elevation of the topic loses a bit of its inertia.

And I think one of, one kind of low hanging fruit type of thing is just to simply encourage your people, the brothers and sisters in that effort, helping them. And I would think about this in two different buckets, Todd, there is an equipment bucket where we equip people to do things.

And then there is a motivational bucket where we encourage them and we help them want to, if that makes sense. And kind of keeping both of those buckets full is a little bit maybe, what we would look for. And certainly, that’s what Brother Arlan and I are trying to do, even with a meeting like this is trying to keep both of these buckets vested.

If that makes sense. I think the other thing, Todd, is we talk about kind of, dripping out the message as much as possible. And that speaks the thing to that motivation bucket that Matt was talking about there. But if there’s a way to continually get the message of mentoring dripped out, that’s part of the point of the emails.

If the pulpit can somehow announce it every so often, or just kind of remind that this is going on. I think that’s a healthy thing. And even it could be appropriate. I know there’s one church that they have purposed that every year. So, they’re going to get the mentors back together.

And maybe it’s every six months. I don’t know, that might seem like too much of an undertaking, but at least sometime maybe you have another session where you share ideas, you share thoughts together, experiences of how things went and almost kind of have a self-perpetuating learning experience together as a group.

I think those I’ve heard good feedback from those churches that have done such things. And I appreciate you guys sending those emails out cause that’s the education part for us. I feel like the motivation at times is easy enough. We had a neat one yesterday. We had our business meeting and our Elder Brother Steve Ringer shared, encourage the church in the mentoring program.

And we did get an email today from a lady probably in her eighties, offering to be a mentor, which was really kind of encouraging because we haven’t had a lot of older people. It’s been more, it seems like younger people. So, it was neat to see that. Powerful and that’s great, Todd. So, I think keeping that door open where people, come into this work is very important.

I mean, six months, you’ve got more people in church that are maybe available for it. And so, we have an initial door opening and then, sometimes, we forget to include others. And so that would be part of, I think your job, which sounds like you’re doing quite well. And that is keeping that door open and getting new mentors in.

And then at that point in time, there would need to be some equipping. And that’s what we’re hoping this teaching can help you with. This would be something that you can pass on to that sister and help her, or any anybody else that’s wanting to join. Any other questions out there? Matt and Arlan, can you hear me now?

This is Brad. We can, yes. Okay, good. I found the right button. So, I think this is great information for the mentors. One of the things that, and we don’t really have a very good, or we don’t have anything formal set up yet. I think we’re trying to move in that direction, but sometimes, in my counseling with people, I will think, you know, I think this person could really benefit from a mentor type relationship with someone.

But it seems like, and it’s related to this vulnerability that you talked about they’re really intimidated by that for some reason. And, you know, it’s maybe they’re concerned about the confidentiality aspects or whatever. Do you have also some information that could be helpful for those people to help them get more comfortable with the idea of being mentored? Brother Brad, I think that’s an excellent request. I’m writing it down because the resource, per se, isn’t immediately coming to me, but, Brother Arlan, what are you thinking? I think that’s a key piece. I think part of it is in, the word mentoring can be a scary word.

At least we’ve gotten that feedback in multiple different places. Sometimes, the word of just encouragement or kind of being an encourager, having someone walk alongside as an encourager can help alleviate some of that fear. I think, help, I mean, sometimes the terminology makes a little bit of a difference.

Yeah. But for the most part, it’s a culture that you’re seeking within the church where it’s expected, and a culture takes a long time to develop. And it develops as they, as positive examples perpetuate themselves over time. Which is easy to say and hard to do. But Matt and I will put our brains together a little bit more and that could be a great topic for a future email because it’s come up before and that’s a great question.

One thing I might offer, Brother Brad, is maybe backing off the expectation. You can, the person is timid about being vulnerable. Well, maybe this person needs a companion, maybe a person to come alongside them who really doesn’t know the situation. And that’s very healthy. Okay.

So for example, I had a counselor here who asked me to walk alongside a client of his who didn’t know the situation who didn’t know and who could just read the Bible with him without having all of these weights and bags because I didn’t know what the marriage situation was.

And that might be a non-intimidating relationship where you’re saying no. If would you be willing to be put together with a person where they, we, you know, you might, I’m not sure if that makes sense or not, but you almost separate those things. And in time, maybe those things will work itself out and she would become, or he would become more vulnerable when it’s ready. Okay. Yeah. Those are helpful thoughts I think, brothers and yeah, I would look forward to some additional help with that as well. We see that it’s seven minutes till nine o’clock and there’s certainly no reason to go a complete hour, but we want this time to be as useful, maximal use for you folks.

So feel free. If you, any questions or comments? Maybe just one more question here. Yeah. In terms of this webinar and how it can, will be accessed in the future. Will you just provide a link of some sort to that? How do you see that? That’s an excellent question, Brad, and since this is the trial run here, I’m not going to make any promises, but I did hit record and I’m going to be interested to see what happens after we log off. And I know that there are going to be some file formats that are going to need to be adjusted so that it could be played. But the pie in the sky hope is that we would have a video of some sort that could be housed on our website and retrieved by whomever you want.

Okay. That’s fair enough. I accept that. Matt, this is James, I just want to. This is very clear. It comes through very good. I’m using my iPad, but actually the sound and everything it worked really well. So, I don’t know how it’s worked for others, but for me here, it actually came in really clear.

And everything was, you know, it wasn’t like the slides were really delayed. It was all, so it worked out really well. So just some feedback from here. Thanks. Thanks for that feedback. Thank you. Well, if there are no more questions, then there’s, we would, well, let’s close in a prayer, I’ll have that prayer and then we can log off. Heavenly father we’re thankful for this opportunity through the technology, which Thou has allowed and are now using for thy glory, Father. And we thank Thee that this teaching can be brought forth. We’re thankful for the willing hearts and hands in the congregation. Step up into the lives of people and make relationships and make disciples of Christ.

And we pray that Thou would bless this effort in all of its many forms and all of its many locations. And we pray that Thou would be glorified now, tonight. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thank you each one. Brother Arlan, anything in closing? No greatly appreciate you taking time on your evening and joining us and thanks for what you do each day to encourage and serve others.

May God bless you. Have a good night, everybody.