Podcasts about honored

NEWS: REDInc president honored at 7th Philippine Faces of Success | August 24, 2026Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net Follow us: Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital Check out our Podcasts: Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer Stitcher: https://tmt.ph/stitcherTune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein#TheManilaTimes#KeepUpWithTheTimes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why do religious groups care about abortion and prayer vigils in Mississippi honored Nolan Wells on his19th birthday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham reportedly exchanged messages with someone impersonating White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles before becoming suspicious of the communications. Prosecutors rested their case in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial as the defense began presenting testimony about her mental state before she killed her three children. The Supreme Court declined for a second time to hear President Trump's appeal of the $5 million E. Jean Carroll verdict, ending his effort to overturn that judgment. 16-year-old lifeguard Ryder Williams was honored at the White House alongside 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai, whom he rescued from dangerous surf in California.   Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold    ARMRA: go to https://tryarmra.com/MEGYNto get 30% off your first subscription order Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My friend Jerry Chong (active LDS, Temple worker, many leadership callings, lives in Calgary Canada, convert, powerful advocate for LGBTQ inclusion) joins us to share his story (was on Episode 41, 8 years ago): Advocacy work with Stake and Ward Leaders across the world (Canada, USA, UK, Brazil, etc) How to approach stake presidents and ward leaders to engage them in LGBTQ Inclusion and Sensitivity training for leaders and members . The email communications and patience that is required for these meetings to come together . What he teaches at these meetings Being a temple worker and explaining his singleness to fellow workers and temple presidencies Creating boundaries with homophobic church members Personal sacrifice and loneliness of being celibate—with no hope of companionship if he wants to remain a member is good standing Series of essays he's written. E-mail Jerry if you want a copy (see show notes) Being an ally for transgender/non-binary Latter-day Saints . Arranging video conversations to learn about their lived experiences and the impact of church policies Hopes to start dating men. Going slow. Would like to be married and share the last chapters of his life with someone Thank you, Jerry, for being on the podcast. You are one of my heroes—sacrificing so much to be in a position where you can help advocate for better LGBTQ understanding and inclusion. You have blessed so many through your ministry. You are a true disciple of Christ. Honored to have you on the podcast. Please listen and share Jerry's episode. It will help you be a better ally and will help you if for you are queer Latter-day Saint. Links: Jerry's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jerry.chong.52 Jerry's IG: @mrjerrychong Jerry's e-mail: jfchong@telus.net Episode 41: https://soundcloud.com/user-818501778/episode-41-jerry-chong-gay-mormon-convert-calgary-temple-worker Ministering Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1433556613672143 Richard Ostler Substack on The Family Proclamation: https://substack.com/home/post/p-209436738

Did you know that there is an Aya in the Quran honoring a Jewish Rabbi? It's an incredible story of respect and recognition that's often overlooked. Stay tuned till the end of today's Tafsir, and we will tell you all about it. Let's begin.

A stretch of Ohio 13 near Mansfield will soon carry the name of a Madison High School graduate who left home for Vietnam and never returned.Support the show: https://richlandsource.com/membersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Honored to be invited by the Tribeca Festival @tribeca to cover the red carpet premiere of Born Melo.@carmeloanthony and I spoke about his career and what legacy really mean throughout this phenomenal documentary “Born Melo”.What makes this documentary so powerful is that it goes far beyond basketball. It's a story about legacy, fatherhood, purpose, and the moments that define us long after the final buzzer. Watching Carmelo Anthony reflect on his journey while witnessing his son Kiyan Anthony begin his own chapter creates a moving portrait of what it truly means to leave a legacy....@iheartradio @iheartpodcast @power97.5laradio ...#bornmelo #carmeloanthony #tribecafilmfestival2026 #fyp #explorepageThis new, official documentary takes an intimate look into the life and legacy of Carmelo Anthony as he is inducted into the Hall of Fame and sees his son, Kiyan, launch his collegiate basketball career.There's more to life than just basketball in Born Melo, the official documentary following former New York Knicks player and power forward Carmelo Anthony. In his own words, Anthony reflects on his upbringing in Baltimore, his meteoric rise to NBA superstardom and his legacy as a Hall of Famer. Featuring exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage, this film replays all the major highlights from his electrifying high school debut to leading Syracuse into championship glory.

The Tulare County Sheriff's Office held a ceremony honoring the bravery of personnel involved in the April 9, 2026 Porterville shooting, which resulted in the death of Detective Randy Hoppert. The department awarded its highest honor, the Medal of Valor, to Hoppert posthumously and to Deputy Hector Negrete for his actions during the incident. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Philip Teresi on KMJ' on all platforms: --- Philip Teresi on KMJ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- Philip Teresi on KMJ Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tulare County Sheriff's Office held a ceremony honoring the bravery of personnel involved in the April 9, 2026 Porterville shooting, which resulted in the death of Detective Randy Hoppert. The department awarded its highest honor, the Medal of Valor, to Hoppert posthumously and to Deputy Hector Negrete for his actions during the incident. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Philip Teresi on KMJ' on all platforms: --- Philip Teresi on KMJ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- Philip Teresi on KMJ Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stay up to date by joining the LCMS Current! (LCMS Current Events Newsletter) What happens when millions of dollars are given to a Lutheran university for Gospel-centered ministry—and the campus those gifts were intended to support is later sold?Casey Salminen, president of the Oscar & Keturah Haab Foundation, joins Tim Ahlman to tell the remarkable story of Oscar and Kay Haab, their generosity toward Concordia University Ann Arbor, and the responsibility Casey says Kay entrusted to her before her death. Casey explains why the foundation continues to seek answers regarding donor intent, restricted gifts, the proposed fitness center, CUAA's endowment, and the decisions that preceded the sale of the main campus.Casey also shares her perspective on the alternative plans supporters believe could have preserved ministry on the property, the human toll experienced by students, employees, alumni, and donors, and why “I don't know” cannot be the final answer when institutions and ministries are at stake.This conversation ultimately reaches beyond one university. Tim and Casey discuss transparency, institutional trust, the closing of Lutheran churches and schools, spiritual warfare, the contribution of women in the church, and the hope that God can still bring new ministry from the ashes.This episode presents Casey Salminen's account and perspective on events, including matters that remain disputed or unresolved. Lead Time welcomes thoughtful, charitable responses from those with additional perspectives.Support the show⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️Care about the future of the LCMS?Join the LCMS Current! (LCMS Current Events Newsletter)⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️To learn more, visit uniteleadership.org

Today we feature "Diagnoses" by Laurier Tiernan. Please send your submissions to be featured on the podcast to poetryinmedicine@gmail.com. "In whatever you do, read a poem." Honored to have been named one of the top 10 medical podcasts in the state of Georgia by Feedspot: podcasts.feedspot.com/georgia_medical_podcasts/ This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only and doesn't provide any medical advice.

WBZ NewsRadio's Kyle Bray reports.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My friend Carlos Toledo (age 28, communications strategist, accomplished businessman, community advocate, son of prominent Brazilian church leaders) joins us to share his remarkable story: Navigating being attracted to men—outed at age 14/15—unique story How therapy (not conversation therapy) helped him Decision to serve a mission—totally out to priesthood leaders Importance of being impowered—step into it—owning your story Moving to Utah and being a LGBTQ community leader Burnout a few years ago—needing to rebuild—super powerful Difference between being queer in Brazil and USA Getting through anger You are a good man, Carlos. Honored to have you on the podcast. You have a great life ahead of you! Links: Carlos on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carlos.toledo.19.98 Carlos on Instagram: @thecarlostoledo

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Spence Shelton, Lead Pastor of Mercy Church, a rapidly growing multisite church in Charlotte, North Carolina. Since launching in 2015, Mercy has expanded to multiple campuses while maintaining a relentless focus on reaching people, developing leaders, and sending them into ministry. In this conversation, Spence shares how churches can intentionally build a culture of multiplication by developing leaders from within, creating healthy sending pathways, and stewarding opportunities for church revitalization. Stop “plucking” leaders. Start growing them. // One of Spence’s biggest challenges to church leaders is resisting the temptation to solve leadership shortages by hiring talent from elsewhere. Just as churches prioritize reaching lost people rather than simply attracting Christians from other churches, they should approach leadership development the same way. Instead of constantly recruiting experienced leaders, churches should intentionally identify, disciple, and develop people already sitting in their congregations. This approach takes longer, but it creates leaders deeply shaped by the church’s culture and mission. The power of the shoulder tap. // Many future ministry leaders never consider vocational ministry simply because no one asks them. Spence encourages pastors to intentionally “tap people on the shoulder” when they observe leadership potential. Some of Mercy’s key leaders—including executive pastors and campus pastors—came directly from marketplace careers like banking, manufacturing, and physical therapy. Rather than waiting for seminary graduates to apply, Mercy helps people connect their existing gifts and experiences to ministry opportunities. Create a clear leadership profile. // To make leadership development intentional, Mercy created a “Lead Pastor Profile” built around three categories: character, competency, and calling. While designed for future church planters, the framework serves as a roadmap for developing leaders throughout the church. By clearly defining what healthy leadership looks like, staff members know exactly what qualities to identify, cultivate, and reproduce in others. Character matters before charisma. // Within the character category, Spence believes self-awareness is one of the most overlooked leadership traits. Effective leaders understand both their strengths and limitations and are secure enough in their identity in Christ to build teams around areas where they are weaker. Without self-awareness, talented leaders can make excellent first impressions while creating long-term organizational damage. Character requires observation over time and not just impressive interviews. Multipliers build movements. // When evaluating leadership competency, the ability to multiply is critical. Can this person develop other leaders? Have they demonstrated the ability to move beyond accomplishing ministry personally and instead equip others to lead? Churches often unintentionally hire capable “doers” rather than leader-builders, limiting long-term growth. Multipliers create healthy ministries because they reproduce leadership instead of accumulating responsibility. Alignment creates unity. // Calling isn’t simply about theological agreement, but also includes ministry philosophy. Spence stresses the importance of ensuring leaders share the church’s convictions about how ministry is carried out. When someone consistently wants to reshape the church into something fundamentally different, the healthiest response may be helping them pursue the ministry God is calling them toward elsewhere. Clear alignment creates healthier teams and stronger long-term partnerships. Let people discover their gifts by leading. // Churches shouldn’t expect to know someone’s leadership potential before giving them opportunities to serve. Mercy intentionally creates pathways where people can lead community groups, coach leaders, and gradually assume greater responsibility. Some will flourish as long-term small group leaders. Others will demonstrate broader leadership gifting and eventually plant churches. The key is creating a culture where trying, learning, and growing are celebrated rather than feared. Revitalization begins with humility. // Spence also shares lessons from Mercy’s experience helping revitalize struggling churches. Successful partnerships require patient relationships, deep humility, and genuine respect for the legacy of existing congregations. Rather than viewing church buildings as opportunities to expand Mercy’s influence, the team approaches every conversation as the stewardship of Kingdom resources. By honoring the faithfulness of previous generations, Mercy has seen older congregations joyfully become part of new seasons of ministry fruitfulness. Faithfulness compounds over time. // Spence closes with an encouragement for church leaders: don’t underestimate what God can do through long-term faithfulness. Leaders often overestimate what can happen in five years while dramatically underestimating what God can accomplish over twenty. Healthy multiplication isn’t built through shortcuts. It grows steadily through consistent obedience, patient leadership development, and a commitment to stay the course. To learn more about Mercy Church, visit mercycharlotte.com or follow Spence Shelton or the church on social media for additional leadership resources and updates. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school's facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at risepointe.com and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they're here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, this week is a great conversation and was recommended by one of my favorite church leaders in the country. And so you’re going to love this conversation. It’s going to be super helpful. And I do think it’s going to challenge you and provide you some steps forward. Rich Birch — Excited to have Spence Shelton with us. He is from Mercy Church, a multi-site church with three locations, if I’m counting correctly, in Charlotte, plus Church Online. God is leading Mercy Church into a season of a bunch of expansion and investment in ministry facilities and outreach over a two-year discipleship initiative called All to Him. They have a goal to launch the Mercy Family of Churches in in late 2025, which I think is maybe launched, or we’ll see where that goes, and is aiming to form their own collective within the next five years. Super excited to have you on the show today, Spence.Spence Shelton — Man, such an honor to be with you, Rich. Man, this is, I’m a big, going to say it, I’m a big fan of yours, man… Rich Birch — That’s kind of you to say. Spence Shelton — …because you have produced so much helpful content for me as a leader to lean into and grow little by little. And I can only hope that I can contribute a little bit more to the great work you’ve been doing, man.Rich Birch — Come on, that’s amazing. Honored to have you with us and to learn from you today, Spence. And mutual friend in Andrew Hopper…Spence Shelton — That’s right.Rich Birch — …who I love, fantastic leader. And so shout out to Hopper. Thankful for what God’s doing in his church as well. So Mercy Church started in 2015. Give us a picture of kind of where things are at today. If we were to come to the church, what would we experience? Kind of talk us through the last season, kind of the last couple of years. What’s that look like?Spence Shelton — Yeah, man. So if you came to Mercy today, what you’d find is a church, you might be surprised to learn how big it actually is because the church is, you know, a couple thousand people, but it’s across seven services and three campuses. And there’s some of some of that’s intentional. Some of that is, hey, we’re just kind of following the Lord where he’s led in this. And we didn’t really plan for it, you know, so. Spence Shelton — Our average service size is not that big, but we’ve the Lord’s been really gracious. If you came what you’d find is especially at our broadcast campus you’d find an old church building that you’d be thinking: wait are all these people how are they you know filling in here, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — And you’d see cars parked uh all through a neighborhood and everything else and you’d see a retrofitted old church building, and that’s just the story of God’s grace on us – a building that was given to us and a church family that decided, hey we want to join you guys and they gave us their building. Really cool moment that like a legacy moment of faith in our church. And a couple other spots where we’re seeing similar sorts of things and it’s just it’s awesome, man. Spence Shelton — So we feel blessed. We feel like we are um doing what God has called us to do because we’re seeing that kind of momentum in the ministry that we’re doing. But none of our facilities are going to wow you, I promise. I actually love training church planters because, you know, so many times they come in and they’re like, Oh, ah we can do this. Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — I’m like, yeah, you can do it. You know? Rich Birch — That’s normal like us.Spence Shelton — So we are praying and asking the Lord for better wins. Yeah. But you can do it, man. If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere kind of thing. So Lord’s been really gracious to us. And it’s a, it’s been a real joy these past 10 years.Rich Birch — It’s so cool. It seems like you guys are in a bit of a pivotal season or an inflection point season where you’ve got a bunch of things on the horizon, launching Mercy Family of Churches… Spence Shelton — That’s right. Rich Birch — …the 50 Missionary Goal by 2030, a collective. Talk me through those. What is the future look like? What’s driving the urgency? Help us understand kind of what the future looks like.Spence Shelton — Yeah, man, I think this happens for any church, both leader and in just the life of a church. You come to those milestone moments. We hit it last year with 10 years, and it was not only a milestone in terms of age. There was some just real growth that had been happening to the church that was forcing some good conversations around long-term you know expansion so that we can continue to facilitate what we believe God, actually, I should say we could steward what God is doing in our church.Spence Shelton — And so we launched an initiative that we called All to Him. I was teaching through the book of Romans all year last year. And so it comes out of Romans 12:1 and 2, because Christ gave his all for us, we give our all to him. That is our living sacrifice that we do. Spence Shelton — And so we said, we got some goals as a church, man. We want to see our church, we got some reaching goals. We got some training up goals. We got some sending out goals. Because when I planted Mercy Church, one of the things that was on my heart: if we’re going to come to Charlotte, North Carolina, we were going to be a sending church. Which means we’re going to build a sending hub here where this thing’s going be like an aircraft carrier that just sends out missionaries all over the place into the battles that the Lord has for us across the world.Spence Shelton — That was just on my heart. Instead of going to, you know, a place that might be, might have a, I don’t know, like a north Pacific Northwest or Northeast, something like that. If we’re coming to the Southeast to the Bible Belt, we’re doing so intentionally. Very intentional.Spence Shelton — So that’s been on our heart um ever since day one and this All to Him initiative. You know, we were hoping that by 2030, we double the size of our church. That’s because Charlotte is growing by 150 people a day.Spence Shelton — So like, we’ve got to, you know, this isn’t like it’s just because it’s something we want to do. It’s a calling, a good stewardship of the moment that we’re in. And we want to we’re launching a seminary certificate program for our members of our church because we want to train them up. Right.Spence Shelton — And we got a goal to see 50 missionaries go on the mission field by 2030. We just planted a couple of weeks before the recording of this, we planted our next church here in Charlotte, and we’ve got plans for several more.Spence Shelton — We are a large family of churches about to become a collaborative. We’re, we’re ah you know, 2028, 2029, somewhere around there, we’ll officially form that collaborative if the Lord continues to do what he’s doing. All because, man, we are convinced that God has brought us here to reach people, train them up, send them out, which I hope does not sound novel to any church leader listening to this.Spence Shelton — I hope it just sounds like, yeah, man, that makes sense.Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — It’s like, well, then what’s the the magic or what’s the the secret sauce? It’s just putting your hand to the plow. And now here we are 10, 11 years in, and we’ve been steadily doing that same work. And I think the Lord is, um you know, our buddy Andrew would use the flywheel. That’s his favorite version of that illustration. But you keep putting your hand to the same thing and eventually the Lord starts to bear fruit. And that’s what we’re seeing now.Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. And yeah, you know that and you’re a kind leader, you know that for some leaders, the reason why we’re talking to you today is unfortunately, that is more novel than it should be. And so we want to dig into that a little bit.Spence Shelton — Sure..Rich Birch — Particularly, let’s maybe start with that middle section, this training goals, you’re working on trying to train people up. When you’re thinking about the kind of leadership vision you have as a church, you’re thinking about, hey, we’re going to raise up leaders both you know here to and then also sending.Rich Birch — I think we we can fall into this dichotomy around, okay, so do we find these leaders from other places and attract them to come here? Or, do we grow them up internally?Rich Birch — Do we find a way to develop them internally? So it’s this idea of plucking talent rather than developing it. Talk to me through why is training so hard in so many churches? Why do we struggle with that? And we seem to default towards, let’s just find somebody from over there and have them come and help us here.Spence Shelton — Yeah, man, I think that mentality starts all the way down to the idea of reaching people that don’t know Christ versus just sheep swapping from one church to the other church. Right.Spence Shelton — So you can grow your church by transfer growth. Um, which I actually am one who, Hey man, if somebody on the sideline in one church and then they plug into your church, I I’m all for it And if the same thing happens with Mercy, all for it. Spence Shelton — But our aim, what we all know as pastors and ministry leaders is our aim is man, let’s reach lost people and then disciple them. Right. Rich Birch — Yes.Spence Shelton — The same thing I think should be true with leadership development. For some reason, when it comes into developing leaders, we tend to go a different direction and think, well, let’s just go find where some leaders are and get them to to plug in.Spence Shelton — It’s like, we don’t do that even with discipleship. Why are we switching our mindset? And so I want to just kind of, I have to, I was convicted and wanted to call our church and I would call others to the same mindset that you have with discipleship. Let that carry over into your leadership and your leadership development as well.Spence Shelton — And I think that’s how we’re going to grow, just as how we’re going to grow the kingdom by reaching lost people, how we’re going to grow the leaders in the kingdom, the number of leaders we have, it’s going to be developing them in our church. And I just… I don’t know that we’re even thinking that way and asking the question, is the guy who’s a 27-year-old physical therapist in my church, has anybody ever bothered to tap him on the shoulder and ask, hey, man, could God be calling you into ministry?Rich Birch — That’s good.Spence Shelton — Because I watch you and no we’re not doing the shoulder tap, man. And so um right now, I just I love it. Just a little bit of the story of our church… Rich Birch — Yeah. Spence Shelton — …our executive both of our executive pastors and two of our three campus pastors were all in the marketplace. One of our executive pastors was in banking. Another was a plant manager. We have two campus pastors who were both, I use physical therapists because they’re both former physical therapists. And you know, we’re sitting there having these conversations.Spence Shelton — You know what makes a great pastor is someone who has sat with person after person told them, hey, you should do this to feel better. And then they come back to you later and say, hey, I don’t feel better. And you say, did you do the thing I told you to do? And they say, no. And you say, well, you should have done that.Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — And a patient, long suffering physical therapist turns out to be a great pastor, but somebody’s got to tap him on the shoulder and say, hey, man, I think God might be calling you into this. And so my my encouragement to anybody who’s a in ministry right now, kind of in that leadership development role, and you’re like, I don’t know, we’re gonna have to go outside to find some talent.Spence Shelton — I promise it’s going to take longer the way I’m talking about. But if you will seek the Lord, ask the Lord, and then start shoulder tapping and giving some opportunities for guys to lead, for men and women to lead there in your ministry and whatever the leadership roles might be, I think there might be more people in there than you realize. Because I believe that God provides for the church that he’s growing, that he’s called you to lead. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Spence Shelton — And so I think the same thing is true with leaders as well.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. I love that. And I you know I love the even the vision for, hey, maybe there are some people within your church. We see this statistically, like even if you’re thinking about campus pastors, 9 out of 10 campus pastors are coming from within, which means we’ve got which means we’ve got to get good at this. Spence Shelton — Yeah.Rich Birch — And yeah, if your church has any kind of unique slant on the world, you’ve got to find people who have come up through that culture to ah to ultimately push that culture forward.Spence Shelton — Yes.Rich Birch — I love this this marketplace to ministry transition. How do we help people do that? That’s a real key transition. I would imagine on your end, you’ve got to help connect the dots for somebody. I love that there, how you even with the physical therapist, we’re able to connect the dots between, hey, here’s what you’re doing. Let me talk to you about the kind of role that we’re thinking about. How do you make that transition? Have you developed anything to try to help make that, you know could you know, connect those dots for people as you’re having those conversations?Spence Shelton — Yeah, I would say we don’t I don’t have a conversational map that I’m doing.Rich Birch — Sure.Spence Shelton — I don’t have that yet, though I think that’s just like many things, trial and error, and I’m still in the still cooking to formulate that map.Spence Shelton — But what I do have that we’ve worked through with our staff is something we call, it’s interesting, we actually call it the lead pastor profile.Rich Birch — Okay.Spence Shelton — The reason we call the lead pastor profile is because everything we’re doing, we’re building towards, developing towards planting more churches. And you’ve got to have a lead pastor to go and plant those churches. Rich Birch — Yeah. Spence Shelton — Now, the thing is actually when you when you look at it, it’s actually just a ministry leader profile, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — Everything on there, but there may be a couple of things that are nuanced specifically to lead pastors, but it’s kind of like when you go into Timothy and you see what are the characteristics of an elder? Well, every single one of them is just a good Christian, except then you got this thing able to teach. You know what mean? Rich Birch — Right, right.Spence Shelton — So it’s a similar thing is like most of our profile, nine points on it and divided into three buckets, it’s mostly just what makes a good ministry leader. Well, then what I’m doing is what we are doing is we’re taking that and we’re training our whole staff through it and saying, Hey, here’s what we are looking for. Here’s what we’re trying to develop. And then here’s everything. So I do a training monthly with our staff on these points. Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — And then I do it and I say, yeah, I have to verbally say it, never underestimate or never overestimate, I guess just that it’s going to happen without you saying it, always say what you want them to do, you know, just good old preaching point there. But man, Hey, I want you guys to take what I’m teaching you and go teach your volunteers. Rich Birch — That’s good. Spence Shelton — And go teach those that. And I want you to teach your leaders. And then I want your leaders to be able to teach them. And if it doesn’t work, I want you to come back and tell me so that we can get better at making this a multiplying thing. Right. Spence Shelton — So we just got to have a lot of checks and balances along the way. So we’re hopefully training. And it took a while to pull this together in a way that it makes sense to all of us. And now that we’re kind of running it, we can see the value in it of, hey, this is what we’re looking for. And now you can go shoulder tap and say, I know what I’m looking…So the the kids director can go, I know what I’m looking for.Spence Shelton — Now I can go and start shoulder tapping because I know what, you know what i mean? Now that know what I’m looking for, it’s…Rich Birch — Totally.Spence Shelton — Those are probably the the beginnings of a conversational map to to walk somebody through, but at least you know what you’re looking for. You can start to have those conversations. And if you have the relational equity, those conversations can really go somewhere.Rich Birch — Love it. I’d love to double click on that. I love this lead pastor profile idea. I think working to get the clarity I think is in is a great, you know, a great task for all of us to wrestle through.Rich Birch — We think, well, we want to develop our leaders, but then we don’t have any definition of what do we mean by a leader, like at its more most basic level.Spence Shelton — Yes.Rich Birch — So we don’t need to get into all nine, but are there a couple of them that are either counterintuitive or maybe we miss, or you find yourself coming back to time and again, that are like real dividing points or like ones that kind of stick out to you in the in the framework?Spence Shelton — Yeah. All right. So obviously all nine matter to me or I wouldn’t have had them all. So I’ll do my best.Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.Spence Shelton — I’ll do my best.Spence Shelton — So we divide him into three buckets, character, competency, and calling. So each one of those has three points under it. And I’ll click on one of them, maybe in each, and you can tell me if you want to go further.Rich Birch — Sure. That’s great. Yeah.Spence Shelton — But in character, the one that I find to be the most overlooked is self-awareness.Rich Birch — So true.Spence Shelton — I find that to be the most overlooked characteristic of a good leader is one who is aware of their strengths and aware of their weaknesses and is settled in their identity in Christ so that their weaknesses don’t crush them.Rich Birch — That’s good.Spence Shelton — You know, they can instead build a team around them, you know. Because the classic thing with a lead pastor is to say, well, I’m good at vision and bad at details. It’s like, OK, man, maybe we need to do something a little more thoughtful than that, because that resonates with me for sure… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Spence Shelton — …that you ask the guys around me for sure. But what what? what about are you better at vision casting or vision creating? And what are the evidences of that in your ministry? You know, so for me, I’m better at vision casting than I am vision creating. That’s probably my my 9 to 10 is actually sharing it.Spence Shelton — But I got to have some help and and love having help in the other side of that. And so there are plenty of other things like that. But when we have someone who’s not aware of their strengths and weaknesses, usually that’s that’s like a stop point for us.Spence Shelton — And so if we’ve got someone we think, oh, man, they they come across because here’s the thing. Unless you have these points, somebody will can make a great first impression and a lot of long term damage in your ministry. Rich Birch — That’s good. Spence Shelton — Not because they have bad intent, but because they’re not aware of what they’re… And you give them a lot of responsibility and maybe they’re not actually, they don’t have the eyes of Jethro in Exodus 18 to know how to build out a ministry.Rich Birch — Right. Right. Spence Shelton — You just thought they did because they gave off a good first impression.Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — So that’s my biggest biggest one in that character, or not biggest one, but that’s a key one, I think, in the character is…Rich Birch — Right. A key one that sticks out.Spence Shelton — …man, are you self-aware? And so whatever we use, we love different, whether it’s the personality assessments, leadership assessments, but we also, and we just, we wanna develop from within because that gives us the ability to see.Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — We can see what their strengths and weaknesses are. Rich Birch — Yes. Spence Shelton — Because we’ve had people eyes on them for months and years and you can’t really trade that out.Rich Birch — Yeah, and character takes a long time of up-close observation to really get a sense of where where people are at.Spence Shelton — Yes.Rich Birch — Because, and you know we know this is, this is you know we don’t have to think long. There are lots of examples of leaders who—and all look great—but there’s like a 2% you know, problem in their character that ended up showing itself in the most kind of ugly of ways.Spence Shelton — That’s right.Rich Birch — So I know all nine are super important. I get that. appreciate that. But we can’t be here for three hours. So competency, what was what’s one in there that that that tends to say we’re just trying to whet people’s appetite to kind of help them think through it a little bit.Spence Shelton — Yeah, man. For competency, the one that I would, the the one that, yeah, that spend a lot of time on when it comes to competency, what I would say is the multiplier. Rich Birch — That’s good.Spence Shelton — I want someone who is a proven multiplier before I move them into an increased um level of leadership and responsibility. I want to see it, man. And if we, otherwise, again, what I’m trying to weed out is someone that talks a good game or someone that just has a, there may be someone I think a lot of leaders that might actually be really strong in the gift of hospitality have found themselves in the arena of administration simply because they are, like generous, kind, easy to talk to people. And they’re great. You want to be around them. They’re probably encouragers, that kind of thing. Spence Shelton — And it’s like, wait a minute, have they multiplied? Do they actually understand what it takes…Rich Birch — That’s good.Spence Shelton — …to take someone from leading self, to use the old Ramsharan leadership pipeline, from leading self to leading others, have they actually, do they understand what it takes? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Spence Shelton — And do they understand what it takes to go from leading others to leading leaders? And have they, let’s let’s just look behind them. If you wanna go the the Bible route, you just take 2 Timothy 2:2…are they able to train up faithful teachers who can then teach others also? That to me is, especially when we get into who’s going to go out and plant a church…Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — …and I’m not sending somebody out that’s not a builder. Another way to say multiplier would be builder, but I say multiplier because I’m specifically thinking around leadership and leading those who will lead others. Rich Birch — Yeah. Spence Shelton — If we want to build a movement of churches for the sake of the glory of God, and we want these churches to go and continue to build, there’s got to be multipliers leading this. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Spence Shelton — You know, gotta be. So when it comes to competency, that’s like a a deal breaker for me for who we’re going to send out the plant. And so I want to develop it starting in our student ministry, you know, and working our way through or starting in our college ministry, working our way through.Spence Shelton — I don’t want to wait until we just try to, otherwise we’ve got to go pluck out from the, you know, ether, somebody that we hope is a multiplier. And I don’t want to do that. I’d rather raise them up.Rich Birch — Well, and we see this temptation in churches when they get to, say, 1,000, and then they’re they’re growing you know they’re they’re eyeing 2,000 beyond. There’s a there’s a dangerous temptation that can come in, particularly for our staff teams. I know we’re talking broader than just staff teams, but particularly for our staff teams, we can ah we can forget the Ephesians 4 call to equip others to to ministry.Spence Shelton — That’s right.Rich Birch — And we just become doers. We hire doers rather than multipliers… Spence Shelton —Yes. Rich Birch — …because they get stuff done. And we’re like, oh man, they’re solving problems for us. But that is can then erode a church long-term very quickly. I’ve seen that so many times where they end up with, you know they slow down.Spence Shelton — That’s right.Rich Birch — They’re like, why are we slowing down? It’s well, because you’ve stopped multiplying. You’ve stopped doing what we’re called to do. I love that. Rich Birch — So then the third category calling anything in there that would, that steps that kind of is similar. Again, I know all nine are are really important, but, but any of those that that kind of jumped to the, to the front.Spence Shelton — Maybe I’ll give you one that has we’ve learned through some some painful trial and error, Rich Birch — Okay. Sure. Spence Shelton — And that is, we call it alignment. And what we mean by that is: as you develop a leader, when it comes to their long-term place in your church and leading maybe even beyond your, so in our case, beyond our church to going in and leading ah a church that’s going be a part of the family of our churches, it’s really important that not only are they theologically aligned, but they are philosophically aligned in terms of how we do church.Spence Shelton — So no shade on any other way of doing church. What I’m saying is so that we can continue to be united in one voice internally, so at Mercy Church with how we do discipleship, and then so that we can be united in how we can help and train one another as a family of churches, we got to be aligned not just around our theological convictions, but on our ministry convictions, how we do it.Spence Shelton — I would say to those of you out there who have a promising young leader, but it seems like they just don’t want to do, they want to change your church into their, a different kind of church.Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — The best thing you can do is set them free. Rich Birch — Yes. Spence Shelton — And I don’t mean like, that’s not like code for firing, by the way, that genuinely that genuinely is like, help them find a way, an off ramp to whatever it is they sense God calling them to. If they’re not, you know, they might be just, they need more season of development. That might be all it is. But when it comes to appointing people towards and, and, setting people into key leadership. So take an elder role at Mercy Church, community group coaching, shepherding, that kind of thing where you’re in now, you are shaping, not just participating. You’re really shaping the DNA of our church. Spence Shelton — We’ve got to be aligned with what we’re doing. It also makes for a much more enjoyable experience. I’m not saying we’re not thinking. We’re always thinking over here about how to do it better and trying to be faithful and everything else.Rich Birch — Yes.Spence Shelton — Of course. But I’m saying, man, you want to feel like you’re locked arm and arm going together. And when conviction comes that goes a separate way, it’s like best to separate. So we’ve we’ve learned that the kind of the hard way. I think a lot of lessons are hard.Rich Birch — Sure.Spence Shelton — And so I offer this as our missions pastor likes to say, we have paid some dumb tax. Rich Birch — True. Spence Shelton — And so wherever we can save another person from paying it, we’d love to do that for you.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. and And yeah, I think alignment’s a massive deal and and calling it out. And I would think being in a church that is um so focused on sending, you’re you’re hoping that that’s a big part of what’s kind of the outcome of the church. Spence Shelton — That’s right.Rich Birch — That, you know, having an an outlet for that sending in a way that makes the most sense. Hey, here’s a leader who seems to have the skills and, you know, and and and then you can celebrate, hey, they seem to have some unique ideas that they want to go and see happen somewhere else.Spence Shelton — Yes. Yes.Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. Rather than having to like fight that. I think that’s cool. That’s really good. Rich Birch — So, you know, help me ah pick this apart a little bit. So one of the interesting things I find in this whole kind of leadership pathway, leadership pipeline conversation is there are, so I think we all can be influential. I think in one way we are all called to be leaders, but not necessarily everyone that we’re discipling is necessarily going to be a lead pastor. They’re not all necessarily going to. Rich Birch — Now I understand we’re kind of discipling towards that, but help me understand what are you doing internally with folks that you’re like, I just, they’re just not going to make that jump eventually. How do you have that conversation? I know that’s a hard conversation. What does that look like?Spence Shelton — Right.Rich Birch — Or am I just looking at this wrong? Which could be the case too. Happy to be wrong. Help help me think through that.Spence Shelton — Well, we’ve got to have some freedom that comes from distinctive categories. This will help us a great deal. Helps me in pastoring a great deal. First, we got to have the category of spiritual gift. The Lord has given everyone a spiritual gift… Rich Birch — Yep. Spence Shelton — …and we got to celebrate that. Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — And we got to be careful not to turn the leadership pipeline into, or that concept of leader development, turn that into a a grading of gifts. Like you’ve got a, you know, you’re, you need to graduate from one gift. Maybe that’s a better way to say it. Graduate from one gift to the other, to the other. It’s like, no, no, no. Rich Birch — That’s good. Spence Shelton — What we’re not talking about is graduating out of your gift set. God has given you that. And the best thing for you and for his church is to get really good at how he’s given you or how he’s gifted you. Rich Birch — That’s good. Spence Shelton — And when we when we conflate those, when we only talk about just you know getting better, it’s like, man, we got to watch out. Instead, let’s say, how can we get better at the giftings God has given us so that we can steward it really well?Spence Shelton — And then we find ourselves able to say, and when it comes to leadership, and here we are as church leaders, we’re now inside of a category. We’re inside of a category of leadership. And how can we develop leaders who are gifted by God as leaders? Well, the good news is maybe take some pressure off everybody, you’re not really going to know if someone’s gifted in leadership until you let them try to lead. Rich Birch — True, yes. Spence Shelton — So you got to let them try to lead, man. And then as they lead and you give them a couple of swings, two, three, four, whatever, and you coach them along the way, hey, here’s what we’re looking for in a leader. Here’s how you can grow from leading self leading others. Take the pressure off. Spence Shelton — This might be how God has gifted you, we don’t know. But the best way to see, based on what we’ve seen so far, is to let you try. So here’s a community group, and here are the things you’re gonna need to be a good community group leader, and we’re gonna coach you and support you.Spence Shelton — Let’s go. And let’s see what the next six months brings, right? Rich Birch — Yep, that’s great.Spence Shelton — Hey, this went really well. We wanna take you out of this community group leader seat and put you in as a coach. Now there’s a different set of skills you’re gonna need to be a coach, but man, it seems like your people responded to your leadership. What do we think about you as a coach? Spence Shelton — Each set of the way, man, do I have the, the way I always say it to our staff—they’re sick of me saying this, so it’s great to talk to you because…Rich Birch — I’m not sick of it. Yeah.Spence Shelton — …[inaudible] fresh person to say this too—is that clarity in expectations creates confidence in execution. The clearer you are with what you are asking someone to do, the more confident they will be in doing it. Another way to say it.Rich Birch — That’s good.Spence Shelton — So that’s just my my big thing there on on this. Let’s get over now that we’re, and what we’re going to find is some people are going to lead a community group faithfully for 20, 30 years at our church. Rich Birch — Right, right.Spence Shelton — Praise the Lord. What we can’t see is that we can’t see that a failure. Rich Birch — No. Spence Shelton — Others are going to lead for six months to two years. And we’re going to man, this, this person’s a leader and, and we’re seeing it. They already, they’re planting. Spence Shelton — I had someone come up to me the other day at church and tell me, Hey man, I just wanted to tell you, we’re so excited. You challenged me about five years ago to lead a community group. And we just planted our fifth group. And I went, like I went, I was, my mind went so far. I didn’t even have time to be, to be celebrating. Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — Cause I was like, does anybody know that there’s a guy out here… Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Who’s just cranking out groups. Spence Shelton — …with the with an apostolic gift just planting groups every year what’s going so so. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Spence Shelton — I was like hey, but so that that was a a great moment the Lord gave me just of, hey this is this is going really well and there will be some that will lead a group and things won’t go well and they won’t go well and you’ll keep trying different efforts. So to my community group leader friends, hey once someone tries and tries and tries, would you maybe tap their shoulder and say hey can we try something else. You know. Rich Birch — Good. Spence Shelton — Like you are not a failure. We just got to find the gift that God has given you. Rich Birch — Right. Spence Shelton — And the more that’s in the conversation of your church, that’s in the atmosphere of your church—We’re just looking for the way God’s gifted you. And we’re going to try and make you the best you can be at how he’s gifted you.—The easier the conversation is going to be of, I don’t think it’s community group leadership. I don’t think it’s this. I don’t think it’s that. Because we have a culture of, Hey, trial and error, you know?Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. That’s so good. I love that. And I love this has been a great kind of look under the hood of this whole multiplication issue. I think a lot of church leaders out there have the desire. They have the like, oh, we, man, I would love to be a church that has that kind of vision. But then what are the mechanics underneath of that? How do we actually do that?Spence Shelton — Yeah. Yeah.Rich Birch — Super helpful. Pivoting in this totally, well, it’s a related but different direction. Your church has been involved in a number of revitalizations. You talked about on the you know top end, you had a you know facility given to you. And I this is like a super inappropriate, with just a few minutes left, curveball to throw in there. What’s your shorthand thing for us to learn about that? Rich Birch — You know that we’ve seen, particularly from a multisite point of view, this area has grown hugely in the last 10 years. It was 10 years ago, 5% of new campuses came about because multiple revitalization. The most recent study showed showed it was 40%. Spence Shelton — Wow.Rich Birch — I suspect Warren’s out talking right now. I suspect the number is even going to be higher. What are the few things that you’ve learned about, you know, those kinds of conversations and relationships that have allowed it to work for you? And it’s been helpful. It’s been a joy giving part of the story at Mercy. Talk us through that.Spence Shelton — I’m going to do so using another point in my lead pastor profile just to have some fun here.Rich Birch — Love it.Spence Shelton — So one of the things we look for in a leader is confident humility. Rich Birch — That’s good. Spence Shelton — Confident in terms of, man, they believe God has called them to something. You know there’s a there’s a settled confidence there. But the humility to be patient and wait on the Lord and see what he has and to consider others, Philippians, to consider others more important than yourself. Right? This matters a great deal when it comes to this area of revitalization.Spence Shelton — What a leader needs to know that there’s this temptation, and I had it, of why would you not give us your church building? Rich Birch — Right.Spence Shelton — Things are going well for us and struggling for you. Why would you not do that?Rich Birch — Yes.Spence Shelton — Well, it’s that there’s an unintentional, I’m call it a holy ambition that may be a little bit creating some blinders. Okay, let’s use the positive side of that. The the negative side would be there’s some arrogance there. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.Spence Shelton — But the positive would be holy ambition. But what you gotta know is, man, often these facilities that are housing these churches, the ones that are remaining, a lot of the times that there are people that have been there for decades and for a generation or two, and they put blood, sweat, tears and money into where they are. Spence Shelton — And we had to take the the approach of slow by my standards, still fast by theirs… Rich Birch — Yes. Spence Shelton — …slow by my standards. Conversation after conversation that began with , in both of these cases, began with the church that needed revitalizing coming to us. We didn’t go to them. Spence Shelton — They came to us and said, hey, we’re trying to figure out what’s next. We hear you might be able to help. How can you help?Spence Shelton — And we had to present them. We had to consider that a stewardship process. of a kingdom resource, not a how do we advance the name of Mercy Church.Spence Shelton — And so it’s happened two different ways for us right now. One is a campus of our church. You know, we it took months and months, but they wound up voting to hand us the keys, join our congregation, and we held their hand the whole way through. And it was a really beautiful thing. And it’s where our broadcast campus meets today. Spence Shelton — There’s another one that happened where we decided the best thing was for that to be a, because of the neighborhood it’s in in East Charlotte, to be a church planting incubator where we could plant a church every 18 months to two years. Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah.Spence Shelton — And so that’s what we’re doing right now. And there’s a church plant in there. And that was the best stewardship of that building. And after the conversation with their people, but we kind of, we basically put that with them and say, I had a lot of lunches and dinners that I just I’m going to tell you, if you want to get into this game and you want to do it in a way that’s going to honor the Lord, you got to be ready for the patient handholding that I would say is honoring a legacy of faith these folks are are taking.Spence Shelton — In many ways, the greatest step of faith taken in our church has been a couple of other churches handing us keys…Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.Spence Shelton — …to something that the Lord was an outpost for the gospel at one point. And now in both of those cases for us and in the others that we’re starting to see that are still too soon for me to talk about, it’s just, man, now there’s an outpouring happening in both of those places. And you got like, man, there’s a couple of folks that are from the original congregation of what is now our, where our broadcast campus now is. And they, they, they’re greeters. They have tears more mornings than they don’t on Sunday mornings.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, for sure.Spence Shelton — It’s beautiful, man. Rich Birch — Yeah, it is.Spence Shelton — I mean, they’re all in. They are way bigger fans of Mercy Church than I am. And I’m the lead pastor of the church. Rich Birch — Yes, right. Spence Shelton — You know what I mean? And they just, they are like, they love, because what they actually are is they, they took a step of faith, a huge step of faith, trusting the Lord. And the Lord has blessed them and renewed a a vigor in their ministry. Spence Shelton — I saw a couple of them, mid 80s, and it was about 11 a.m. weekday and they were leaving the church building. I was pulling up. I just put windows down. Hey, what are you doing? It’s like, well, we just finished prayer walk in the neighborhood a couple of times…Rich Birch — Wow.Spence Shelton — …and it’s getting too hot now. We’re going inside. And I’m like, these are the people I want, man. Rich Birch — Yes.Spence Shelton — Like just they’re retired and they have chosen they’re going their day prayer walking. It’s like, well, you told us to pray. And I’m like, yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s incredible.Spence Shelton — Thank you for leading the way you have the time and this is what you do with it. So, man, there are if if all we see is just, Oh a facility to advance my cause. And we miss what has actually been the sweetest thing for our church has been our very young church got some grandparents.Rich Birch — Yes. Spence Shelton — It’s beautiful, man. Beautiful. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s so good. Spence Shelton — So that’s just a little bit I learned from that ah from those couple of runs we’ve had. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. And yeah, that underlines, so it’s definitely the majority—I think it’s three quarters, if I remember the most recent statistics on these sort of revitalizations—are coming about because the joining church is coming to the lead church, not the other way around.Spence Shelton — That’s right. That’s right.Rich Birch — And so you have to position yourself in a way that that confident humility is a great kind of benchmark to be thinking about, friends. How do we you know hold ourselves in a way that we’re here to serve other people, we’re here to care for them in a way. And I say to church leaders when we talk about these things, I’m like, you have to handle these relationships well enough so that then they’ll tell other people, hey, wow, we loved working with Mercy Hill.Rich Birch — Man, there we love working with Mercy Church. Well, we love working with mercy Mercy Hill too. Spence Shelton — Sure. That’s right.Rich Birch — We love working with Mercy Hill, Mercy Church, too many Mercies. Wow, what a great you know interaction that was been. And wow, that’s a life-giving thing.Spence Shelton — That’s right.Rich Birch — And I loved that. That is what ultimately we’ll see more of these happen long-term. Not because you did some, you know, so too many people have these like, You know, like they use merger and takeover and like this kind of aggressive language, which just doesn’t help in the conversation at all.Spence Shelton — No, it doesn’t help at all. Yeah, that’s exactly right. You got to have that humility. And if somebody’s sitting there wondering, okay, man, well, how do I how do I wait on that without, I want to go get it. I want to get started. I’d say two or three things to do if you’re looking and you believe your church might be a good church candidate for helping another church revitalize, whether that’s being a campus of yours or or something to that effect. Spence Shelton — I’d say first start praying and asking the Lord. And that if you’re not fasting, then you’re not praying yet. Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.Spence Shelton — So I don’t want to hear that you’re praying if you’re not fasting on this. Secondly, man, this is why networks matter. So I would say whatever your denomination or stream is, whatever, however you’re kind of tied to other churches in your community. If you have no relationships with other churches in your community, and then you want to go and be the revitalizer, that’s going to come, that’s probably going to come across a certain way.Spence Shelton — So There are a number of—years and years and years—of meetings that I’ve gone to, conversations I’ve sat in, in order to genuinely try to say, how can we help? How can we help?Rich Birch — Yeah.Spence Shelton — Whether that’s sending a worship leader to go serve at a church one Sunday morning or helping one church with a a building fundy kind of like thing they got to upfit or something, you know.Spence Shelton — Basically, I’m trying to be a team player in the Kingdom here in our little corner of the world in Charlotte. And then that’s going to earn the respect and the trust for when those conversations can happen in the relational network, those conversations can happen. Spence Shelton — So I am one who just in my nature, I do not like meetings. I don’t like them. Rich Birch — Sure.Spence Shelton — They feel like necessary evils. Rich Birch — Love it.Spence Shelton — And I’m trying to get better about that. But they are actually what I do love and value is trust and relationships. And again, confident humility. I have to be more about the Kingdom than I do about my own church. And a rising tide lifts all boats, you know.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, this been a great conversation today, Spence. I really appreciate that. And thanks for going with me there with that little you know detour at the end.Spence Shelton — Of course, the joy.Rich Birch — That was fantastic. But anything you’d love to share just as we wrap up today’s conversation?Spence Shelton — I would say too—I don’t know what’s spurring this, but something that has helped me so much in my ministry to the leader out there, especially the young leader, but maybe to all of them—you will always overestimate what you can do in five years and you will drastically underestimate what you can do in 20. Rich Birch — That’s so true.Spence Shelton — And there maybe a way to say it is you will overestimate what God will do and underestimate what God will do. So this is a little plug of me saying, stay the course, stay the course where you’re at. The Lord is going to do a work in honor of your faithfulness to the work. Stay in it, man. Stay in it.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Just to add to that, I’m doing some research on working on a book on churches that break the 2000 barrier. And one of the interesting telltale signs are senior leaders and senior leadership teams that have been in the same church or the same community for 20 plus years. Spence Shelton — There you go. Rich Birch — So going into their third decade, it just takes time. Spence Shelton — There it is. Rich Birch — You know, it’s not it’s it’s not you know’s not overnight. Rich Birch — Well, I really appreciate this. This has been a great a great conversation. Spence, if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Spence Shelton — Yeah, man, you can go to probably social media is the the day and age that we live in. So @SpenceShelton is my social media handle. It’s Instagram and and those kind of things. Our church is just @MercyCharlotte. And you can go on our website, mercycharlotte.com. Find everything you need there. Spence Shelton — We’re launching a podcast. Praise God, let’s go. You can find all of it, though, just through our Instagram handles, which is usually a good first landing point for folks. And however we can help, man, feel free to reach out. Nothing super shiny about what we got going on over here, but we love being in the game for the Kingdom. However we can help.Rich Birch — All the best as you serve in Charlotte. Thanks so much, man.Spence Shelton — Thank you, brother.

The Drive opened the show explaining how last night has highlighted how the Royals need to make sure whenever Salvy final game is, they honor him properly.

We discuss the postponement of the New York state electric mandate, feedback on the annual NASDPTS illegal passing survey, the impact of Daylight Savings Time conversations on students, and accolades for former STN Transportation Director of the Year Teresa Fleming of the School District of Philadelphia at Zum's Mobility Summit. See how mentorship and teamwork star in the noteworthy career of Sandy Dillman, a longtime school transportation director and certified driver trainer who was named the 2026 Peter J. Grandolfo Memorial Award of Excellence winner at STN EXPO West last month. Read more about leadership. Episode sponsors: Transfinder, EverDriven, School Radio.

Honored are we here in the Land of Scrolls to have Dan Yergert join us for conversation. Dan is a 2026 Robert E. Howard Award winner and a member of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association and we gladly spoke with him about Alfredo Alcala’s sword and sorcery comic...

Big K Hour 01: Hear the story of a World War II veteran being honored and brought back to Western Pennsylvania after 81 years full 2332 Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:45:34 +0000 2KdNbSKSgf6N1QJNfC22d7L4fqpwnXCc news The Big K Morning Show news Big K Hour 01: Hear the story of a World War II veteran being honored and brought back to Western Pennsylvania after 81 years The Big K Morning Show 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc.

Ken Bennick, VP of Engineering & Tooling at Fabrik Molded Plastics, joins John Landecker to explain the company’s deep roots in McHenry, what it manufactures, and more!

Family, friends and world leaders gathered for ceremonies in the nation's capital to celebrate the life of late Sen. Lindsey Graham — the farewells continue in his home state of South Carolina. TODAY shines a light on new high blood pressure guidelines from the American Heart Association, including a cardiovascular disease risk calculator tool and easy lifestyle changes to improve health outcomes. Tom Holland confirms his marriage to Zendaya after getting grilled by elementary school students on “Celebrity Substitute.” Plus, Macaulay Culkin eyes a return to the holiday silver screen after pitching a “Home Alone” reboot to Disney. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My friend Chris Bissett (lives in Raymond, Alberta Canada, married father of 5, serving in Bishopric) joins us to share his story including: Realizing he is gay before his mission—learning how to balance his faith and his sexuality alone and dealing with the shame. Navigating things in the church that were helpful and some other things that were hurtful “Rage praying” and getting an answer “God was OK with me being gay” Coming out to his wife Becky in the first year of their marriage—wanted to be honest and have a relationship on trust While his wife is very supportive, he recognized he didn't give her a choice, learning that a marriage of love needs to be built on truth (authenticity) and choice. Helpful meeting and getting great advice with Elder Holland early in their marriage Eventually couldn't keep being gay on the “back burner”—needed to come out more openly Taking away the shame—living with confidence How he moved from seeing being gay as a “sacrifice” to moving toward “consecration” and using being himself as a gay member to build Zion His powerful Wayfare Article called “Light in a Watery Darkness, Finding a Way with Consecrated Identity” (see show notes). Chris shares a super insightful story with unique insights and perspectives—all coming from a place of no-shame, integrity, and confidence. I learned so much from Chris. If you are an LGBTQ Latter-day Saint, Chris's story will help you. And Chris's story will help you if you are looking to better understand and support our LGBTQ friends. You are a good man, Chris. Honored to have you on the podcast! Links: Wayfare article: https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/wilt-thou-suffer-that-we-shall-cross Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrisbissett

As new revelations reignite questions about the pandemic response, Mike examines what newly released records could reveal about COVID-era leadership, accountability, and whether America has truly learned the lessons of those unprecedented years. He also reflects on the life and legacy of Lindsey Graham as the nation pauses to honor his public service, while turning his attention back to the ongoing fight over election integrity and the political battles that continue to shape America's future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A 4 Apple Family Learning Center has been honored at The Seattle Medium's inaugural Best of the Best Northwest Readers' Choice Awards, recognizing its three decades of providing culturally responsive early childhood education and support. The organization was awarded Best Educational Support Program and achieved runner-up status for Best Youth Organization – Non-Athletic, highlighting its sustained commitment to fostering children's development and community success. Appollonia Washington, CEO and co-owner of A 4 Apple Family Learning Center, joins the Rhythm & News Podcast.  Interview by Chris B. Bennett.

Today we feature "Untitled" by Franny Choi. Please send your submissions to be featured on the podcast to poetryinmedicine@gmail.com. "In whatever you do, read a poem." Honored to have been named one of the top 10 medical podcasts in the state of Georgia by Feedspot: podcasts.feedspot.com/georgia_medical_podcasts/ Honored to be named one of the Top 100 Poetry Podcasts by Feedspot Blog Reader. podcast.feedspot.com/poetry_podcast…featured_email

My friend Rich Cope (early 50s, father of four) join us to share his brave, vulnerable, and honest story in hopes of helping others: Growing up in Utah County and not fitting the mold/expectations for a man Great insights about broadening the definition of masculinity Processing his attractions to men in a vacuum—with no outside support/understanding Serving a mission and learning God loves him and will always be with him Trying to make it work with a woman—be told it will all work out Getting married—good marriage—why that marriage eventually ended Being closeted and being a dad to a gay son (who was out, authentic, and accepted himself) Decision to come out to his wife and then more broadly (lots of acceptance) Powerful testimony on how God loves all of His children—gay or straight Advice for younger LGBTQ folks This was another deeply moving podcast from my friend Rich Cope—who is so vulnerable, real, and honest—all attributes of masculinity. This podcast will help you in you are LGBTQ and help the rest of us better love/accept ourselves, know God's love for us, and how to better love/support our LGBTQ friends. You are a good man, Rich. Honored to have you on the podcast. Links: Instagram: @richcoperealtor

Utes insider Steve Bartle Sports Roulette Final thoughts

July 23, 2026 ~ Michael Bouchard, Oakland County Sheriff discusses a couple deputies being recognized for saving children from a house fire. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

URSULA'S TOP STORIES: KC locals are moving out and out of stater's moving in // The raccoon is now a national story // FIFA nets $9 billion in profit // WOULD YOU RATHER?

Storytelling vs Storyliving.Can a story be so immersive that you no longer watch it—you live it?In this episode of The Artists Podcast, Vicki Dobbs Beck takes us behind one of the most groundbreaking immersive storytelling projects ever created: Alejandro G. Iñárritu's CARNE y ARENA (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible).The experience became the first virtual reality work to receive a Special Academy Award (Oscar), recognizing it as a visionary new form of storytelling. Created in collaboration with Iñárritu, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and ILMxLAB, it invited audiences to step into the lived experience of migrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border, redefining what cinema could be. As the former Vice President of Immersive Content Innovation at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Vicki Dobbs Beck shares the story behind its creation—and how immersive storytelling is changing the language of cinema itself.If you're curious about where storytelling is headed, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.Watch on Spotify & Apple Podcasts and You tubeFollow @the.artistspodcast for more conversations on cinema, creativity, AI, and the future of storytelling.#StorytellingVsStoryliving #VickiDobbsBeck #TheArtistsPodcast #CarneYArena #AlejandroGonzalezInarritu #ILM #ImmersiveStorytelling #VirtualReality #XR #Cinema #FutureOfStorytelling #Filmmaking #AI #CreativeTechnology

What if simply BELIEVING was enough to make a difference in life? Doing is what makes all the DIFFERENCE in life. If we believe all the right things, but don't do anything with what we believe, our FAITH becomes FEEBLE and FRAIL and FRAGILE. Jesus' Invitation: FOLLOW Me, not BELIEVE Me. God is most HONORED […]

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Alvin Sanders, President and CEO of World Impact, an organization committed to equipping leaders to build healthy churches in every community experiencing poverty. After decades in pastoral ministry and leadership development, Alvin has become passionate about helping ministry leaders avoid one of the greatest threats to long-term effectiveness: burnout. Are you serving faithfully but feeling increasingly exhausted? Wondering how to sustain ministry for the long haul without sacrificing your health, family, or relationship with God? In this conversation, Alvin shares the personal lessons that transformed his own leadership after experiencing burnout. Tune in as he offers a practical framework for building a ministry that lasts. When work becomes worship. // Ministry itself can quietly become an idol. He didn’t intentionally choose work over God, but somewhere along the way, serving Christ replaced walking with Christ. Spiritual disciplines gave way to ministry responsibilities. Prayer, Sabbath, retreat, fasting, and personal communion with God slowly disappeared beneath endless demands. The result was a ministry that looked productive on the outside while becoming spiritually unsustainable on the inside. Return to the basics of spiritual formation. // Rather than searching for complicated solutions, Alvin returned to the foundational practices Christians have embraced for centuries. Prayer, engaging Scripture, fasting, Sabbath, retreat, generosity, commitment to the Church body, and intentional spiritual rhythms are not optional extras for ministry leaders. They are essential practices that sustain healthy leadership. Just as championship football teams return to blocking and tackling when they lose, pastors must continually return to the spiritual basics that anchor their lives. Pay attention to the warning signs. // In hindsight, Alvin sees numerous warning lights he ignored. His daughter once looked at him during dinner and innocently asked, “Daddy, why are you here?” because she had grown so accustomed to his absence. He gained significant weight, neglected his physical health, ignored emotional exhaustion, and consistently placed ministry ahead of family. None of these issues appeared overnight, but together they revealed a leader drifting toward collapse. Burnout is often less about one dramatic event and more about a thousand small compromises over time. Healthy leaders steward their whole person. // Pastors often underestimate the importance of caring for their physical and emotional health. Exercise is no longer something he squeezes into his schedule. Now, it is part of his workday because caring for his body directly affects his ministry. Likewise, emotional health is not separate from spiritual maturity. Leaders who fail to process stress, trauma, criticism, and disappointment eventually carry those burdens into every aspect of ministry. Healthy ministry begins with healthy people. A three-legged stool for sustainable ministry. // At World Impact, staff health is built around three interconnected priorities: spiritual formation, engaging stressors, and leadership development. Spiritual formation keeps leaders rooted in Christ. Engaging stressors helps them process trauma, maintain healthy boundaries, and avoid adopting a “savior mentality.” Skill development—including emotional intelligence, leadership growth, and contextual ministry effectiveness—equips leaders to serve wisely. Remove any one of these three “legs,” and long-term ministry becomes unstable. If you’re approaching burnout, don’t ignore it. // Alvin closes with practical encouragement for leaders who recognize themselves in his story. First, honestly acknowledge where you are instead of pretending everything is fine. Second, intentionally rest by embracing Sabbath, vacations, and healthy rhythms. Finally, if the burden runs deeper, don’t hesitate to seek help from a trusted counselor. Burnout isn’t a badge of honor—it is a warning that something needs attention. To learn more about Alvin or World Impact, visit worldimpact.org or connect with Alvin on LinkedIn. You can find his expanded book Redemptive Poverty Work on Amazon and his recent webinar on redemptive poverty work here. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, I know you’ve got a million things going on this week. In fact, if you’ve got a lot of things going on, you really need to set aside the next half an hour or so to lean in on this conversation because I really think this is going to be helpful for you. I know it’s the kind of thing that you and your team is wrestling with plus we have a return guest on the podcast which what that indicates to you is this a person I want you to hear from. Honored to have Reverend Dr. Alvin Sanders with us he is the president and CEO of World Impact which empowers leaders to build healthy churches in communities of diversity and poverty. When urban leaders so when urban leaders are empowered that to own and lead their own ministry, individuals, families, and neighborhoods ultimately flourish. Super excited to have him with us. Enjoyed his episode from maybe a couple years ago and honored to have you back today. Alvin, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Alvin Sanders — Glad to be here, Rich, and thanks for having me back.Rich Birch — Oh, it’s great to connect a little bit. Why don’t you bring us up to speed? Tell us a little bit about yourself, about World Impact. Give us some context if people don’t remember.Alvin Sanders — Yeah, so President, CEO World Impact – our vision is a healthy church in every community experiencing poverty. We’re working to solve the problem that 95% of the world’s pastors have no formal ministry training whatsoever.Alvin Sanders — So we we try to bring that training to them and make it affordable and accessible. I don’t know if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the Christian educational world right now in terms of universities, but it’s ugly out there. Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — So we are really trying to make sure that people are equipped and they can be able to do ministry in the in the context that they’re called to do it.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. And I really, friends, I would commend you to to, if you don’t know World Impact, you should get to know them. You know, all them and the team do such good good work here. Well, we I want us I want you to take us back to 2007, so almost 20 years ago, which is insane to say that that’s 20 years ago, because it doesn’t feel like 20 years ago. It feels like just yesterday.Rich Birch — What was going on in your ministry and life? Yeah, kind of bring us into that part of the story. Let’s start there.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So in 2007, I was wrapping up a 10-year project of planting and starting a church in inner city Cincinnati. And the denomination that I was a part of, the Evangelical Free Church of America, had offered me a position to leave the pastorate and to come work for them and run what’s called our “all people initiative”.Alvin Sanders — So me and my wife prayed, thought about it and said, yep, you know what? It’s time to make a good transition. And we made that transition. Yet for the first six months after that transition, we were, it was really a weird dynamic in the fact that when we would run into other people, people would say, hey, you guys look so much better than…, I mean, they didn’t say it this directly… Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — …but essentially what they were saying is you look so much better now that you’re out of the pastorate.Rich Birch — Right. What happened? You look great.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. What happened? You look good. Did you, did you lose weight? Did you, you know, glasses, whatever, you know?Rich Birch — Oh, no. You’re like, thank you, I think.Alvin Sanders — Yeah, and Rich, this wasn’t like a small amount of people. It was like every time we ran into people. So after about six months of this, we were like, okay, so what’s going on? And then we when we looked back in hindsight, felt like the last year or so of being in the pastorate, we had burned out.Alvin Sanders — And up until that point, I really didn’t know what burnout was. You kind of sort of hear about it, but you don’t really think about it. Why? Because you’re too busy, right? So you don’t sit back and think about ordering the chaos of ministry or anything of that nature.Alvin Sanders — And so we vowed that going forward, never again would this happen to us. So essentially I divide my ministry life in the two halves. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — The first half is pre-2007. It’s kind of like how people look at the pandemic, right? Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — So it’s like pre-2007 and then post 2007. And so we began to implement a series of things that helped us to be able to do ministry in a sustainable way and not experience burnout because you do not have to burn out doing ministry. That’s what I’ve learned since 2007.Rich Birch — Yeah, when you so when you think about that time, yeah, I love that. Like, hey, friends, thanks for telling me I look great. Or you look terrible a year ago. Okay, thanks.Rich Birch — When you look back on at that moment, you’re like, hey, I think we were burnt out. What were some of those those patterns, habits, evidence, signs that you look at and were like, oh, that is what was going on there? You know, what what was it that, you know, got you, yeah, that you kind of saw it yourself in that moment as you looked back?Alvin Sanders — In hindsight, what I looked at is we were basically on autopilot. When I first started that ministry project, I felt a call. I felt like I was walking with the Lord. I felt the Holy Spirit’s presence. You know it was like hindsight, it’s like the book of Acts stuff. You know it was kind of like God was right there. I was energized. I was excited. I truly wanted to make a difference in the lives and the hearts of the people who were there. I wanted to make a difference in the community. Alvin Sanders — But that last year or so, I look back at it. It was just 60, 70 hours a week, flip the switch, doing what I need to do. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Very jaded, cynical all the time, low energy, you know, vacation didn’t matter because I had to go back to work. You know, these are, you know, it was sort of like a call of duty, so to speak. It was this is my duty to do it.Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Interesting.Alvin Sanders — Right.Rich Birch — So now you made a few decisions to, you know, in the words you use was, we do a series of things. We changed the way that we work. What were those things that you changed? What were some of those things when you look back, now that you’re on the other side of that, what were some of those decisions you made to say, hey, we’re going to live in a different way? And what was what was that? You know, what is that? What were some of those?Alvin Sanders — Well, one of the big things that I realized, and it’s going to sound elementary when I say it, but I think as pastors and people in ministry, we forget about the basic things.Alvin Sanders — You know, I’m a big football fan, Ohio State Buckeyes to be exact, right? And so I remember, I can’t remember which one of those coaches, but I remember one of those coaches, I was listening to an interview one day and they said, hey, you know, when we lose, our first practice back is we go back to the basics.Alvin Sanders — Just basic stuff. That’s all we do. Blocking, tackling, you know, simple things. And one of the things we did was we went back to the basics of what it means to be a Christian. You know, over the years, they call that spiritual formation.Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — So the basic things of are you praying? Are you fasting? Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — You know, you know, just if you type in spiritual formation in Google, you’re going to get a gazillion things that pop up. Right?Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Alvin Sanders — Well, we should be doing many of those things. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, retreating. You should not be accessible all the time. Sabbath. You know, it’s Hebrews 11 tells us that, you know, we’re among a great cloud of witnesses and that great cloud of witnesses are our people who, any and everybody who has ever been Christian ever in in in the entire history of the world. And Rich, hate to break it to you, but it’s not rocket science of how to be a good Christian.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — We just ignore it. Rich Birch — Yes. Right. True. Alvin Sanders — Because there have been people before us who have worked out, hey, these are the rhythms. These are the things that you do…Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — …you know, to be Christian. Rich Birch — Yes. Alvin Sanders — And what had suddenly happened is I made work my worship.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s painful.Alvin Sanders — The job became what I worship. Now, I didn’t intentionally set out to do that, but I had so much passion and I had so much zeal to want to make a difference in the world that suddenly the rhythms of what made you a Christian took a backseat to the work that I was doing.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I want to come back to that. I want to put a bookmark in you made work your worship. I think that’s a powerful idea. I want to come back to that. But just before we leave this idea, you know, I love that the football analogy. I had and a nephew that was a receiver, college ball receiver. And I remember talking to him, you know, once as well. Rich Birch — And I was like, like, tell me, what you know, kind of what is your practice look like? And how are you, how do you keep on top of that? And he said, he said, well, you know, I’ve got these three formations, these three patterns that we run. And he’s like, I just run those formations all day long. Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — It’s like, you just, you know, it’s like the same, you know, four steps this way, three steps that way, you know, turn, you know, it’s like, I’m just do that for four years. We’re just going to run that, which stuck with me similarly that, you know, I think oftentimes, you we can complicate this and we can say, hey, that you know we can complicate staying connected to praying, fasting, Sabbath, reading scripture, these kinds of things. We can drop them. Rich Birch — Were there any other warning signs looking back now that you missed? Again, in hindsight, you look back and say, oh, there were some some things on the dashboard that were blinking and I didn’t notice that you were leading up to this breaking point.Rich Birch — Were there other things in your life besides these dropping off that you know, that you, again, in in hindsight noticed and maybe are looking for now?Alvin Sanders — There was zero what they call work/life balance. Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Zero. Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — At that time, I was working on my PhD. I was pastoring a church full time. Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — And I was running the church’s Christian Community Development Corporation that was attached to it.Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — And oh, by the way, I was also teaching classes at the local Bible college.Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Alvin Sanders — And had a wife and I had two kids.Rich Birch —Yep.Alvin Sanders — And so I remember during that period, a huge red flag that in hindsight, I’m ashamed to say, I did not pay attention to. One Friday night I was sitting down and I was eating dinner with my family and my youngest, Gabby, she looked up in her little toddler face and she said, Daddy, why are you here?Alvin Sanders — And I said, what do you mean? I’m I’m sitting here. I’m I’m eating dinner. You know I’m here. You know she’s and she and she was so confused that I was home.Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.Alvin Sanders — So that’s so that was a neglect of family. Right. Rich Birch — Yes. Alvin Sanders — That was a huge red flag. Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — Gained a ton of weight because I was not taking care of myself physically. I think that’s something we underestimate in ministry. Rich Birch — I agree. Alvin Sanders — You know, to the point now that I even I count when I go work out, that’s part of my work day.Rich Birch — Right. Interesting.Alvin Sanders — Because I said I can’t be a successful minister if if I am not in shape. So I see that as a you know, I don’t have this sort of dichotomy of the physical and the spiritual, all that. No, I it’s all one. You know, it’s going to hurt me spiritually if I’m out of shape, if I’m not eating right, I’m not properly fit and all those types of things.Alvin Sanders — So I wasn’t taking care of myself physically. I clearly was not taking care of myself emotionally.Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — We are emotional beings. We are emotional. I have come to believe, and this is maybe a controversial point, but I don’t know. It’s my belief. I have come to believe, Rich, that we are emotional beings that rationalize our lives with facts.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.Alvin Sanders — But there’s a lot of research out there that says we can think we’re rational all we want, but what we really do, we have never made a rational decision that does not agree with our emotions.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — So we must take care of ourselves.Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — I was not taking care of myself emotionally.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Therefore, out of shape physically, neglecting family, which by the way, God says that’s the first ministry, you’re supposed to lead well. So if you’re not leading your family well, it really doesn’t matter what else you’re doing, you know. And just an emotional, just not emotionally regulated is the easiest way that I can say it. Didn’t know I wasn’t emotionally regulated, but I wasn’t.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You know, the Carey Nieuwhof, friend of mine, ah you know, he says around this whole that topic, he says, you know, if you’re an alcoholic and you stumble into work one day drunk, you know, you get fired, or you or there’s a consequence, right? If you are a gambler and you’re addicted to gambling and you know you lose your house, that’s gonna show up and you know you’re gonna lose your house, there’s consequence to that. And you know one of those might be you lose your job. Rich Birch — But this area of like overworking, if we overwork even in good things, you’re rewarded for it. Like, you’re like, way to go. You’re a good soldier.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. Yeah.Rich Birch — You know, there’s, it’s almost like a badge of honor in ministry to be exhausted for Jesus. When you said, man, I made work my worship, that stung because I was like, ooh, I think I’ve done that before.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. I mean…Rich Birch — So take us inside, you know, ah other leaders’, you know, heads. How does that mindset quietly quietly set us up for this crash? How do we, you know, kind of unpack that even more for us?Alvin Sanders — Yeah, I mean, I say all the time I’m a recovering work workaholic.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, that’s the way I put it.Alvin Sanders — And then a big thing that really set me up for this that I didn’t realize is that I come from a family of workaholics. You know, my father, who is my hero, other people have heroes outside of the household. My father is my hero. He’s 87 now, that’s my guy.Rich Birch — It’s so good. Yeah.Alvin Sanders — He, I grew up in a household, my father grew up in Jim Crow, Alabama. And he overcame so much. Rich Birch — Right. Incredible.Alvin Sanders — He went to when he joined the military, military was was sort of like a saving grace. He was in the military for 30 years. Rich Birch — Wow. Alvin Sanders — And he went to night school and he got two degrees in night school while working during the day.Rich Birch — Wow.Alvin Sanders — You know, my mom was an old farm was a was a farm girl, you know. Protestant work ethic. You know, you want she would say, son, you want to kill time, work it to death. You know, idle hands is the devil’s workshop. You know I grew up on all these idioms.Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.Alvin Sanders — And, and so that was in my DNA. And just by the fact that we live in United States of America, where busyness is a badge of honor, I believe you said, and we all are under the Protestant work ethic, you know, you know, who, what, what, what bum works only 40 hours.Alvin Sanders — I mean, you want to get ahead.Rich Birch — It’s true.Alvin Sanders — The minimum is 50.Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, when I was pastoring, how many people in my congregation, you know, in terms of the white collar crew, you know, I had ah I had all spectrums in the church that I was in, I pastored. It was no big deal for them to just be gone all the time.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — If you get offered a promotion, who would tell you don’t accept it for the sake of your family?Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Of course I’m going to accept it. It’s more money… Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — …because more money puts us in a better position…or doesn’t it? Rich Birch — Right. Alvin Sanders — It might, or might not. So counterintuitive thinking is something that we have to do. I mean, I’m in a place now where um God has blessed me that I have a lot of opportunities and I limit my opportunities. Because I say if if I’m gone all the time again, guess what I’m on the road to? Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — You know, and we may have a little bit more money, but then, you know, I’m in the I’m in the empty nesthood stage of season of life and I’d be missing valuable time with my wife. So it’s a reordering of the priorities, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Alvin Sanders — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. And this is one of those areas where I see hope in you know next generation. You know i see hope in Gen Z leaders. There there is, like I think, a healthy pushback on on some of this area, which is I think is positive. I know sometimes, you know, I’m Gen X, classic Gen X, born 1974, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century.Alvin Sanders — Yes. Yeah.Rich Birch — And, you know, and I think sometimes, you know, my peers and particularly the folks older than me, that generation, they they really did, they handed down this idea. And you know, there’s good change happening, I think, on this front. Rich Birch — But so how do you think about this now? So, you know, as you’re thinking about the future, or maybe you’re coaching your team, people you’re interacting with, you know, how do you kind of articulate this, maybe with a framework or thinking around this, so that we don’t just pass on more burnt out organizations?Rich Birch — How how are you helping, you know, lead an organization? Because I think there’s the reason why asked that question is I think it can be easy for us folks that are in charge. I run my own organization. I like often joke, like my boss is a bit of a taskmaster because it’s me, you know. But you know, when, but when we’re the people in charge, we get to set the pace. We get to lead in a way. How are you leading different now? How are you helping your people understand this different now? What are, how are you, what’s that look like for you?Alvin Sanders — Yes. So we, we have baked in in the cake at World Impact. Um, three things, three areas. We talked, we touched on it before spiritual formation, you know, that’s a big deal here at World Impact.Alvin Sanders — You know, we, we really want to make sure that people understand your work is not your worship. You know, part of our sustainable strategy is, you know, we care more about who you are than what you do. And we mean that. Alvin Sanders — And it’s funny because when you first say that to some people, they go, oh well, you don’t want me to work. It’s like, no we didn’t say that. What we said is we understand you are a human being. And we care about you and we’re going to invest deeply in you as you invest deeply into our our our vision. And so um making sure that work’s not to worship, make sure that people understand our identity is in Christ. Alvin Sanders — Understanding also the the spiritual disciplines. We incorporate eight particular spiritual disciplines. I probably should know them the my head, but I don’t. But let me see, I mean, I can roll off the top of my head.Alvin Sanders — Let’s see, you got church membership. You know, we, we, and It’s not cool, you know, to be a church member and people love to kill the church and criticize the church and this that the other. But I leave that to the accuser of the brethren to use the KJV version and use that to the devil.Rich Birch — Nice.Alvin Sanders — Jesus came to establish the church. Period. End of discussion. So you ought to be part of one. So, you know, we encourage our folks to be part of churches, to fast, to pray.Alvin Sanders — We have three times a year we’ve shut everything down and we have prayer days. You know, we we encourage people to be generous with their money. We encourage people to empower others. You know, so there’s we we we encourage we have a personal retreat days that we offer people for for, it’s a work day, but it’s a different kind of structured work day. We say we’ll give you one day a month where you go off and you examine yourself. You do a spiritual examen off basically, you know, off the old St. Ignatius type of spiritual examen. And then you also look at your professional development. You go off and we do that and we’ll pay you for that.Rich Birch — Right. That’s great.Alvin Sanders — You know, so there are a number of things that we do in terms of developing a rhythm. We call, you know, having a rhythm. Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — You know, so a lot of spiritual formation. And then the other s is we look at the, you could think of these S’s as three S’s or a three-legged stool that serves the foundation and they’re all intertwined.Alvin Sanders — So besides spiritual formation, we also encourage people to engage stressors, right? We there’s there’s a way that you work in the world. There’s I got this from my friends at Praxis that there’s three ways that you can engage the world. You can engage the world um exploitatively, ethically or redemptively. Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — So we want people to we want our staff to engage the world, and engage their jobs in a redemptive manner, which is, you know, sacrificing our lives in the pattern of Jesus Christ. Right. That’s we follow the pattern of Jesus Christ, that that we are doing this in order to make the world a better place.Alvin Sanders — We also have a posture of that we’re not the saviors. Many people who are in ministry, we get in it for the right reasons, but then we think that we’re the king and not a subject of the kingdom. Right. And so we think that whatever ministry we’re in, whether it’s urban, suburban, whatever it may be, that we’re the saviors. It’s like, no no, no, no, that’s not the right posture. The right posture is that to be utilized by God, you know.Alvin Sanders — And then also anybody who’s been in ministry any any time in their life, any, you know, they are going to experience a lot of what’s called secondary trauma.Alvin Sanders — You know, like mine was very intense being in a very violent neighborhood and ministering there. But even in suburban context, there’s a lot of things. Now, Rich, don’t know if you ever experienced this, but, you know, people, the sheep bite. Rich Birch — True.Alvin Sanders — They talk about the pastor. Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — They do a lot of things. You know, you’re misinterpreted all the time. There’s a lot of hurtful things that happen to you… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Alvin Sanders — …from an emotional perspective. And if you if you try to blow them off or roll them under, you know, let them it’s water under the bridge. No, no, no. Those things need to be engaged. Alvin Sanders — So that’s keeping the right posture, making sure we keep the right pace in ministry. So we have one school of spiritual formation, one one one leg stool of engaging stressors. And then the third leg stool is is skill set development. Alvin Sanders — And we have to understand that developing the right skills will not save us from burnout. That’s a false dichotomy. People think, oh, well, if I just develop X, Y, and z well, then, you know, I won’t burn out. No. um There are three primary skill sets that I think people need to understand when it comes to any type of ministry or wherever they’re doing it. A big one is emotional intelligence.Alvin Sanders — It’s there’s a guy by name of Daniel Goldman who really popularized the concept. He wrote this book years and years ago called “Primal Leadership”. And that book makes the case that therere there are things that you can develop to emotionally regulate yourself.Alvin Sanders — There’s a book they they don’t call it emotional intelligence, but it’s another classic called “Leadership and Self-Deception”. It’s a classic book which teaches you how you can engage the workplace and and by emotionally regulating yourself, which I think is directly correlated to spiritual maturity.Rich Birch — True.Alvin Sanders — There’s also the skill set of leadership development. I believe that everybody is a leader, right? We don’t all have the same responsibilities as leaders, but there are things that we can do to develop ourselves to become better leaders in the situations that we find ourselves in. Alvin Sanders — And then there’s also a a skill set that we can develop where we engage our ministry context in a dignified manner. So that’s sort of like our three-legged stool at World Impact, you know, spiritual formation, engaging stressors and skill set. And you can’t, just like a stool, if you remove one of the legs…Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — …the stool will not work. So all three have to be intertwined and working together to give you that strong foundation. And if you do those things, I have found that, you know, you won’t touch burnout. Because… Rich Birch — Right. It’s so good. Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So I’m very, very focused on that. And we have interwoven all of those things within the DNA of World Impact.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.Alvin Sanders — Yeah, I love…Rich Birch — There’s there’s so much to unpack there, friends. And there’s, you know, in six minutes there, you gave us what a great picture of how we should be thinking and leading in our environments. I love, particularly, you know, you talked you touched on the emotional quotient, the eq issue.Rich Birch — And, um you know, I’ve had a a friend of mine say, you know, it’s it’s impossible to be spiritually mature if you’re emotionally immature. And I think…Alvin Sanders — One hundred percent.Rich Birch — I think that’s true. And there are, we all know these people who they they walk around like they’re spiritually mature, but they’re they’re, you know, emotionally immature and it comes off. It’s like they’re bleeding. It’s like the internet’s made for these people.Rich Birch — Like they are, those people get good followings, which is terrible. And you know, they get people around them who are just like, yes, sir. Yes, sir. It’s usually sirs. Unfortunately, it’s a lot of guys… Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — …you know, we’ve got to fight that. And I love that you’re, you’re attempting to do that, you know, at, you know, in the organization you lead at World Impact, I think is, is incredible. And one of the things, you know, calling this out, I’m not directly engaged in urban ministry, but the thing I, I think is, like, I think every ministry has its stressors to it. Alvin Sanders — Yes.Rich Birch — I think every ministry has trauma related to it. And I think what you’ve outlined here, we can apply really in any context. Alvin Sanders — Yes.Rich Birch — But I do want to underline for our listeners, the fact that this has come out of a context where, again, I don’t want to stigmatize or create stereotypes around urban ministry, but there is a lot of trauma. There is a lot of stress in the ministry.Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — You know When you’re dealing in communities that are experiencing homelessness and poverty and you know, you know at the conflict, at the you know the epicenter of racial conflict, and you know all ah all of that creates the context that makes it next to impossible to serve in. And the fact that you’re leading there, I just want to commend you you know on that. Alvin Sanders — Yes. Rich Birch — And so this is actually a part of, well, talk to me about the expanded second edition of “Redemptive Poverty Work” and how does that tie into what we’re talking about today? Because I want to move people even towards that call to action out of today’s conversation.Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So the the things that I’ve talked about that I just talked about that we instilled at World Impact, it definitely works in in any context, no doubt about it. What I tell my suburban colleagues is that whatever you experience in the suburbs, 10x it. And that’s in the urban context.Rich Birch — That makes sense. Okay, that’s good.Alvin Sanders — Just 10x it. It’s not that you don’t experience these things.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — It’s that it’s much more intense…Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — …within the urban context.Rich Birch — Yeah.Alvin Sanders — So the expanded edition of “Redemptive Poverty Work” is is my attempt to really have our vision at World Impact come to fruition. Because at World Impact, if our vision is a healthy church in every community experiencing poverty, we cannot not talk about burnout.Alvin Sanders — Because the burnout rate within the urban context, because of the 10X that happens down there in in this in the urban community—but increasingly in suburban communities, to be quite honest with you. The same dynamics are happening in certain suburban communities—is that you have to be able to deal with it. And the big way that you deal with it is that you are intentionally engaging those things that can cause you to burn out.Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — Cause you cannot have a healthy church unless you have spiritually formed pastors who are engaging stressors and who are developing the skillset to make the community a better place.Alvin Sanders — So, It was basically by doing things in the field and spending a lot of time with our partners that I said, you know what, these folk need an expansion. Because when I wrote “Redemptive Poverty Work” a couple of years ago that we talked about, it was a little booklet and it was more academic.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — But what I realized is, hey, these folk need to know how to implement this in a practical sense. So that’s what the expanded version is about. It’s not only teaching you the principle, it’s like, here here’s how you can apply this to your life. It’s sort of like a field handbook, so to speak.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think it’d be great for people to pick up, you know, a copy of this. And, you know, I think it could be really helpful for them as they’re thinking about, you know, ministry in any context. Even to help if there are folks that are listening in, you know, that serve in a suburban context and they’re trying to gain, you know, a bit more understanding of there are urban, but you know, brothers and sisters as they’re, you know, leading there. I think this could be a helpful resource.Rich Birch — For folks that picked up the first edition, you know, should they pick pick up a second? I know you’re not just trying to sell books, but like, help me understand, you know, obviously you’ve added a lot to it. For folks that are familiar with your work, what would your, you know, kind of what’s your recommendation that, you know, for them?Alvin Sanders — Yes, because the the first Redemptive Poverty Work booklet is really only one chapter in the expanded edition. It’s, as I said earlier, it’s really about how to apply and how not to burn out.Rich Birch — That’s great.Alvin Sanders — The whole thing is it assumes that there’s a point in your walk in doing your work of the ministry that you’re going you’re going to hit a wallRich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — I don’t know anyone in ministry, let alone urban ministry, who hasn’t at some point hit a wall.Rich Birch — Right.Alvin Sanders — Right. To go back to sports analogy. Right. Talk about how if you’re a rookie and you’re coming into the and NBA, you only play like 40 or some college games. NBA has 82 games. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how much you play, about game 50, you’re going to hit a wall because you’ve never really played at that intense level for that long.Rich Birch — Yep.Alvin Sanders — Same thing with ministry.Alvin Sanders — At some point, you’re going to hit a wall. So within this urban context, you know when you hit that wall or hopefully before you hit the wall, read this book and begin to implement it in your life. It’s a failure for you just to buy the book and read it. Rich Birch — Yes.Alvin Sanders — A lot of books you just write, you buy it and you read it and you go, oh, I got the knowledge. I’m good. No, this book is like, read it and apply it. And I can tell you, it’ll work if you do so.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Where do we want to send people to pick up copies of the book? Where online? you know how how can they How can they get their hands on it?Alvin Sanders — Yeah, just go to Amazon. you can get it off of Amazon. Redemptive Poverty Work Expanded Edition. Rich Birch — That’s great.Alvin Sanders — You type that in or you can type in Alvin Sanders and I’m sure it’ll pop up. Rich Birch — That’s great. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, we’d we’d love for you to get it. You know, got paperback and hardback versions that are there. Rich Birch — Nice.Alvin Sanders — And then you can also go on YouTube. We just had it. We launched it last week. We had a webinar… Rich Birch — Great. Alvin Sanders — …around the topic of redemptive poverty work. It was about an hour long. So if you’re really interested in this topic, you can check that webinar out as well.Rich Birch — Nice. Yeah, we’ll link to that in the show notes to make it even easier for folks to to find that. We’d love for for people to track with you, Alvin. You’re doing such a great, great work. So let’s take us back to 2007.Rich Birch — Let’s say there’s a leader who’s listening into, well, I know that there’s a leader who’s listening in today. There’s at least one… Alvin Sanders — Yeah. Rich Birch — …in the couple thousand people that are listening in who are heading towards where you were in 2007. Not the new part, not the new job part, but the like, oh, I’m burnt out.Alvin Sanders — Yes.Rich Birch — This is not good. Maybe today they’ve been listening in and they realize, oh, wait a second. Maybe they had a similar thing with their kid. Hey, dad. Hey, mom. Why are you here? What’s one thing you’d want them to do this week? What’s one action step that they could take coming out of today’s conversation? Alvin Sanders — Well, I would say, I’m going to cheat. I’m going to give you more than one. But first is to admit where you’re at.Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — Because there are so I hate to say it. There are some faith traditions where it’s downright almost sinful to admit that you might be burned out. What? You don’t you don’t pray enough. You don’t do this. You don’t do that. Say, you know what? I’m tired. I’m still committed, but I’m tired. I’m jaded. I’m whatever. So the first thing is to embrace that. Alvin Sanders — The second thing is, you know, get some rest. You might it might just be an Elijah situation. You know, Elijah wanted to die and God said, no, man, just just go lay down.Rich Birch — Yeah, have a nap.Alvin Sanders — You know, you just had a really, really intense situation. Go lay down. Take some time. Go take a nap. Get some refreshment. Get some food. Look at your schedule and say, am I actually taking at least one day a week off? You know, are what’s your rhythm of rest, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Alvin Sanders — Are you resting as hard as you’re working?Rich Birch — That’s good.Alvin Sanders — Are you taking vacation? You know, or is vacation for the weak, right? Are you taking your paid holidays off? Do, actually really start to take the commandment of Sabbath seriously… Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — …and actually start to rest?Alvin Sanders — And then there are some of us, and, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with this either. We may be too far gone, and we may need to take some time to go see a counselor, and to unpack things. Rich Birch — That’s good. Alvin Sanders — And to unpack some emotional wounds and things of that nature. So I would say, you know, first, acknowledge where you’re at. Second, actually start to rest. And then third, if these things aren’t really working, don’t be prideful. Go see a mental health counselor.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Alvin, you’ve been a gift again to our audience. Thank you so much for for being here today, for helping us think through these issues and take some steps. If people want to track with you or with World Impact, where do we want to send them online?Alvin Sanders — Well, if you want to track with me, you know, as a good Gen Xer like you, I’m on LinkedIn. So you just place to find me.Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.Alvin Sanders — It’s LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn. I have an Instagram account. I ain’t been on that Instagram account in forever. So, you know, that’s just not me. But you can find me on LinkedIn.Rich Birch — Love it.Alvin Sanders — If you want to personally interact, talk, whatever. Great thing to do on LinkedIn. And then the other thing is go to worldimpact.org and you can learn a lot more about World Impact and what we do.Alvin Sanders — We’d love to serve you.Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate you taking some time to be with us.Alvin Sanders — All right. Thanks for having me. 

My friend Scott Mena (lives in Deltona Florida, mid-30s) joins us to share his amazing story: * Growing up closeted in a world and shame—being gay meant AIDS * Hiding and trying to change * Gaining a testimony * Coming out to his mom and Bishop * Working to solve pornography use * His friend Mickeal * Serving a mission to Denver (positive experience) * Going to Pulse (before the massacre in 2016) * Working through suicidal thoughts * Coming out publicly and getting involved with LGBTQ community (PFLAG, etc) * Living between two worlds (LDS community and LGBTQ community) * Being “Mr. DeLand Pride”, being a drag entertainer, Ward Mission Leader * Help start Volusia Gathering and how it helped his dad * Final testimony Thank you, Scott, for being on the podcast. You story is super powerful and hopeful. You are a great man who was walked a difficult road with courage, faith, and hope. Honored to have you on the podcast. Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottymena/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/scottmenaactor YouTube Channel info - https://www.youtube.com/@scottythetheaterguy Website - http://www.scottmena.com Extra info - https://linktr.ee/thetheaterguy

Schaumburg is honoring a restaurant worker for saving a co-worker's life with CPR - and it's not the first time he's done it. Trustees gave Bill Taylor the village's Outstanding Citizen Award at their meeting Wednesday night.

The Nevada County Sheriff's Office and its partners were honored by the Nevada County Board of Supervisors for their response effortwhen a group of backcountry skiers and their guides were caught in an avalanche on Feb. 17.The City Council voted down the current design of the Downtown Grass Valley Roundabout on Tuesday, favoring a signaled designed instead.

Join us for Pastor Roy Noel's Sunday Morning Sermon at Family Camp in 2026. He preached on Jeremiah 28:5-9 Psalm 119:153-160 Romans 7:1-13 Matthew 10:34-42.

My friend Alisha Anderson (graduate degrees in Environmental Humanities and Masters of Fine Arts, Artist, Writer, Adjunct Professor, mid-30s), joins us to share her queer story center around four main themes: Love is easy when it's based on sameness. The true test of love is difference. Time is one of God's greatest tools. I've come to believe in a God who does not wish to sacrifice me, but grow me. We need each other—in both our suffering and our joy. As part of these themes, Alisha shares unique and powerful insights are deeply moving—and even after 900+ episodes are unique. Insights that I believe will help other queer Latter-day Saints find hope as they bravely move forward—and insights that help allies/parents better support/love our queer friends. Thank you, Alisha, for being on the podcast. I learned so much from you! You are so emotional/spiritual/intellectually mature and thoughtful. You are a gift to our community. Honored to have you on the podcast! Links: Instagram: @_a_anderson Website: alishaanderson.org

My friend and mentor Robert A. Rees (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Rees), age 90, who loved and supported his gay/lesbian members while serving as a singles ward bishop in Los Angeles from 1986-1992, joins us talk about his new book called “Imagining and Reimaging the Restoration”. Bob talks about how Joseph Smith creative mind allowed him to imagine the impossible leading to the first vision and subsequent revelations—and how we should continue to use his example to imagine and reimagine what is possible for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. Super powerful imagery. Bob also talks about: Why he is a “Matthew 25 Latter-day Saint and Christian” Why is heart is broken for our LGBTQ friends Why he stays in the Church Bob (along with Carol Lynn Pearson, Greg Prince, William Bradshaw, and others) are some of the earliest and most impactful LGBTQ allies. Their brave work and helped so many of our LGBTQ friends and has given new allies (like me) vision to join their LGBTQ ally discipleship. Thank you, Bob, for all your many contributions over many decades. You are a treasure to our community and beyond. Honored to have you on the podcast. You also give vision of what is possible at age 90! Links: Bob's new book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/158958824X Bob's Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Rees

Episode 3315 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about how Vietnam Vets were honored at West Frankfort, Illinois. The story is titled: Ceremony gives Vietnam veterans long-overdue recognition. It appeared on the Southern Illinoisan website and … Continue reading → The post Episode 3315 – How Vietnam Vets are honored in West Frankfort, Illinois first appeared on Vietnam Veteran News.

Braves close out the Pirates with a 10-5 win behind Matt Olson, Mike Yastrzemski, and rookie Jim Jarvis' first MLB home run. Pete Davis also covers John Riggins finally getting his number retired, a major FanDuel gambling lawsuit, bizarre golf cart chaos, MLB history, and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jesse Love talks about his California roots on this week's Bringing the Heat.

What does it take to save a species on the edge?From the iconic television show, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, comes Back From the Brink, a podcast celebrating the most remarkable comeback stories in the natural world. We meet endangered species that were nearly lost –– some down to their last dozen or hundred –– and learn how they found their way back. Each episode goes deep on a single species and the scientists, conservationists, and unexpected heroes at the forefront of environmental conservation who fought to save them. About the Hosts:As a wildlife ecologist, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant has expertise in uncovering how human activity influences carnivore behavior and ecology. Dr. Wynn-Grant is a recipient of the prestigious Gracie Award, which focuses on women who are making positive change and who further the discussion of what a fulfilling career in media looks like. Honored for her work on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, Dr. Wynn-Grant continues to inspire with her passion for wildlife conservation and storytelling. Peter Gros is a veteran wildlife expert and educator. As the co-host of the Emmy® nominated series, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, and narrator of the Back from the Brink podcast, Gros shares conservation success stories and brings a message of hope to motivate audiences to take action in protecting wildlife and their habitats. Gros joined the original Wild Kingdom team in 1985, co-hosting alongside Jim Fowler on the classic series and Mutual of Omaha's Spirit of Adventure.He has nearly 30 years of field experience with captive wildlife, establishing breeding programs for endangered animals and rehabilitation programs for birds of prey. As a USDA licensed exhibition exhibitor and animal educator, Gros has shared his experiences across the U.S. through the Wild Kingdom Kids Summit, talk show appearances and lectures. He also serves on the board of directors of the Suisun Marsh Natural History Association and is a trustee for the Cheetah Conservation Fund.About Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: Since its network television premiere in 1963, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom has been one of the most loved and respected wildlife programs in television history. The Daytime Emmy® nominated Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, now airing weekends on NBC's “The More You Know” time block, celebrates stories of conservation success, including the great work of caring, compassionate experts and how they are making a positive impact on the Wild Kingdom. For more information about Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, visit  www.wildkingdom.com 

Mike Switzer interviews Patrick Myers, CEO of Lowcountry Creamery in Bowman, SC.

My friend and mentor Kim Puzey (age 75) lives in Oregon, joins us to share his story: * Growing up in a blue-color world * Dad dying at age 12 * Friends dying at age 17 * Surprise decision to serve an LDS mission * 50 years of Church service—but a feeling that he worshipped the Church and callings * Less active, “steeple chaser” looking for the beauty in all faiths * Stroke—going from age 45 to age 75 In some of the most moving segments of any podcast, Kim shares powerful stories of ministering to “the one” including: * Why Walmart is sacred to me * The Chicago L * Importance of names * Waitresses are angels * Workers in the fields I was so moved listening to Kim's discipleship focused on “the one” with powerful stories of making a difference in people's lives—the core of our discipleship at followers of Jesus. Thank you Kim of being on the podcast. Thank you for your example to me over these many years. You are a good man. Honored to have you on the podcast. Links : Kim on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kim.b.puzey

Today on show: We are honored to welcome back the legendary Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworkers. Dolores joins us again to speak out for the rights of people who do the hardest labor for all of us and often get attacked, disparaged, sometimes even deported for their hard work. The second part of the show breaking news from the expanding conflict between the US and Iran. We cut through the Pentagon's propaganda blackout by featuring an interview from Iran with Dr. Foad Izadi, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Tehran. An award winning front-line investigative news magazine, that focuses on human, civil and workers right, issues of war and peace, Global Warming, racism and poverty, and other issues. Hosted by Dennis J. Bernstein. The post We are Honored to Welcome Back The Legendary Dolores Huerta, Co-Founder of the United Farmworkers appeared first on KPFA.

Loryn Nalic, chef and co-owner of Balkan Treat Box in St. Louis brought home the Best Chef: Midwest honor at the 2026 James Beard Awards. This recognition marks the first time in nearly a decade that a St. Louis-area chef has won one of the U.S. culinary world's highest honors. Nalic reflects on the achievement, what it's taken to get to this point, the importance of preserving cultural traditions, and balancing creativity and innovation in cooking.

A 95-year-old veteran honored by schoolchildren in a sweet birthday celebration will make you misty-eyed. You may want to grab a box of tissues. AND A grandpa just completed the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, 60,000 pieces in all, and you’ll be surprised to have a little advice about life coming from those pieces. To see videos and photos referenced in this episode, visit GodUpdates! https://www.godtube.com/blog/veteran-birthday-surprise.html https://www.godtube.com/blog/60000-piece-puzzle.html Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Daniel's blameless life and steadfast prayer reveal the kind of integrity God uses to display His power before a watching world.

Daniel's blameless life and steadfast prayer reveal the kind of integrity God uses to display His power before a watching world.

Our son Jake Ostler (co-founder International Protection Alliance, master's degree in social work, certificate in anti-human trafficking, LCSW, working with sexual violence survivors worldwide, expert speaker on this subject) joins us talk about online safety for youth/teenagers/young adults. In this episode (for parents/anyone with responsibility for younger people) Jake talks about: Creating a safe environment in the home with open discussion about online safety/sextortion, and other online threats kids face How the bad guys connect with youth, gain their trust—with the goal of extorting teens for money and nude images How the bad guys isolate the youth for repeated financial gain—often causing the victim to be hopeless and consider suicide Parents and law enforcements roles before and after sextortion occurs This is a powerful episode on a critically important subject. I encourage parents, local religious/civic leaders, and concerned citizens to get more educated on topic by listening to this episode and sharing it with others. You may help save a life. Thank you Jake for your much needed work in our world. Honored to have you on the podcast. Mom and I love you and are proud of you! Links: NCMEC Education for parents and teens: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/sextortion NCMEC Take it Down: https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/ NCMEC “No Escape Room" Sextortion Experience: https://noescaperoom.org/ International Protection Alliance Web Site: protectall.org International Protection Alliance Venmo: @protect_all Jake's email to request more information or invite a trainer: jacob@protectall.org International Protection Alliance Instagram: @intl.protect.all Facebook: www.facebook.com/ipa.protectall Jake's Utah Clinical Practice: healingandhopeutah.com Jake's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-ostler-492716116 Jake's earlier episode (792): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-792-jacob-ostler-lcsw-therapist-founder-international/id1347971725?i=1000677732364

Rick Stroud and Steve Versnick on the Rays' Junior Caminero being named the AL Player of the Week after he hit 7 home runs in 6 games and the Rays now lead the AL East by 1.5 games over the Yankees. Plus Terion Arnold is released by the Lions after his arrest in Tampa, Germany is upset in the World Cup and former NFL player Chris Johnson has ALS. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.