Hey everyone, welcome back to another Nintendo Prime Reacts today. I, Nathaniel Ruffa-Gents, your host and joined by YouTuber Mason of Delfino. Hello. And I know I just had this and I'm gonna get it wrong. Sir Surge outlet from Twitch. He's a streamer. What's up ladies and gents? The very first time he's actually been with us on anything we've done here. So nice to have you here. No, thank you. So today, there was a little Pokemon Direct. And when I say little, I mean they had three big announcements, but it was only eight minutes long. So kind of put a lot into eight minutes. So before we react and get into some thoughts and opinions on what all happened, let's just go over the general gist of what happened today. The there is Pocken Tournament Deluxe or DX if you prefer. They translated it as Deluxe, but it's DX on all the packaging. That is coming to Nintendo Switch. I believe on September 22nd and it features five new Pokemon over the original Pocken Tournament for Wii U and arcades. One of those Pokemon happened to be from Pokemon Sun and Moon. No surprise there. And then they also added some new modes. I believe three new modes. I Really should have those modes up. I don't one of them is online rankings. So they have ranked battles. They also have, there it is, Friendly Match, which they describe as a casual battle mode. So pretty standard for most fighting games and then a group match, which is a friends-only battle mode. Also in the teaser, they showed things like it works in all the different ways you can use the switch. So, split screen, tabletop mode, single joy-cons, yada yada yada, multiple switches hooked up together. So all the ways we've seen Switch used in the past, this game does that as well. They also announced, and it was really weird how they announced it, because they kind of snuck it in at the end of the Pocken Tournament Deluxe trailer, is Pokemon Sun and Moon Ultra Editions. Yes. Those are, I mean, I guess they're brand new Pokemon games, is how they're describing them. With new stories, new Pokemon. Yeah, it's kind of, from what I understand, it's kind of like Pokemon Black and White too. Yup, that's the way I see it too. So again, they're calling them brand new Pokemon games, mainline franchise games, coming out in November 17th. And yeah, we just saw Brief Glimpse as a gameplay, I didn't really see a whole lot. And then the last announcement was that Pokemon Gold and Silver are coming to 3DS Virtual Console on September 22nd. And I guess the big thing with that is that you can battle and transfer wirelessly, which is pretty standard today, but obviously back in those days you had to use those clunky chords. And it's compatible with the Pokemon Bank, which I feel like they're just doing with all their games they release at this point. Alright, so that's the gist of it. Three big announcements, eight minutes. What a... Well, let's start with Sur Surge Outlet over there. What, which one of these announcements really stood out to you? Well... Probably the Virtual Console on 3DS probably stood out to me the most, because... Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they just remake these games for the 3DS or was that Gen 3? Oh, jeez. You know, I should... Omega? Yeah. Like Alpha Sapphire? It was something like that. It wasn't about Soul Silver. And... Yeah. I can't remember what the Golem was called. For some reason the Soul Silver one's sticking with me. Heart Gold? Heart Gold, yeah. Okay, maybe I'm thinking of something else. Yeah, those were kind of like remakes. Well, Virtual Console support is always good to see. It makes me question what it would be like if we did get it on Switch, which is the biggest question that I have is, why was the Pokémon stars that we were supposed to get on Switch? But I guess Pokémon of whatever deluxe edition 7.3 Sun and Moon. That looks great, I suppose. I didn't pick up Sun and Moon for myself, but... Sure. My friend said it was alright and so maybe I'll pick up this version and give it a shot. Yeah, everyone's been trying to convince me. I did not pick up Pokémon of Sun and Moon last year myself either. One, to be open and honest with our fan base, I've kind of fallen out of love with the Pokémon series. I played it religiously up until about Diamond and Pearl and then I just kind of fell out. It just felt too repetitive and while there was new things they were doing with each game, the game started taking itself almost too seriously in my mind. It got so complex if you wanted to build good teams that it wasn't that complex back in the day. And then Ice Cream Pokémon. Yeah, and the Pokémon designs were getting bad. I really wanted to get Sun and Moon and then I played the demo and as people on the channel know infamously I hated the demo. I thought it was one of the worst video game demos I've ever played that's actually playable. Ouch. But all of my complaints I've had with that demo, everyone, all of my friends that have played it assured me that those complaints aren't valid to the actual game. It's just they put out a demo that wasn't going to convey the games properly. The demo worked well I was told for people who have continually been playing Pokémon but if people were trying to get back into the series it was not a very good introduction. And that's fine. I mean there is Darren the editor-in-chief over at Seldom Informer. He told me he might actually be sending me one of his either Pokémon Sun or Pokémon Moon for me to play. I told him if he did that I will definitely play it then. I might even do some live streams of it but I haven't played them. So when I hear Ultra, you know, the Ultra what is it? Sun, Ultra Moon, you know, new stories, new Pokémon. I haven't experienced the original story yet. And I don't know if there's anything about those games that's going to make me want to try those ones out either. Especially since it does feel like a lot like the Black 2, White 2 situation and I didn't play those games either. I don't think these iterative releases where they're basically reusing content just to get a new game out does it for me because it's kind of lazy in a way. And I think I've seen that as like the general reaction to this direct has been a lot of people have been like, well, yeah, it's not just that we're disappointed that Pokémon Stars or whatever wasn't announced or confirmed to exist or any sort of Switch game besides Pock and Tournament Deluxe. It's that you have a kind of like a remade version of a game you released last year with a new story and then that honestly people these days just expect that as DLC. Like Breath of the Wild is getting brand new story DLC at the end of the year. Right, yeah. So like they obviously could have just released this new story with new Pokémon as a DLC pack for 20 bucks. But you know, that's not what they're doing. That's not what Pock... It's the Pokémon Company. Yeah, and it's the Pokémon Company. You know, that's not what they do.  Even if it's... They live by their own rules. Yeah, they live by their own rules. Well, and the prime example is the fact we even have a Pokémon Direct days from E3. See, that's something that threw me off. It's already jumping just all of a sudden. But like basically, you know, they've never really actually announced a huge Pokémon title at E3. I don't think, have they? In like recent years anyway? Nope, they've always done it in Directs before E3. Right, and that's something that people have just begun to expect in a way. But if they announced these three things here, all of a sudden what would they have for Pokémon 4 Switch besides Pock and Tournament Deluxe? Well, there's not going to be anything. Right, so everybody's expecting, you know, once we got the announcement like, oh hey, Pokémon Direct tomorrow, everybody's minds went to Sinnoh remakes.  Hyping up games that aren't going to exist. You don't have confirmation that it's existing. Why hype it up? So everybody's disappointed now, seemingly, anyway, because it's basically Sun and Moon 2, you know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know why they didn't even use the two. Right. I've played both of those games of Sun and Moon. But it's just like, I can't see myself going out and buying this because Pokémon, it's a series to me that, I mean, while I understand the hype around it, you know, it's a very well-rounded franchise overall. It's just, it seems so repetitive to me as somebody that kind of stands out from that crowd in a way. So I can't see myself jumping right back in for it, you know. Yeah, it's... I agree. Yeah, it's one of those things to me, and I feel like a hypocrite saying this because, you know, obviously I've been following the Zelda series very closely all these years, bought all the Zelda games, loved most of them.   It didn't even take place in the same world. Like, it had an actual world compared to an ocean. And that, to me, was a big enough difference to be like, okay, this isn't the same kind of Zelda game. Whereas, like, with Pokémon, a lot of the games kind of feel samey to me. And I know Pokémon Sun and Moon was like a big step from where the franchise has been. So, you know, it's like, you know, finally, after all these years, a true evolution of where Pokémon is going. But to have something so iterative on that this quickly, on a system that, at least personally, I'm not that excited for 3DS games anymore. Right. Because... We got the Switch. Yeah, I got the Switch.  I'm like, that's fine, I understand that. But in my mind, I'm not going to play on two different mobile video game systems when I'm out. I'm only going to take one, and I'm going to take the Switch.  I mean, it's a seriously cool thing, too. You know, it's not just because it's new, why people play it. But people will begin to respect it's 2017. You know, we got to have something kind of in this era to play, in a way. And the 3DS doesn't cut that anymore. It's, what, six years old now? And I mean, I still love my 3DS, don't get me wrong. But they definitely went more hardcore with their releases back in the day whenever it was still kind of getting out there, you know. Now they just kind of release what seem like filler titles just to kind of keep it alive. Yeah, I mean, the only way I can excuse what they're doing now, outside of the fact that they've always done this, so it's really, I, coming into this direct where everyone was like hyping it up, I'm like, dude, they're just going to like, port Pocken tournament and maybe release Sun and Moon 2. That's all I expected. And that's basically what we got. Outside of obviously the new Virtual Console stuff, and that's great, but they regularly release Virtual Console versions of the game. So like that, to me, that's not even that big of an announcement. Even as much as I love Gold and Silver, you know, if they would have announced it for Switch, and that would have been the very first Virtual Console game announced for Switch, that would have been cool. Since we don't even know Virtual Console coming to Switch. To put it into most simplest terms, my roommate texted me when he saw the direct, because it happened while I was still at work. And he said that he was expecting nothing from this direct, and he was still a bit disappointed.  And I'm sure it's fantastic. Like the idea of Pokemon battling, like throwing back to like old fighting games and to, you know, Pokemon Stadium kind of thing, except, you know, you're manually controlling the Pokemon. Like it feels really cool. Like a concept I would enjoy. But this overall direct, it's kind of like everyone right now is kind of waiting for that new Switch news that is going to make them feel like they were justified, I guess, in buying a Switch. And that's not to say they don't feel that way. Obviously Breath of the Wild, but again, a lot of the arguments right now are the two best games in the system are Wii U games that were ported. Right. And you know, now we know one of the next best games coming out is going to be a Wii U port. So, yeah, we have ARMS coming out next week, which is obviously a big deal. You know, it's the first like new IP, but it's also kind of Nintendo's first Switch exclusive game coming out. Which whoever thought that it would be a brand new IP would be their first Switch exclusive AAA game coming out. Just crazy to think that it's a new IP. It's not Mario. It's not Zelda. It's, you know, a brand new IP that's totally unproven in the market. But when I looked at this direct, I was like, well, I know what they're going to do, but it's not what they should do. The only excuse to me is if later this year or early next year we find out there is a Pokemon game coming to Switch and they just weren't ready to talk about it till 2018. And that would make this year just be like, okay, well, this year just is what it is. They are cash grabbing as much as they can. You know, they threw out these titles, Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon on 3DS instead of Switch because they're already working on a Switch game and they just wanted to make money in the meantime. So they're going to make money off the 66 million install base of 3DS, you know. Is it going to sell as well as Sun and Moon? Probably not. But, you know, it'll probably still combine sell north of 10 million units and that's plenty for them. Which, I mean, it's even crazy thinking about that. Like, I came from the Zelda world. There hasn't been a single Zelda game that's sold 10 million units. So just thinking of, oh, that's a down, that's a down Pokemon game for sales-wise. Right. So overall, like, I'm not disappointed by the direct because it is what it is. I just think people were hoping for a surprise. And I don't know, I think the problem with this direct coming as close as it is to E3 is, it almost makes me worry, it shouldn't make me worry because this is the Pokemon company versus Nintendo on the whole. But it makes me worry a little bit about is this kind of leading what our expectations should be for E3 as well, where Nintendo's got that half-hour spotlight and we're just going to hear about games we already know about and they're not really going to announce. Like, maybe their big surprise was Mario and Rabbids. Now we know. So... So now what? So now what? Because they literally said they're just talking about 2017 games and if they stick strictly to that, it's like, well, okay. Well, the thing with Nintendo, just not to get off topic for too long, just to kind of mention it. Yeah. I feel like in Nintendo Directs, they tend to say that, but now and then they kind of stretch that truth a little bit, you know? Sure, they have, yeah. And so I'm kind of expecting that rather, like maybe until the end of Q2 of 2018 even. Even if it's just like one game announcement that's coming in like February or something, you know, just something to kind of start off the New Year. So we have something else to look forward to other than, oh, this is all we're getting, you know? Because the game job thing, I feel like they have to have learned that from Wii U. You know, that was a mistake on their part. Everybody's aware of that. But with that said, you know, the Switch has had, what, like one big game a month now so far since launch, which is great. And hopefully that continues. But, you know... Well, I feel like this Direct, this Pokemon Direct, without meaning to, put almost more pressure on Nintendo AD 3.  Right. And let's say that Nintendo's other big announcement, let's say that 2018 surprise is a Smash Bros. port for early next year. Well, that's great. Obviously that needs to happen, but if that's your other big announcement and their previous big announcement was Pocken Tournament, it's like, well, so this is a console that's just surviving off Wii U ports all the time with a sprinkle of new games.  What's Retro Studio's been doing for the past four years? Since Tropical Freeze. How could we not have any announcement in four years? Is there a problem? Are there issues? There is Pikmin 4. We haven't heard about it yet. Supposedly Pikmin 4. Well, yeah. We believe exists. Right. Well, I know. I was in an interview, I think. Yeah, Miyamoto said it was basically done, but that's one announcement I almost expect to happen just because I think it was already done for Wii U and they're like, yeah, we can't put this on Wii U. So, yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, no, this Pokemon Direct, as I said, it met my expectations, which I guess is why I'm a little disappointed because I don't like when things meet my expectations unless my expectations are so high that they can't be met, typically. And I've never really been that way with anything. Outside of Breath of the Wild. Had any of the Breath of the Wilds release my expectations were sky high and they were mostly met. Whereas with this Direct, I just kind of expected the safe route and that's what they did. I'm kind of left empty inside. It's okay for... I almost want to tell the Pokemon Company that it's okay to not have a year with a new Pokemon game. Right. That's fine. You release them so often, it's okay. Like, yeah, the pock and tournament thing, the port probably needed to happen, just like all the other Wii U games. I'm sure we might hear at E3 that Band-Aid II is getting ported or something. That's fine. The Wii U library absolutely should get ported because the Wii U wasn't very popular and those games deserve a second shelf life. But those shouldn't be like showcase games, you know? Like, we're at a time now where everyone's waiting for all this big news. Pock and tournament's not really a big deal in the grand scheme of this. So that feels like something that could have been announced after E3, closer to release. Right. And I also... just another thing to keep in mind is the fact that he specifically... the... I forget his name. The Pokemon Company president specifically mentioned that this is the next big Switch game for Pokemon and everyone else was remembering that interview and I don't remember the exact quote, but I distinctly remember there being an interview at one point where someone asked him and they were like, yeah, the next big Pokemon game is gonna be on Switch. And then they came out with the Pokemon Black and White 2.374. Yeah. I think that's just the general feeling coming out of this direct is that it's what people expected, but people were hoping that there was going to be more.  And I get it, those rumors have been around forever. Whether or not they're true or not doesn't really matter at this point. What matters... We'll find out soon enough anyway. I mean, well, we're not gonna find out until 2018. Right. We're gonna do it to be honest. And if we find out the next Pokemon games are coming also to 3DS, and it's like, okay, well, you just give up. They're not releasing HD Pokemon. It's just not happening. But I don't know. I mean, I feel like these games are fine to exist as they are. No one's gonna complain about Virtual Console. No one's gonna complain that Pock and Tournament got ported with some new content. There's new versions of Sun and Moon after how popular they were last year. That's fine, I just... I feel like these are just announcements they could sprinkle later in the year. They didn't need to be like a precursor to E3. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Which I don't know if that's my fault. I mean, maybe it's just because I'm not... There's probably people that are really hyped for the new Sun and Moon games. Like really, really hyped. Pokemon sells like hotcakes. Yeah, I'm sure there's tons of people. We're obviously not among them. But it's to that point where... Yeah, that's just what's expected. Can you do something unexpected? You want to know what the next big Pokemon game could have been if they really wanted to make a big deal on Switch? They could have brought Pokemon Stadium back. That would be awesome. And had the new Sun and Moon games work with that because we already have evidence of other games being able to work with cross-saves and 3DS to Switch. What if when we learn more about Poken Tournament that it turns out that Poken Tournament is the next Pokemon Colosseum? Or like it has like a side mode in it? Yeah, a new unannounced mode that's Colosseum mode basically. That's almost like dreaming that they have another mode that's Pokemon Snap. That would be the only reason why I would buy Poken because I bought Poken on Wii U and played it like maybe two or three times in all of existence and it's been collecting dust ever since. But I would probably actually legitimately play Poken Deluxe on Switch if it had a Colosseum mode. Well yeah, well I think a lot of the issues with Poken Tournament or however it's pronounced is that it's definitely like an arcade game. Yeah. Arms feels like it's got more to it than a Poken Tournament because there's upgrades and unlockables and there's like a backstory apparently and Poken legitimately is also an arcade game. Yeah, it was originally released as an arcade game so it's like arcade games aren't a bad deal like that's fine but there's not a lot of substance to it so we know what this game is. We know. Here's your Pokemon, you have all your moves you know like this is just what it is it's a fighting game and there's no substance behind it just Pokemon fighting and Arms has more substance to it you know even a lot of the fighting games today you know the new street fighters the new Mortal Kombat they even have more substance now added so it almost feels out of place in our world today where arcades aren't really as relevant as they used to be. And correct me if I'm wrong but aren't all five of the new characters coming to Poken Deluxe just characters that they added to the arcade version? That I do not know that I would have to double check because the arcade version is only in Japan I'm not 100% sure about that this is the first time I've heard of them but I haven't been watching any Poken Tournament news in a long time until this announcement so yeah, Mason what's your general takeaway from this? You know I feel like just in general people expected more than what we got and while we did get some you know decent announcements for what they were people were expecting this thing and this thing only for example you know and once they got what would seem like a repeat of what we just played last year it's kind of like what's the point you know I'm sure people enjoyed the virtual console that we're getting for 3DS and Poken Tournament DX or Deluxe whatever you call it whatever you prefer but I just can't see people getting insanely like oh my gosh this is going to be the best thing I've ever seen that kind of thing you know since we kind of have seen similar I mean it's Pokemon for me looking at it from this perspective from mine it all looks the same to me I mean that's just how I see Pokemon I don't hate it and I understand there's people that do like it but for me personally I'm not really at all it's just like okay cool well that's why a lot of people want to see like a Pokemon Star has happened because it would be a game on switch in HD you know all the excuses for not doing certain things in the past because you're limited are gone so like that's what people I think that's why a lot of people are let down today because they wanted to see what Game Freak could do if you remove all these mobile restrictions and let them have the power of the switch to basically do whatever the heck they want I feel like if they did put it on the switch though their entire Pokemon like the 3DS fan base in general would just die you know because then oh there's an HD Pokemon forget this thing I don't need it anymore I can play it on my switch yeah but the switch would also continue to sell the hotcakes so there's a counter to that like yeah the 3DS might die but the 3DS sales have already been kind of sinking I know that they did get kind of a boost last year with Sun and Moon but in general they have been going down as they should 6 year old piece of hardware you know and yeah I know they're releasing another 2DS XL thing and that's fine maybe that'll become their new standard cheap go to you know system I think it's 150 bucks exactly half the price of a switch yeah like I get it like there is room in the marketplace for like a cheap handheld like that especially for kids but I feel like I wonder if the reason some people are disappointed is because they are in that camp that they just feel like the switch is absolutely perfect but they see a path work to be so much better and part of that path includes Pokemon I think for the switch to be at its peak it would most definitely need to include Pokemon because Pokemon is Nintendo's arguably Nintendo's biggest seller compared to Mario and even Fire Emblem has been getting up there even compared to Zelda these days but if switch wants to succeed switch definitely needs the Pokemon support which is where Pokken kind of comes in but it doesn't quite fill the niche we've all been looking to itch per se yeah no I think Nintendo is in a very interesting spot right now even with regards to Pokemon with the 3DS with everything because I think a lot of people love the idea of the switch being their all in one system being that hybrid it's not a home console you take on the go it's a hybrid of home console and portable and in many consumers minds that means we should get all of Nintendo's franchises on that system but Nintendo has never said they're gonna do that they've never once come out and said that's gonna happen that's just what people assume should happen because hey it is a hybrid at least it feels like a hybrid and Nintendo's been like the whole time they've always said we're gonna continue to support the 3DS there's gonna continue to be 3DS exclusive games and it's just this ultra moon and ultra sun are just further proof that maybe there are gonna just continue to keep making 3DS games highly popular ones that are never gonna come to switch and you have to wonder someday if that you know let's say they said they're supporting the 3DS at least in 2018 let's find out they announced even brand new Pokemon games for 2018 and they're throwing the 3DS then you start getting to the point where Nintendo might try to keep the 3DS going for another four years and is that ever going to start affecting the switch sales because people still need to own two Nintendo systems to get all the Nintendo games I feel yes absolutely it will affect sales I think the the 3DS is almost holding the switch back and it's unfortunate that I'm not sure if Nintendo does or doesn't realize it but it's slightly disappointing to me that Nintendo isn't just going all in with switch and saying alright we've we're here to fix our past mistakes we know you didn't like the Wii U the 3DS it did alright and we're gonna do what we did good and we're gonna do what we did good here and there and everywhere we're gonna just make this a bam at least on the flip side we do a Fire Emblem coming to the system next year so hopefully a full Fire Emblem will be great they made it sound like it's a full Fire Emblem game we haven't had Fire Emblem on a home console in a long time so it's due it's a path of radiance on Wii in a long while I mean the 3DS helped revive the franchise so now it's time to get that home console experience well I think that's gonna gonna wrap it up here for our reaction I think fans out there kinda get the general gist of how we feel it was okay expected a little bit of a let down because we're hoping for more I will say the virtual console thing is probably the highlight for me though more virtual consoles brand new pokemon games and old pokemon games you're excited about I suppose but I'm also one of those classic pokemon master race once they started making ice cream for pokemon I gave up I figured you already mentioned that once they had some weird pokemon designs that was what was kinda nice with sun and moon they kinda took their good pokemon designs and just redid them a little bit I will give them some credit for that I don't know where they were going with some of those pokemon designs I agree I never really planned to pick up sun and moon but I did actually watch most of the pokemon unveiling trailers and I saw all those pokemon and this last generation wasn't too bad well I mean again a lot of reimagining of already existing pokemon which to me is way better than whatever the heck they've been doing for a couple of genes at least oh my god the ice cream pokemon there's so many bad pokemon designs it's like are you really running out of ideas let me just look at oh look I have a remote control let's make this a pokemon quick we're parakeas or parakeas yeah or parakeet there's new pokemon in this one so just wait for the joycon pokemon oh yes it's happening it better evolve into a full switch no it evolves into two joycons no grip and then it becomes the actual switch it'll do something like it'll have some weird third evolution that's got nothing to do with it and then a mega evolution where it has a dock there you go there it is jeez alright mason you got any closing thoughts on the direct uh you know kind of like what you said just kind of summed it up pretty well we were somewhat disappointed but somewhat you know this was expected kind of thing you know me personally again I'm not really too fond of the series in general so I'm kind of like okay cool but at the same time you know I wish the people got what they were expecting rather I don't think Sun and Moon 2 I mean obviously this pokemon is going to sell well I just don't think it's going to like be exactly what Nintendo is expecting in terms of like sales and stuff sure well I want to thank you guys for joining me on this Nintendo Prime Reacts obviously if you guys out there listening watching if you have your own opinions or you think these are the greatest things in sliced bread go ahead and let us know down in the comments it's cool to disagree with us we all have our own opinions on things obviously if you liked what we did here you could like, subscribe, comment below obviously go ahead and over to Mason of Delphino's channel he's got a lot of cool videos he does over there I've watched most of them yeah I've watched most of them in the last few months and then obviously you got Sursurge Outlet, I almost said chat since that's his name on Discord yeah Sursurge Outlet over on Twitch you can go ahead and go watch them I'll put some links down to your guys' channels and stuff in the description thanks for joining maybe we'll get together again once this whole E3 fiasco is over definitely oh and I'm jealous of you Mason going to E3 I'm so excited it's going to be worth it I went last year man it's a lot of fun I'll let you know how it goes alright I'll catch you guys next time


We want to go on and start on time. So I'm going to ask if you're not speaking, if you will mute out and I'm going to ask Bishop McKee, if he will pray our meeting in and then tell us about the genesis of BCI as we move forward through our time. Thank all of you for coming. You want me to tell you about the genesis for BCI? If you would like to. Okay. Let us pray.  We're reminded that this afternoon, that we're talking about BCI and about its future. Our future is the North Texas Conference in terms of our ministry with our African-American brothers and sisters, and their ministries together. God, we ask your blessings upon all that we do this night. We're grateful for S. Diana and the work that she has done and others who have supported her, and we celebrate that this evening as well. Of course, the name of the Christ I pray, amen. I'll give you a brief rundown how we got to this point, how we got to the point in the beginning, and not in terms of how we morphed into the nomenclature so much as what we propose to do. It's obvious that none of our work related anything in annual conferences but over the work will continue after everyone on this call has gone to the next place in their life, to be honest. This is ongoing work. It's not to say that it is critical work and it is urgent work. I don't want to say that. But in that time, so I have to give a lot of credit also to Kami Gassen at the time who we were talking about some of the things that we were aware of, that we're learning more about, and we needed somebody to address this and somebody to spend about three years working and solely in and with the African-American churches and clergy and laity. And we came to the conclusion quickly, I might add, that Estayana would be the perfect person to do it because we knew that she would see the tasks that were involved. We knew that she knew the Black church and the Dallas area well. And when I say the Dallas area, I mean, most of our African-American churches are in Dallas, not all of them, but most of them. And we think that's a place where we need to do better than we've done. And so that's how we got there. And we had also done some considered doing the work with, I don't think, Estayana, I don't think I need to really go into this in any great detail with. No, sir. That's all I'll say. I'm through. OK, that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Vishamaki. I will say some more about that a little bit later in our time together this evening. We have asked one of our pastors to respond to the importance of BCI. And so I'm going to ask Mr. President, the newly elected installed president of our African-American clergy group, if he will talk about BCI. And so we thank Joshua for accepting that role and Mr. President, we would like to hear from you now. Thank you very much, Reverend Estayana.  Now you made me nervous. I'm more nervous staring at your faces on the screen than I would have been if we were in person. But very briefly, since I have four and a half minutes, for me, the Black Church Initiative is really honestly the reason why I'm sitting before you today. As far as my own story is concerned, I graduated from seminary a couple of years ago. And fresh out of seminary, I was appointed to succeed a pastor master's at Warren. And so I did not have any experience serving as an associate at another church. My internship was kind of weird. So I didn't learn all the things I needed to learn. And for some reason or another, God saw fit to make sure I started my journey at Warren. And because of that, I had to learn a lot relatively quickly out of frying pan into the fire. And some things were sort of lost in transition. It was also my first professional job. So I was not aware of all of the spoken and unspoken expectations, if you will. And in doing that, my back was, in many ways, just against the wall. And no matter how much God, I believe, had given me a vision for what Warren could be, I couldn't live into it because of my frustration with a number of different things. And I would argue that I was the only one who was frustrated with myself. And so as there was growing frustration, it would have been very easy for me to kind of give up. And also for, I mean, honestly, our cabinet to give up on this experiment. But Reverend Masters made sure I was connected to a coach who really understood me, but understood our connection and how to begin translating some of the language that was lost in translation for me, helping me understand some of the unspoken expectations, and helping me grow into a level of comfort with who I was and where I was going. And what was at the time was a skills gap. And I think Black Church Initiative is not the only pastor that's happened for. I'm sure that's happened for a number of us. Excuse me, I have a one-year-old here. But I'm not the only pastor that's happened for. And I truly believe that that is the reason I'm still here. And not just here in the North Texas Conference, but really in ministry in general, was because of the Black Church Initiative. And to that point, I think there is a perceived skills gap in our African-American clergy, whether that is real or perception is another conversation or what expectations are for pastors in different settings is another conversation. But I think the work of BCI has been to create common language and translate where translation is needed, and to coordinate and stand in the gap. And also, last thing, as I closed a couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. When I visited the Land Institute, the president of the Land Institute taught us something. He basically shared with us that they did not plant individual plant species in homogenous pools, but rather put different plant species next to one another because diversity helped to breed resilience amongst the plants. And so I would argue for us moving forward, the reason a Black Church Initiative is important because it strengthens us as a connection in total. Even as our African-American clergy are strengthened and equipped to succeed, that strengthens our clergy pool in general because diversity does, in fact, breed resilience. And I am grateful for the Black Church Initiative. I look forward to what it will become. Reverend Masters, you're muted still. Thank you, Pastor Joshua. We are very thankful for your work with Warren and the North Texas Conference and in your leadership. I have asked Minister Phoebe Hutchins to talk about the importance of the laity. When we think about the Black Church Initiative, it's not just the work of the pastors. Nothing that's done in the church is just the work of the pastors. The work of the laity is critically important. And so I'm going to ask her if she will talk about the role of laity in the work of BCI. Amen. Thank you, Reverend Masters. I'm sure a lot of you know me.  I'm a pastor's child. I mean, if you may not know that. So therefore, I know the importance of clergy. And I know the role that clergy plays in the church, the tiring role sometimes, the uncomfortable role. But I also know that laity is somehow the glue, if you will, that holds the church together. If the laity is uncomfortable, somehow the congregation, the church is uncomfortable. But I've worked with Pastor Masters since the conception of BCI. And after the vision was laid, the churches were chosen. And I also serve on St. Luke's BCI committee. And the importance of laity in this entire Black Church initiative is once pastors lay the vision out before the church, it's the laity that actually do the work. And once the vision is laid, it's the laity that takes the responsibility and those different ministry areas to recruit other laypeople, other disciples to come in and actually do the work. So being on St. Luke's team has been such a blessing because by our church being so large and having two services, you don't always know everyone. We would always say we have two churches, the 8 o'clock church and the 11 o'clock church. But this team somehow brought us together in a different way, whereas we could put ideas together and know what our strengths and weaknesses are. And BCI also brought in Mystery Guest. And we did a survey for the church, in the church. The congregation actually led this survey to kind of show us our strengths and weaknesses.  But anyway, Joyce Bell, Mrs. Joyce Bell. And so we sat down, we found our strengths. We didn't really focus a lot on our strengths. We know our strengths. We focus more on our weaknesses and how we could get an expedite those moves in ways that we could connect with our congregations. Because a lot of times, us as Laity, doing the footwork a lot of times, we think we're always doing it right. But until up, because we're leading it. But until those who are not leading it come in and say, hey, I wasn't welcome well in this area, or the audio could be better, or the visuals could be better, or the worship guide is too long, or it's too short. Or I mean, just things that we need to know. So Laity is very important in our all churches. However, I am the chair of Black Methodist for Church Renewal from North Texas. So of course, you all know the Black Church is a heart piece for me. But anyway, we're here for our clergy. And as I started, and I will end the same way, I've always been very partial to clergy because I am a PK. And I know what you all go through behind the doors that a lot of people can't see and hear. So we continue to lift you all up. And that's what we're here for. So I didn't use four minutes. But hey, somebody else can take my time. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. So I wanted everyone to know that BCI is housed in our center for church development. I have invited our director, Reverend Dr. Owen Ross, to respond to what has been said up till this point. So Dr. Ross? Yeah. And I want to start by saying that I feel blessed that BCI is housed in the Center for Church Development because it really collaborates across all the centers. And we have with us tonight the director for the Center for Mission and Outreach, Andy Lewis, with us, as well as the superintendent for the Metro District, Debra Homs Mason. And Esnaiana and BCI have worked closely with all of them. But as Reverend Master says, it is housed in the Center for Church Development. She and I started on the same day and navigated this work together. And we began talking about this meeting that we're having tonight in May when she had announced that she was retiring. We said, we need to have a meeting in which we can share what has been the impact of BCI during these three years and communicate what our next steps are going to be. And so we've been talking about this meeting and preparing for this meeting. And I thank God for the presence of each and every one of you here tonight. And we'll now ask Reverend Masters to share with you the work that we have done over these three years as well as share what is next with the Black Church Initiative. Thank you. Thank you. So you've heard a little bit about the Black Church Initiative. What I'm going to do is go through a PowerPoint and talk about where we have come, what we have done, and then our next steps. I've done many PowerPoints over my career, but I've not ever had a PowerPoint where I'm not changing the slides. So Zoom brings about a change, and change is not always bad. It's just different. So I invite you to have patience. And as we go through this, we will have questions. You may have questions at the end. I would like for you to just take a moment to look at this slide. I'm not going to say a lot about it, but I would like you to listen.  And what I would say if I was in person, I would say, call their names. So I'm going to pause for you to look at this slide. I know I've asked you to mute out, but do you see the names of all of the people there? That's very important. And we could add other names. Owen, I'm going to need to change this.  The black church is the heart of all of those that matter.  When you think about the black church, you think about the black community. They're not all right there around you. If you think about St. Luke, I don't know of anybody that lived in walking distance of St. Luke. St. Luke has members all around. So does the village. So does St. Paul. So does St. Hamilton Park. But it's the community. And we mean community in general. It's so important for us to think about the black community when you think about voter suppression, when you think about our black men and black women being killed. People are coming to the church to say, what are our next steps? So yes, it's important for us to support our black churches because that supports our black communities. In our, when we think about the black churches of the North Texas Conference, we've been struggling on many levels. When Bishop McKee looked at this, Bishop McKee decided to shine a light upon this situation and not just shine a light on it, but think about the necessity of doing something about it. The light was there, but nobody had done anything about it. So a new position was added to the Center for Church Development for the exclusive. And I just wanna repeat that for the exclusive purpose of working with our black pastors and the laity of our black churches in the North Texas Conference. What do we start with? We started with investing in our black church related to preaching. That was one of our first cohort.  You have to be really strong in preaching to be effective in the black church. And I'm gonna say something about that a little bit later. We also invested in leadership in the black church. As you heard Phoebe say, laity is involved in every aspect. So we have laity and preachers working together. What we did from the very beginning, we equipped our laity and clergy with not just with new faces, new spaces. When the conference decided to do a new initiative, new faces, new spaces, we did a workshop at Warren United Methodist Church just for our black churches. We did a session on stewardship and finance. One of the leaders for that session is owned this called Reverend Melvin Amerson for Texas Methodist Foundation. We're glad that we're here. We did a workshop on discipleship led by Reverend Dr. Dwight Radcliffe. And in doing that, he talked about how do you make disciples when you don't have a district superintendent to go to saying you need money, you don't have a conference office to go to to say you need money. How do you build and how do you form disciples? We did a whole days lesson on that. And social media. We did social media before COVID. Dr. Cogman came here from Baltimore, a DS in the Baltimore area. And she talked about social media. The first time she came, we invited her to do a session for the clergy. How to do an SPRC meeting, how to do all of the meetings just on social media on Facebook. Now that we're doing COVID, we have COVID, what we have taught the black churches for two years before COVID hit, we started with that with Dr. Cogman. So it's one thing to have programs, but it's another thing to be financially invested. And so I think Bishop McKee and the conference for not only creating this job, but also putting money in it. So the village is one of our new church starts. You may not know this, but the village is the first new church start that the North Texas conference had as black since the 1950s. There had not been a new black church start in the North Texas conference, this Hamilton Park. So we wanted to encourage them and we invested first $50,000. They accepted the challenge and raised another $50,000. And during COVID, when that challenge was met, we met together on the parking lot and they passed a Derek received a check for $50,000. When was the last time that a black church received $100,000? That shows that the North Texas conference is interested in supporting our black churches. We also supported black church pastors. We have Pastor Payton at Payton Parker at First Methodist Lancaster as he's starting a new black congregation while sustaining the church that's there. We also have Miranda and congratulations to Miranda for passing DCOM today. And the BCI is involved in supporting those black church pastors. As Joshua mentioned earlier, coaches are needed for clergy. Every one of our four largest churches, our four BCI churches, Hamilton Park, the village, St. Paul, St. Luke, each one of those churches had a coach. But that wasn't the only group that had coaches. Several of our young clergy also had coaches and we believe the conference has been involved in coaches for a while and we use that resource for our clergy. We also had a program that we called 2020 Leadership and it worked hand in hand with our mystery guest assessment. We did the 2020 Leadership in our four largest churches and the main piece, Phoebe referred to it, is an assessment. Every church had that assessment done by the entire congregation. It was hard work. It took a long time and the pastors would call me to say, it has taken so long to get this done, but what happened as a result of them staying with that and being encouraged is when we did the mystery guest, which was following 2020 Leadership, what we saw by people coming to these churches that had not ever gone to church or hadn't gone in a long time, where some of the weaknesses were, not one of those churches saw those weaknesses for the first time. They all had been already identified and moving forward in addressing those weaknesses. So 2020 Leadership and mystery guest worked hand in hand. So we have equipped our clergy with preaching. We led that with Reverend Dr. Kevin Muriel, one of our young adult preachers in the nation. He leads one of our largest churches, but we didn't just get him. We also partnered with Dr. Alice McKenzie, the leader of preaching at Perkins School of Theology. They worked hand in hand in helping our large church pastors improve their preaching. It was, we called it iron sharpening iron. Two of them on this call, I saw Derek and Chiron on the call, they will gladly tell you. We worked really hard in that, but we didn't want to just have those large church pastors equipped. We did a leadership cohort with Reverend Dr. Kevin Muriel with our young black clergy. Bishop McKee is talking all about equipping our young black clergy. So we brought them along and they had a year with Reverend Dr. Muriel also.  So when we were equipping the congregations, separate from equipping the clergy, they first did an assessment. That assessment took a really long time. It had them to look inside rather than outside. No one had to guess where they were strong. No one had to guess where they were weak. I would say this slide helps you to understand why BCI is different from other programs across the nation that other annual conferences uses because what BCI does is it is a prescriptive program. So what we saw as strengths and weaknesses for Hamilton Park were different from St. Paul, different from the village and different from St. Luke. So each church were able to assess where they were strong, where they were weak. They worked with their coaches to respond to those weaknesses, as Phoebe already mentioned, and that helped to start the improvement of strengthening that congregation. So we look at what we've done over those three years. We've helped our churches not only to make disciples but form disciples. We've done it through leadership on every level, clergy and laity. We've done it with preaching with our clergy. We've done it also with coaching. We've had several coaching teams that have worked with our clergy and with our cohorts. We had several cohorts that we've formed and provided for over these three years. One of the cohorts was a young cohort where we took them to Houston and they were exposed to two of our churches there, two of our church leaders there and they wanted more and we were excited about that. We had a cohort of pastors that were very different in what, how they did their ministry. They were all south of Dallas and they got together and came up with a focus on how to do ministry and what they could do together. That was one of the last cohorts we put together and it ended in the spring of 2020 and their work is even continuing. So this slide helps you to look at BCI in a holistic kind of thing because if I had one slide to say, what did we do? This is what we did and I showed you the financial aspects of it. So in the midst of the pandemic of racism that's going on across our nation, including our city, including our United Methodist Church, the world is watching and learning how the United States has treated black men. We see them killed on a regular basis and it just tears me up and not just our black men but black women who are just in their home and thus how is the United States going to support the black people's dreams and hopes and successes and children and how do we move forward? And I think to take it away from the US but how do we do it in the church? Well, these are our next steps. These are the steps that we've already begun. We will have BCI teams, not just in our four large churches but we have extended it to Warren and Church of the Disciples. Those BCI teams, all six of those teams will be organized and become very active in what it means to strengthen their congregation. These BCI teams will either continue implementing their assessments and the two that have not started the implementation they will be allowed to start the assessments so that we will know for sure where they're strong and where they're weak and what our next steps are. And all of this work involves them working with clergy and laities to maximize the ministerial potential of every single church. Their strengths and weaknesses are different church by church but this is a prescriptive program for that reason. Each BCI team will have a coach and that coach will help them not only to develop and execute the goals but to come up with benchmarks and strategies and strategies for making disciples. Every year that we've had BCI, we have had a conference-wide training session. The last one was held at Warren and we had national leaders come in. Reverend Mevin Emerson was one. We had the White Ratcliffe come in. We had Jim Salley come in about finances from the African University. We had Dr. Cogman come in. We have national leaders come in and every single church, every single black church is invited to come to our trainings. And so in our next steps, rather than having that training in May, what we're hoping to do is have that training in fall, in the fall. So I'm asking you to pay attention to that. Look forward to receiving a date. It will be in the month of December but every black church, including clergy and laity, clergy who are not serving black churches like Edlin Cowley, who is not serving a black church. We always invite him and others, April Bristo, who's not serving a black church. They come to all of our trainings like this training and we're looking forward to having that to just kind of see what the fall has encompassed and what we'll be doing from that. And this next slide is gonna tell you why we do it. We must find a way, my brothers and sisters, to look after one another as if we were one tribe. That's a quote from Chalala Chadwick Boseman and I would say to you as Owen closes that, Wakanda forever for all of us. I would invite you to join me and stand Wakanda forever for all of us. All of us on this call Wakanda forever. I would like to invite the director of CCD to add anything I may have left out. It takes a lot more energy to get a ball rolling than to keep a ball rolling. And so although Reverend Masters officially entered into her retirement status on July one, I have asked her and since contracted her to ensure that this work continues. You know, we find ourselves in unique times and in the life of our church navigating what we'll be and what our needs are and what our needs are going to be. But I am thankful that she is generously accepted and is continuing this work. As she was going over the work that has been done, I kind of felt a little bit, as she was talking about different things, I was like, but you forgot to talk about fish. You forgot, you didn't mention this. And then I was like, well, I guess I felt a little bit about John when he was writing about our Lord. If we were to report on everything that she did, it would be a much longer PowerPoint than we presented tonight. I wanna say that it's been a team effort for the Center for Church Development. We were talking about this this afternoon, although Reverend Masters led BCI, it had the attention, energy and work time of all of the members of the Center for Church Development. Brenda, Peyton, Parker can share about how much Matt Temple has worked with them, as well as Derek Jacobs and has been partnering with our planters. And so there's been investment directly from our staff in the work of our black churches, as well as our collaboration. Liliana von Hill is on here, she's coordinating this. Liliana had led our Healthy Church Initiative and when we came in, we were talking about BCI and we said, we want BCI to be like HCI, but we want it to be black and better. And they have developed that aspect, but that's only been one aspect of BCI that has been developed. And Liliana von Hill played an integral part in the development of that strategy in investing in our churches. And so if you only leave with one thing tonight, I want you to leave with this, the North Texas Conference Leadership and the Center for Church Development is committed to ensuring that our black churches are invested in and that they are strengthened and that we continue to make reaching the African-American mission field a priority. And I am thankful for the work of S. Diana Masters for the leadership around BCI, for Minister Hutchins, for Edlin Cowley, for Joshua Manning and all who have been invested to make what was shared tonight possible and we're committed to continuing this. I had a long conversation with President Manning last night and said as we start looking forward to 2021 in the future, that I wanna make sure that we are communicating and gathering and staying connected to what is needed in our black congregations and how we can best invest in their fruitfulness. So I thank all of you for being here tonight and we'll turn it back over to Reverend Masters. Thank you Reverend Dr. Ross. When we think about the next steps, one of the things that I've said to several of you on this call is I will be meeting with you, we'll set up a team meeting with the pastor and the BCI team coming, not coming to you as I have done in the past three years, but we'll come together on Zoom and start our work again and make sure that you're organized, that you have your assessments right there ready to go and we're not gonna need to start from scratch. We have two new churches that we've added to this and that's Warren and Church of the Disciple we've always planned to continue to add churches but I will be meeting with each one of your churches coming together with your BCI teams. I'm looking forward to that and we do that work individually because the work, the conversation I will have with St. Luke will be completely different than the conversation I will have at Hammond and Park. So look across these three pages, I see a lot of clergy, I mean a lot of laity particularly that are on BCI teams and I am so excited to have you here. So other than specifically for your church if there are particular questions that you wanna ask, you can unmute and we will receive those questions and answer them if we can and if not, we will get back with you. So are there any particular questions that you would like to ask? I see somebody's hand up. Yes, so I have Diana, Lilliana here. Lilliana, hi. Hi, how are you? Good. So we have two questions here so far. In the chat? Yes, so I'll kind of like, I'll share them with you and then you can answer. The questions is, will this team focus on smaller black churches this go around? Yes, yes we have. So at this point, Warren is a small black church. They won't continue to be a small black church but at this point that's one of the churches that we're including. So yes, to answer that question. Is there another question? Yes, how many black churches do we have now and how many will we have in 2021? Say, can you say that one more time? I didn't get it all. How many black churches do we have now and how many will we have in 2021? You don't mean in BCI, whoever asked that question. We have six churches in the BCI. Altogether we have, I think 15 black churches and that would be the same number that we will have in 2021. I want to just say to you, as we started this journey three years ago, we have worked with all of the churches. They have not been labeled a BCI church but there's not a black church in the North Texas Conference that I have not worshiped with, met with the pastor and talked with them. And I just say to you right now, I celebrate that during this three year time, we have not had one of our black churches close. And we need to just say, amen, raise your hand and just, we give God glory for that because it's the work of all of us together. And so, yes, that number will still be the same in January, we don't plan on closing black churches. What we want to do is help each church look at where they are and get stronger in the areas where they're weak. If you remember when we were there first started, Phoebe talked to, she's a member of St. Luke. She talked about, they didn't look at what they're good at. They know that. They looked at what they're weak at and that's how you remain open. That's how you learn how to make disciples and form disciples. Look at where your deficiencies are and we, and I will work with you and the coach will work with you and that's what we have done in the past and that's what we will continue to do. Can I jump in Diana? Yes, Dr. Patterson. Good evening everybody, I'm Reverend Patterson. Oh, go on. I'm Reverend Patterson from Hamilton Park United Methodist and Diana, I want to tell you as a tribute or as an evidence of how effective DCI was, we have over 10 lay people on this call right now. That shows lay engagement. That shows lay buy-in. That shows BCI was effective at Hamilton Park. So if you want some proof in the pudding, Hamilton Park is great numbers. I told my folk Diana Messers and the Bishop said get on the line and they are here. And we want to say thank you number one for selecting our church. This process has been amazing and what it taught us and how we had to review ourselves and learn so much. It has been amazing. And it's good to hear that I think you're saying you want cutting us off, you're gonna still be around, is that right? Yes, ma'am. I'm gonna be right there with you the way I've been with Hamilton Park from the beginning, because you know we were there. And while I have you on the phone right now, I would like for you to say something about the preaching cohort. Because I remember at the end you said you know what? I was not happy that you made us buy our own books. But was that time with Dr. McKenzie and Dr. Muriel and wait the work that we did, what is your response as one of the pastors? As you said earlier, preaching is essential in the black church. You have to be able to preach just the way it is. And so you are brought in Muriel and Alice McKenzie to make us go to the next level. And that included buying and reading a lot of books, preaching and having our preaching critiqued by those experts, McKenzie and Muriel and our team. And it really pushed me further in my preaching and made it a lot better. So I say again, this BCI thing works and I wanna thank you for all the effort that you all put into it, it really works. And so I'm excited about more churches getting on board and I'm also excited about you staying with us to help us get even better. And let me close by saying, if it hadn't been for BMC, BCI, the park wouldn't have been so able to jump into community engagement during COVID-19. We jumped in and started feeding, doing COVID testing because we were used to being nimble and evaluating and making ourselves available. So all that is due to what we learned from BCI. So thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Patterson for those kind words. We really appreciate the work that Hamilton Park is doing and I'm looking forward to having our meeting with your BCI team and with you. Thank you. May I say something? Yes, yes, ma'am. Thank you, Dr. Patterson. I didn't know how many late persons were on this call but I just wanna piggyback on something that Dr. Patterson did say because I am laity. For the churches that may be on here are the laity that may be on this call and if your church is not a part of BCI yet, if and when it's presented, try not to be apprehensive. I know that sometimes when new programs sit on the conference room table, it's like that's just something else they want us to do to keep us busy but that's really not it. This is more than just another program. This is actually a program that will really find out your strength and weaknesses and I say that because I know that I pose the question to the Black clergy that a part of EMCR of the smaller congregations, all these acronyms. I hadn't seen a few of them doing this pandemic because they did not have the means to have Zoom or Facebook or live stream or YouTube because they didn't know how to do. They weren't trained or didn't have the funding or just something simple. So being a part of this BCI program would help you also learn a lot of things about how to move forward because we didn't expect this pandemic in cane but I think we're doing really well communicating with one another even on Sundays during this time. So anyway. Thank you, Phoebe. One of the things I hope that you heard from Dr. Patterson and from Phoebe is when you think about doing BCI work, it's not easy. I'm not a person that just kind of sits, I love to talk, everybody knows me. When Owen and I are talking, we don't know who's gonna get off the phone first.  But I would say to you, BCI is a lot of work but the payoff is more than worth it. It's more than worth it. So if you're ready to put in the work, put in the time, your church will be a stronger church in making disciples as a result of the work that you're doing involving your BCI team. Are there other questions that... We have a few more questions. Yes ma'am, thank you. Lily, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so very much. I really appreciate all that you do and being a part of this BCI team. No problem, it's my pleasure. So we have another question. What will BCI do to cultivate, create and engage spaces where black churches in rural and non-urban spaces? Okay, what we will do in those spaces to cultivate, create and engage is the same thing we've done in the urban churches. We'll come meet with them and do the assessment, see where they're strong, see where they're weak and move forward from there. Is there another question? Yes, I'm ready. Okay, so Phoebe, if you wanna jump in here, I wanna make sure that I'm asking your question correctly. Will you look at ways to partner with larger churches with smaller churches? But then she said, she kinda jumped in and said larger churches. Yes, so let me tell you what she means. And I'm glad Dr. Patterson is on the call because what we have agreed to is the larger churches that we spent money and effort in getting them strong, they will help with leading with, they were partnering with one of our smaller churches. So once I get the larger churches really kind of back rolling, yes, they already have agreed to partner with our smaller churches. Great, okay, another question. I believe this is the last one unless somebody else wants to jump in. What can neighboring churches do to help? Example, my church at First UNC Tarot engaging with Warren Chapel in Tarot. I think that's from Peter, Peter Magnap. So yes, thank you for that question. When we're working together, we don't want to leave anyone out, Peter. And so as we talk about community involvement with Warren Chapel in Tarot, then what we can do is invite you and your team to come and join us. And I would even suggest, since I've been in that beautiful sanctuary where your church is, that we meet there, that you provide a place for us to host the meeting if we're not doing Zoom, but coming together and partnering together with your church and with that church, the black church in Tarot will be something that I would look forward to helping to coordinate. And once I get the two of you together and you're doing community work, you will just continue to do that work as Dr. Patterson mentioned early. One of the things that they wanted to get stronger at is being involved in the community. So when COVID hit, they were ready. They jumped right in, they were equipped. They didn't need any get ready time. They hit the ground rolling. And if you watched her on Facebook, you would see they did something every day. They went from the food to the, given the test for the COVID, then doing backpacks. So community involvement is very important. And Peter, I would say to you that just as the black community is centered around that church, we would invite you to be a part of that because Terrell is a community where everybody can have the same mission field that they're trying to reach. So you and I are gonna be talking about some other things related to coaching anyway, and we will have that conversation with you then. Okay, we have one more question. Yes ma'am. Based on the BCI data, what was the number one strength and the numeric weakness within the black church? Okay. You have 10 seconds to answer. So let me see if I can answer that. And the person that gave that question, I don't want you to think that I'm being evasive or not answering it, but let me just answer that and just so that you will know that it's not an answer. BCI is a prescriptive program. It's not a cookie cutter program. We started with a cookie cutter program and we became prescriptive right away. The number one strengths are based on that congregation. So one of the number one weaknesses, I would say, for Hamilton Park was they wanted to be more involved in the community. And so they worked on that and they got involved, as Dr. Patterson said, they were ready when COVID hit. The number one weakness for another church would be something else. So it's not a number one strength or number one weakness for all of the churches because we don't do it by all of the churches. We do it congregation by congregation because it's a prescriptive program. What St. Luke has is their number one strength and number one weakness is completely different than the number one strength and the number one weakness as the village. Even though St. Luke birthed the village, you would think that they would have the same, but it's different. So every congregate, and that's what causes this work to not be competitive or anything leading in that direction. It's prescriptive for that congregation. Where you're strong, we celebrate that. And where you're weak, we help you with those weaknesses and move ahead. So that's what I'm saying. There's not a number one strength or a number one weakness for all of the churches because the work is prescriptive. I believe those are all the questions in the chat unless anybody else wants to unmute and ask any other questions. Yes, Diana. Yes, sir. So this is Mike McKee. So I just wanna emphasize something you said there. And that is, is that for a number of years and as long as I've been in ministry over, which is a few decades and nobody needs to make a comment on that. But what I wanna say is that basically everything's been sort of programmatic. Same thing for everybody. And what's good about this is the fact it takes every each church's context in the, and so I think this has the potential to do more good than any number of seminars that people could go to. I mean, this is hands on work. And it's, as you said, it's prescriptive to particular congregations given their work. Thank you, Bishop. I would say thank you for creating this position and supporting BCI in every arena. One of the things, the reason for that is because a lot of churches, not just black churches, we look at who has the number one, how many are in attendance? How many Sunday school classes? How many this and that's not how you make disciples. You make disciples based on what's happening in your local congregation and not in comparison to what's happening in some other congregation. So even churches, that's not a part of the Black Church Initiative as we grow in this work and we want to share that particular program, the assessment, Phoebe, her whole theme was around that assessment. Then each church in the North Texas Conference can see where you are strong and not compare you to someone else. But it's about making disciples and we're all on the same team. And I think what Peter McNabb suggested in him partnering with Warren Chapel, that's a great thing to do for us to work together to make disciples in that. I remember when I came to worship with you, Pastor McNabb, Phoebe came with me and we were at Warren Chapel and we were at your church on that same Sunday. So when we think about the work of making disciples for Jesus Christ, I want you to know this. Jesus cares about Black lives. We shouldn't have to say Black lives matter. We shouldn't have to say all lives matter. When we think about the church, every church should have as their focus making disciples. We can do it with new spaces and new places, which means that you're going somewhere where the people that don't go to church go. You know where they are, we've talked. I've had lots of conversations with many of you with new faces, new places. You're not stealing members. There are enough people that's unchurched all around where you are. What we want to end up with is strong communities. That is very important in the Black church because the people that don't even go, they claim St. Luke. They may have watched Zen homes one time. Oh, you know, Dr. Holmes said, this is what we need to do with voter suppression. This is what we need to do. And so people in the Black community, they look at the Black church to see what are they saying about all of the stuff that's going on and all of you will agree there's enough stuff going on right now that we need to be about our father's business. Too many Black men and Black women are being killed right in broad daylight. We need to do something about that. And I think coming together as a church would be a good beginning. But it's this work that has anything to do with competition. We don't compare. We do it within our own home. And we don't have to go to the building to do it. So. A question? Go ahead. We have two more questions. We have two more questions. Will BCI program work with the NTC team slash committee on dismantling racism? I would say yes, I'm on that team. And so anything that we can do to be a part of that, we will continue to do that. But I serve on that team. And I will add also that it is working together. It is working collaboration, but there's also distinct work that BCI does. The work of dismantling racism is of utmost importance. But as I shared with many people, if we become a less racist denomination, but wider, we will not have been faithful. We must continue to reach our communities of color. We need to better reflect our North Texas conference mission field while we are doing the work of dismantling racism. I thank you, Owen, for saying that. And I would just like to add one last piece to that. I hope that moving forward as the cabinet meets, there's an agenda item on there. Each time they meet, whether it's about appointments, what is the state of the black church? How's the black church doing? We don't want to wait until at the end of three years of a new initiative and say, how did we do? We have been working on this really hard. Hopefully you can see that. There's been a lot of hard work done. And I want you to know step by step that this got done. It didn't get done in one year. It didn't get done at one moment. But we want all of the people to be aware of what's going on in our black churches. No matter what we do with racism and making white folks feel like, they're anti-racist and all of that. That's not what happens to the black church. And I would say for my black brothers and sisters that's on this call, we would say, we're tired. We're tired right now. And we don't want to continue to teach, but we do want to do the work of making disciples. So I know that our time is just about up. And before I ask our district superintendent or the Metro district to close us in prayer, I want to make sure that all of the comments have been made, Mr. White-Harry. I think you had one comment that you wanted, you won't have anything that you want to say before we have the last question. Thank you, real masters. I did put my question in the chat box and they are going to get back to me with that question with some of the specifics. So thank you, I did get that answers on its way. Thank you so much for remembering. It also relates to James Miner's question about the specific goals for BCIN 2021. When the announcement for the retirement of Reverend Masters came in, my goal was to ensure that the ball that was started kept rolling. We had these assessments that have been done. There's a lot of implementation that has yet to take place from those assessments. And of course, the assessments could have been done and these reports could have been put on a shelf and they would not be the first thousand plus dollar reports that sat on a United Method of Shelf. But we want to ensure that the work is being done to continue the work that has been started and doing the implementation of those. We also know that we are navigating into a new season in Christianity, in church in the United States. And so what our goal specific goals are getting to James Miner's questions as well as Dwight Harry's question is we are in the process of forming what BCI is going to look like in 2021. We've already had one Zoom call with the six pastors of the six churches. I was talking to Joshua Manning last night about developing a conversation and continuing this conversation and starting to form that which will both be budgetary as well as strategic on how we continue to invest in the black church in 2021. And so that work is while the work is continuing of the work that started also navigating into this new world that we find ourselves in and what is going to be the best use of our resources both financially as well as personnel to address that for 2021 will be that work is starting will be continuing. So thank you, thank you. Thank you on one of the things that on had mentioned earlier is the BCI work. I've worked really closely with Andy Lewis during this time and he came on board the same time on and I did. And we've worked with Marty first and now Cami with leadership development. So this is not something that's just, you know, in a little box. This work covers all the parameters and just covers all the annual conference and I'm thankful for that. So thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate your presence. And if there are any questions we need to still get answered, I'll get back with you. Let me give you my email address so that you will be able to continue to reach me because I'm not using the North Texas conference email address, but I am definitely receiving email and responding to email. And it's dianadina.masters, M-A-S-T-E-R-S at gmail.com. dianadina.masters at gmail.com. I look forward to getting together with all of you. Thank you for coming and thank you for your work. I would invite Deborah Hopps-Mason to close us in prayer. In the spirit of how we opened this meeting, I want to read some names. Mount Zion, Warren Chapel, Camp Wisdom, Community, Glen Oaks, Hamilton Park, Highland Hills, St. Luke Community, St. Paul, Warren, Church of the Disciple, the Village, Jubilee, God's Kingdom, First Lancaster. Also want to name that Marcus Jones is alone in the Northwest District and that there are three friends in the North Central District, Rick Hawkins, Edlin Cowley and Cheryl Jones. Also, there are five African fellowships which are not part of BCI, but it sure seems like a way that we are being the Black Church, Oasis, All Saints Zimbabwe Fellowship at Richardson, Ebenezer Fellowship at First Mesquite, part of Africa at Lovers Lane and the Zimbabwe Fellowship at Lovers Lane. So there are actually 20 gathered bodies every week in addition to the ones that are already churches, they are reaching people from many, many countries. So just I'm thankful for all of these churches and for the witness that they already are but the witness that by God's grace through strengthening they can continue to become. So let's pray. Almighty God, lover of our souls, giver of all gifts, one who goes before us in all things, we are thankful this night that you have made each one of us in your image, your beloved precious image. May we Lord see you in one another, love you in one another, serve you in one another. May we be moved by the anger right now in our world to do something and not just continue to have conversation. We do pray Lord that we who need to look at our privilege will look at it and we'll dismantle that. And the racism that's mixed in with that and that we won't ask our friends to be further harmed having to help us learn what by your grace we should have learned a long, long, long time ago. So forgive us, strengthen us, guide us and bind us together Lord, bind us together, bind us together in your love and in your grace and for your glory. For it's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for coming. I hope you have a blessed evening. Bye-bye.


For the right, and to build a nation's fight, And the army goes rolling along. Ground along, we have done fighting till the end.


This is probably is not a popular thought at this point, but I still don't think anybody wants to see the Titans when you get into the postseason. You know what? I'm not leaving.  I'm not leaving. The adversity that this team has overcome, the fact that they continue to play tough nose football, they get after the quarterback, and again, in the playoffs, they're gonna be a tough team to play. I agree, I wanna keep.  This city, this city, me tripping my tricep. Picture me in the kitchen, you're pitching.  Still hit me up trying to buy some. This is my home. See who doesn't hustle, ain't entitled to a pack crumb. Might be the murder trial to us that's called triumph. Live it to the limit, I'm just saying. You're only that once. Pulling out champagne for all the good that die young. I think this makes three. The show goes on.


YouTube no money spent. It's been dead. There's no weekend league when I first started honestly It was actually easy to have a base elites The only way to truly make this a challenge is to wait four months then boot the team back up Let's take a look at what it looks like right now Boys it's kind of ugly right now base elite Trevor Lawrence the Andre Swift This is like if someone just got the game for Christmas Christmas noobs, you know, here it is Oh, they'll Beckham. This is honestly a disgusting team right now. We do have 119,000 coins I'll tell you guys what I turned that into for sure, but this is I haven't been on this account Maybe three months now will be a challenge now. It would be fun now. It would be great boys We got Jordan Davis Tavius Robinson our boy Tyson Anderson to Sean Elliott, you know, we guys we got stone walls out here Not bad not bad. We got our boys sign of the times We got Mukamora, let's see what we can do with 119,000 coins But this is the team the only way to truly run no money spent is in December Christmas time when a team you've never played We'll see how it goes. All right. First of all, let's open 13 packs if we get anything worth anything here The thing about no money spent like you having a bad team it get Look at us Look at us. Who'd have thunk it. He might play my best player just like that my best player We're my best player It gets easier as the year goes on because like this hunter and like this hundred and twenty K It sounds crazy, but it could field me a team. It really could do my EA play packs or just carrying me right now 85 I mean boys, are we farming right now 85 Vic? Let's go. We could farm. We could use him 83 John Madden probably is my bluff tackle like with no doubt about Unstoppable welcome pack Derek Henry might be my best running back next year next year I'm literally gonna go no money spent like children tail And try to compete. I mean why is this guy not my bet? It's my best quarterback I got everybody goes here boys. Everybody goes 82 plus zero chill. Let's send it boys. What do you know? What do you say 80 to 20 chill? We got one roll Okay, I mean I mean we didn't do bad. I'm staying on the table, baby. I'm not looking We don't got enough money for another role. We don't have enough money for another All right, all right, we got pop we got popped all right Bro, I don't have any hot rod messer.  Oh, I just get it for free already. Oh, we're cracked. I didn't know you get it for nothing.   Let's go. Let's fry. All right, YouTube. This is what we got. We had 200k We had some packs we pulled them. We're gonna use Michael Vic the free card He already gets gift wrap and the hot rod master ability absolutely free not upgrade at all Michael Vic 85 overall He's gonna go crazy We got zero chill cards Matt Brayda Keith Kirkwood Romeo Dobbs and we got Marquis Brown So we got 91 speed we got 88 speed not no, you know, not the greatest But you know the fight low 80s on the line for this for this event. I need all 80s I would have had some goals, but we got some 80s defense boy We got some we got some names and we got some names in the mud world right now Now they're a little outdated when I say outdated. I mean, you know outdated Paul Kraus Ed Reid Sean Taylor we got deep in knockout on Ed Reid for the Middle Thirds We got Paul Kraus with deep out knockout and then we got Sean Taylor with pick artists We got Cameron Taylor Brits gonna play corner a killer when it witherspoon ron de barber Those are my boys want to use the Ron Payne We're gonna use Tavius Robinson and Trayvon Walker to rush, you know, this is the squad. Is it great? Is it amazing kind of tough, but we're gonna make it shake boys. No money spent. It's back Let's see how we get it I feel like I can cook on offense bro. I really do This is a person. This is like a real this is like somebody. I mean at some point You guys go scenes when I had that one on the left some points.  Here's just ran it again.  Let me run again. Oh, I get caught right there, man He's gonna hurt it again. I want a time out. He's tired. K9 is tired this phrase last time out of the first half It's time out there, bro.   Please run right I'm run left. Oh, this dude's a big Kirkwood It's gonna get sweaty here.  Bro, this motherfucker is just glowing dog.  Oh, if I know what side you're going I should be able to stop me. I'm rung committed again. No Well, no, he didn't pass.  He has no idea the clock No idea. He's just playing look. He just called a play with 201 before he's lost I mean, we just got it.  I'm just literally gonna be Quick slam. I'm not time out. I'm not time out. I'm gonna overtime runners dog Runners dog Increase pack odds increase parents more pack odds. I can't lie doos closest tougher because I don't know which way he's running a ball Miss literally verts. It's literally verts here. It's literally verts Sign are you too slow for this? This is insane dog. Oh My god, man, I really don't think it's no way this guy scores though. Seriously. He don't score.  Just tell me he's getting his fourth down. Just tell me in my heart.    You stay in it.  Look at us A cap the token gold player packs though. We are just farming right now boys. Like what how easy is no money spent? Look at us. Look at us.  No solos. No nothing just ball That's what we do boys just ball. So I literally just got that right now because I did I won two games or three games Darnell savage.  Hold up. He's the user. Oh, he's 80. He's 89 speed already Alright, yeah, you're right. I didn't know he was that fast already. I didn't use that fast already No, this dude might be the worst I played bro Now this dude the worst I played for real now. He's MPC this guy I wanted him to catch that I want him to catch that for the content. I can't laugh I get another 90 I get another 90 already look around a round is 90 speed our first 90 speed player round of applause Everybody all around. I feel like this my move, bro. I Feel this my move, bro. I don't need one or two. I don't need one. Yeah, that's my move right there. That's my move buzz He might know something buzz might know something here Ted is a monster. I didn't know he was 89 speed off the rip.   It's like what my go-to inside the tension.     I really don't know what to do against double maple Bro exact because I can't throw the ball.   I should have put a play together I rushed to play I should have called time out right there.


Meta is about a layer of 13% of the entire employee database, which is about 11,000 people out there, which includes engineering team, recruiting team, business teams, and also product management team. If you are currently laid off by Meta, there's three things you need to do. Number one, immediately collect the contact information of your coworker who's still in Meta, so they can use them for reference. Number two, you need to immediately create your product portfolio so that you know how to show off your past experience to show yourself as a higher achiever compared with your competition. Number three, immediately reach out to all your network to update your resume and get ready for the upcoming job hunting season. This is going to be a very critical recession coming up.


The streets were bustling with activity in Yokosuka, Japan for a traditional Makoshi parade. This is a joint event with the City Hall and the Makoshi Association. So it's an on-base, off-base, traditional Japanese parade. And the Makoshis that are in the parade are portable shrines. The American team carrying the Sife Makoshi Shrine is made up of volunteers from different commands on the base. And each Makoshi comes from around the Yokosuka area, coming together to celebrate and represent their community. It was almost like we were just one big team, came out and celebrated together, and there was no division. It was just all one people. Petty Officer Kirk Putnam, Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan.