This episode of the podcast is supported by Bentley Lewis, an award-winning executive search firm. Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. We are proud to be official media partners of Diving Festival this year, which is really cool and we're doing a series of podcasts for the festival. And if you don't know, Diving Festival is a global movement in the insurance sector, which is supporting the development of inclusive workplace cultures. So really, really cool work. They're in about 33 countries now. So they do these really cool events, panel discussions all over the world, really helping to promote diversity and inclusion, which is very cool. I hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. Awesome. I'm alive. Thank you, everyone, for joining. We're doing our final podcast for the Diving Festival with the wonderful Katherine Conway, head of DNI and community affairs at Aion. Thank you so much for joining. Just before we start, for those that don't know, Diving Festival is involved in promoting work, inclusive workplace cultures. I've said that about five million times and I can't even get it right now, around the world. And given what's going on at the moment, it's all virtual and they've managed to expand it to loads and loads of countries. So it's really cool. So if you haven't watched any of the events yet, please do. I think you can find the replays on the website. So Katherine, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing? Yeah, no problem. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Yeah, getting used to lockdown. Well, I am obviously used to lockdown, but just thinking that that's going to last a little bit longer now. I know.  And so in the city of London, I saw more and more people start to come in and and now we're speaking on the 23rd of September. The UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has announced that we're going into a slightly tighter lockdown now. Yeah. And very strange that not that long ago, they were encouraging people back into the workplace to try and get the economy going. And now, actually, we've been encouraged again to all still work from home. So yeah, it just feels like this is going to go on for a little bit longer. I know. I thought I would I swore it would be over by May completely. I did get the year on in the end, probably. But how have you how have you found it all? So I've actually found it OK. So because I have a strange work life balance, I live in the north of England and I work out of the Ledinall building in the centre of London. So I've all I've tended to do a sort of three, four day a week in London, staying over when I'm in London. So but I've always really enjoyed working at least one day a week from home and I've travelled quite a lot. So it's been a massive change for me being able to work from home all the time. During lockdown, sadly, my personal life has changed quite a lot. And I've separated from my husband of many, many, many years. And I'm now and I've moved house. So I'm living alone. So that's unusual as well for me. So but I'm really getting used to it. What I am finding difficult is the blurred lines between life and work and how many hours I'm working and how many hours I'm relaxing. So that's been quite tricky to manage. So you're finding you're working more now than you were before? Yes, yes, even though I was super busy before and even on the commute between Yorkshire and London, you know, I'd always be working on the train and that sort of thing. But yes, it's it's busier and it's intense.  Always I'm just on the video all day and it's intense. It's draining. It's really draining. I read an article by a psychiatrist. I can't remember who it was.  In real life. Really? Yeah, well, I guess so. I guess so. I just I just think that they take so much more concentration than if you're in a room. Yeah. You know, you've always got to be aware of who else is on and making sure everyone can has got time to speak up and make sure you're including everyone. But I also find that you're always doing a five to ten minute check-in at the start of every meeting. How are you doing? How are you feeling? How's it going? How are the kids? How's the dog? You know, and actually then which is great. I mean, for me, I'm all about inclusion. You know, we've never had enough of these conversations in the workplace for me. But then, you know, that also takes up time. So, yeah, it's intense. I'm not sure I'd say it's like morning. I find a sense of sort of relief, but what tends to happen is, you know, you sort of take a deep breath and then you're dialing into the next one. Yeah, but it is tiring. I mean, you can't do so many in a day.  And with the video, although I do enjoy it and it's going to be one of the things I'm always it's like it's here to stay and I'm comfortable doing it. Either I just find, you know, hopefully this is going to be a nice balance at some point where you can meet people, you can do the video, you can do the telephone calls and, you know, a little bit of a mix of all of it, I think. I think that seems to be everyone's sort of wish is that they can have a bit of everything. I think there's been some real benefits from working from home.  But actually, he said in sort of 25 years of working that has never, ever happened.  So I think there's some real benefits in that and that the way that people have realised that actually we can all work from home and get the job done and we don't just sit on the on the sofa watching daytime TV all day is a big change. But I think we do need that mix. I think it would be great to go back into the office. But I think people are hankering after the office environment, how it used to be. And I think going back into, I mean, I haven't been, I have no idea what it would feel like. But it's certainly very different now. I guess if you're sitting on your floor of, I don't know how many 350 people and you're even there.  You're like, please come, please come. And what do you think? I think before this lockdown, you know, there was a lot of a lot of discussion around working from home and getting companies to be flexible, getting them to let their people work from. Do you think now Mother Nature told us to stay at home and it's kind of, you know, everyone submersed in it? It's what people thought it would be pre. Yeah, I think that that's a great point, isn't it? I think Mother Nature told us, told the world to take a pause. I have to say, I really think if you think about where we were going with climate, with, with politics, with everything, everyone just needed to take a bit of a chill. You know, I think that it and for that, for that, I think it's it has been really beneficial for us at Aion. We moved into the Ledinall building in 2015 and we we went on a journey of a whole different way of working prior to us moving into that building. We'd been in about four different buildings in the centre of London. So to bring us all together and we had to adopt a new way of working. So we we modelled agile working and we worked on that, which meant that people could work from wherever. Everyone had the technology, the laptops, the mobiles. Some people were much better at it than others. Some people very much still like, you know, we you could sit at any desk, you could sit on a sofa, you could sit in the cafe and work. And we tried not to encourage people to sit at the same desk every day so that they could meet new people and move around, be flexible. But there were still teams who very much like to work in their, you know, set sort of team. And and yes, it was great because you could, you know, go for a doctor's appointment or leave early to go and watch the school sports day or whatever. But that was sort of as far as it goes. Some of our teams worked from home, you know, they were they were in they had to work from home one or two days a week. So that was great. But there was still teams who weren't fully embracing it. So I think that this has been a great opportunity to practice, shall we say? I mean, we wouldn't have wished this on anyone. But it's certainly given us a massive step change. Yeah, hugely. And just kind of on the DNI aspect and maybe just the inclusion aspect. Sure. How have you how have you guys adapted to it and to make people feel really included part of teams, decision making, these kinds of things? Yeah, and that that obviously has been really difficult. We focused to start with hugely on well-being. We recognize that there would be people who felt massively isolated, you know, living on their own and not seeing anyone and people who suffered from anxiety or any other mental health condition, you know, would find it really challenging. So we really focused on raising awareness of all of the support services that we had available. We've got mental health first aiders, our EAP, our private health, get all of those things. But also we did a lot of work with our managers to sort of spot the signs of people struggling and also encouraging people to say, you know, use your own initiative in terms of when you can work. You know, we had parents trying to both homework and look after the kids and some would work at the first part of the day from like six a.m. to one p.m. and then they'd swap and then, you know, but we were saying just just go with go with it, go with the flow. So that was our main focus, but also encouraging everyone to just check in with their colleagues and make sure and think, oh, I haven't heard from so and so for a while. You know, I wonder if they're OK or or notice when people's videos were off a lot or when they didn't contribute in meetings. You know, and we all had to just be so much better at that. Yeah. What was the norm, people with their videos on or off? So we encourage that's a really great question, because at the beginning, we encourage people to switch them on because it was like, you know, we need to see each other and but then recognise that you could definitely get some video fatigue and that sometimes. And I think also we didn't realise that there were some people, particularly the younger generation who live in London, you know, rents are so high, they were in shared shared accommodation where actually they didn't even have a space to work. Yeah. So they were working from their beds and, you know, so switching videos on, they want to show you can be quite. Yeah, people felt quite embarrassed. The other thing is we found that some people didn't really have great internet connections at home because they came into the office every day and it's expensive. Yeah. Right.   And it's some conscious a little bit like, yeah, yeah. And I'd say, oh, you know, my my internet, my videos off because my internet's connection bad bad, but it just allowing people to do that because you the other thing is, you know, we're seeing into everyone's homes and we're seeing their pets and their dogs and their partners and their kids, which is really cool. And I think it's helped us all. What I say, lower the waterline, you know, get to understand people a little bit more. But obviously, there'll be certain things about people and their home style, their life, the places where they live that they just really didn't want to share with their work colleagues. I'm going to appreciate that, right? That's absolutely. Definitely. It has felt that to your point, it's everyone's got a bit more human now because you come into work with this façade.  But you put your seat and tie on. Ties got relaxed a lot over the last five years or whatever. But still, it's, you know, you've got to be looking smart and not annoyed. Yeah, although actually, I think even Lloyd's a scrap, they tie now. But yeah, but I think but it's still certainly smart cash, you know, in the city. Definitely. But then it's your home.  So yeah, that would be a little odd, wouldn't it? But but that but that's right.   You might have so much going on at home. You know, one of your family might be ill. You might be had a really bad argument with your partner or whatever it was. Or you might have a, you know, a caring responsibility that that no one knows about or you're trying to keep something quiet. But you put your work head on and you walk in and that's you set for the day. You're in work mode. Very rarely did we allow our home lives and our personal issues to come into the workplace with us.  How are you today? How was your weekend? They don't really want to know the answer, do they? They just want you to go, yeah, fine, thanks. Yeah, good. Yeah, great. You're not going to say, oh, the kids were ill or, you know, this was a nightmare or, you know, but now. And I love that fact. I think for inclusion and obviously everything that's going on around covid, you know, we're thinking more of our neighbours and treating people with respect and the whole thing about the NHS. And, you know, why did we never, ever respect the NHS and love them as much as we do now? I mean, that's sad. So I think that we've all got in touch more with our caring, sharing cells, which for me is fantastic. Yeah, the kindness thing, which which people are talking about a lot, you know, and definitely my wife's been working in intensive care with covid patients the whole way through through the lockdown. It's been it's been quite interesting because she she was going into work because remember, we're talking about this work from home stuff.  So supermarket workers, imagine those in those early days. Wow. Yeah, I mean, they were super, super busy. So, you know, with all of this, like, I think you're going to have to put your yourself in in the context of, wow, I'm lucky that I can choose where I want to work and stuff, which I think is great. And yeah, I think it's I think it's I know it's been hopefully eye-opening for many people and a lot of I think good stuff and good working practice will practices will come from it. Yeah, I hope so. I truly think it will. I think it's going to be a huge shift and, you know, firms are going to think why do they need so much office space and, you know, how do we work together? And there might just be one day a week when actually you all get together with your team and it's much more of a creative, you know, sort of process. And and we do that. But I think it's going to also allow people to to talk about how they work best and to make it work for them. You know, I think that's fantastic. And it's going to open so many more opportunities for people. I think I think so. I think the caveat, I would say, is I mean, everyone I speak to is talking about taking less office space. So I think that's that's for sure. I think on on how you like to work or how you think you're most productive. I think, you know, if you think about people entering the workforce right now and you talked about younger people, I don't think you quite know yet, you know, how how you're most productive. And I think, you know, the danger is, you know, I speak to I speak to some some very senior people, people who've been working for a long time. And they always say, you know, I'm really happy to work at home. I know what I'm doing. It's great. But when you're young, you don't know what you're doing. And I did it about you. But I learned so much from just sitting next to a line manager hearing how they talked, interacted, you know, approached people. And I and I just I just hope that that people remember to include younger people, you know, to make sure they invest the time, the training and things like that. That's a really big deal. And we've found that the people that want to go back into the office are the younger generation, because for them, work is their social as well. You know, work is social life.  And so they work hard, but they love that sort of. Yeah, they they love that interaction. And I think that must be really hard. And like you say, they need to be involved and listen to other conversations during a meeting. So for me, it's about making sure that you're including colleagues in meetings with clients, et cetera. And even if they just listen, you know, and don't really get involved, but just to understand the conversations and what's happening. And hopefully people are, like you say, not excluding because we need to build that younger generation. This year, for the first time, we held a so our summer interns that we take in for a period of 10 weeks, they were virtual. Can you imagine doing an internship where you never go into the office and you never meet anyone from the firm? Like and some of them, some of them, yes, we'd hired face to face before we went in to lockdown, but some we didn't. So we even hired them. But we sent them a laptop and some on goodies. And we really worked hard to make it a rich experience. So again, you know, we have to really think about how we're doing things like that. I mean, that was a huge change for us. Yeah, it's interesting. It's also, I think if you're if you're young and listening to this, you've also got to take some ownership as well of your development. And I think even, you know, like even sending someone like you an email and saying, hey, would you mind five minutes with me on a video call or having a quick coffee? You know, I think like it's the way to network internally now to to get on in, you know, in a company like a really got to work hard now. You're not just going to bump into someone in the left. Sadly, not sadly, not. And I think people are more open to that. I'm certainly doing a lot more of that, you know, having virtual coffees with people and catching up and they're saying, oh, how can I do this? Or this is what I'm thinking of? Or how can I do more on diversity and inclusion? And and so that's a that's a big part of the role is actually, yeah, rather than just, like you say, bumping into someone or we held a lot of events. And that's where a lot of those conversations would take place.  And you'd meet so many new people and build your network. You have to be quite intentional about it now. And I think, you know, even, yeah, even, you know, talk to your boss about, I'll talk to others and say, could I join in that meeting, please? You know, how's that going with that client? And, you know, can you can you bring me up to speed on it? Or could I listen in on that meeting or whatever it may be? But I think you've got to sort of take the initiative and ask the question. Yeah, definitely. And if you're not comfortable with it, again, hopefully you're in a firm which which creates the environment where you're able to, you know, because it's sometimes quite hard to to message someone that's more senior to say, hey, grab a coffee, also help. It's a hard thing to do. Definitely, definitely, definitely. It really is. And I think if you're more introvert, you know, if you're that sort of type, maybe you'd struggle a little bit with it. But, you know, maybe drop them and drop them an email and and and ask. I think that's all you can do. Definitely. We talked, you talked a bit about mental health and the help you give people, which which I think is great. And and obviously we've been talking about that for a long time now. There's some great work to be done. I think what I find really interesting and I hope it comes out of it is actually our physical health, because it's it's not it's not been OK to go up to a colleague and say, you know, I think you need to lose a little bit of weight or, you know, something of that. Or, you know, I saw you had for lunch today. You know, whereas whereas it's you wouldn't do that, right? Like you just wouldn't do it. But you would go up to someone and say, you know, are you feeling OK? Or I saw your video was off. You know, is there anything going on? Can I help you? You know, to the mental health side. Yeah. But then, you know, what we've seen from Covid is, you know, I think it's high 90 percent of the people in intensive care have had high BMI, obesity, diabetes. So so so you're and again, physical and mental health is completely linked. I'd love to see it be OK to speak about physical health going forward. It's a tough one. That is a tough one. But also, I think what you what you've got to look for is is changes in people. So you talked about drinking or or eating more. And I think if you see a shift, I'm not sure you could just go, hey, you know, you've put a bit of timber on lately or something.  But it's the shift in someone's behaviour that is usually an indication of them struggling. So they might be more quiet than usual. They might eat more than usual or a lot less. So they might suddenly put weight on or lose it, or they may be drinking more. And that usually is a sign that people are struggling. So I'm a mental health first aid. And that's part of the training is to spot signs of people struggling. But I agree with you, the physical health. So we have a well one app on and it's an app and it clocks your steps and it touches on the four areas of well being, you know, financial, social, emotional and physical. And the physical is like so we get step challenges and and people. We were better at this at the beginning of lockdown is saying, let's have a walking meeting, you know, rather than just doing this.  So put your earphones on your phone. Let's do it. You know, there'll be no slides. You don't need to take notes. Let's just have a conversation. So I think there's some things that we can do. And I think one of the areas of well being is to look after your physical health. I mean, says me, I I am spending too much time doing this and all my ideas of keeping up with my running and meditating and and eating really well. It's not going as well as it could. That's the thing.  And whether or not, you know, when when when all this is kind of blown over, you know, people are going to be doing a bit of both, right?  It's great. Yeah. What I what I found is, you know, from speaking to friends and colleagues and clients or whatever.  I'm definitely doing less steps because the thing about the commute is it gets you up and it's nice to move.  I don't know about you. I just get I don't know in a better mind frame when I'm moving around. Definitely. And even going to get a sandwich or going to get a coffee, it's giving you a ten minute break from, you know, intense work. And it sometimes just helps digest your thoughts and think, right, where am I up to with that report? Or what do I need to do for this? And it just gives you a bit of thinking time. Yeah. But the steps thing, sometimes, I mean, I actually still wear a Fitbit, which is ridiculous because every night I check my steps and I know what a busy day I've had by how few steps I've done. It's just embarrassing. It's so important to programme. You know what I do? I put a meeting in my diary. So my exercise and I regard it as the most important. It's like like I'm meeting the most important CEO. That's my exercise. You know, it's a meeting you do not you do not move. You do not move. That's fantastic. And because I think it's it's it's just it's important for so many reasons, you know, and I think if you diarise stuff like that and you regard it as just the most important meeting of your day, you stick to it. Hopefully, yes. I know one of our leaders. One of our leaders does that and he blocks out I think it's 10 30 or 10 o'clock or something. And he always thinks midmorning is the best time to go to the gym because it's quiet, but also you get those early morning meetings out of the way. But literally, it's immovable in his diary and he goes out, gets to the gym for half an hour. And, you know, that is his time at Sacrosanct. Yeah, I think it's great. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about diversity. And, you know, there was a lot of a lot of diversity initiatives prelock down and all of these things. Do you think that I guess at first year, they are they were have you found that they're working and they change in the dial? And and how have you found it during lockdown? Sure. So. So, yes, lots of diversity initiatives, lots of things happening, slowly changing the dial, I would say. Some things are more successful than others. I'd say that, you know, diving has been a massive sort of trigger for firms in our industry to do more and to really enable that conversation and that debate and give practical tools and tips on what firms can do, no matter how big or small they are. So I think that's been fantastic. We've had really open conversations of part of diving. So it's great that we're, you know, in the sixth year and it's such a fantastic success. But some diversity initiatives are better than others.  It's very difficult to move the dial. It takes time, you know, we have to sort of build the pipeline. People have to leave to create a role. You know, we've got to have diverse panels, obviously, the right person for the job, which as long as you've got a diverse panel, whoever is the right person for the job is the right person, you're never going to just promote someone because of their gender or the colour of their skin or whatever it is. But it takes time. But some of the programs that we've got are seeing the you know, we're really increasing the pipeline of women coming through, which is fantastic. So some are more successful. Also, where we've been more successful is really targeted programs, particularly at the early careers level. So we had what we called our Bain Future Leaders Programme, Black Asian Minority Ethnic, bringing people into our graduate program and really targeting the Bain community. How could we advertise the insurance industry and sector, but also help people succeed? And it's it's to that. I talk about equity a lot. We all know what equality is. We treat everybody the same. OK, exactly the same equity is giving people more support where they might need it. You know, and equity is really, you know, just looking for where people need additional support to bring them up. And our Bain Future Leaders Programme was part of that. We brought some amazing graduates in from all around the country for a two day workshop, helping them understand our industry, helping them understand how the city works, you know, giving them real great tools, insight, doing some work shopping, you know, working together, working on projects, helping them understand what an assessment centre is and how that works. If you think if you're from a lower socioeconomic background or where your parents have never worked in a in an office environment, maybe you don't know how to act, how to behave. You've got no role models. So it was that sort of and it's been a fantastic success. We've seen the ethnicity of our early careers and our highers really ramp up. So across apprentices, interns and our graduate population, in twenty nine percent in twenty twenty nineteen, thirty eight percent were from black and Asian and ethnic minority communities, which is fantastic. This year it was thirty three percent because we had to scale down, you know, why of our, you know, of our intakes, but still thirty three percent. So a whole third, which is great. They're fifty fifty on gender. So that's great. So changing the dial sometimes when you're really targeted really works. But changing mindsets and behaviours and changing hearts and minds, I think, actually, Louis, is is more difficult and takes more time. Yeah, definitely. Is there anything you've had to do differently now since the pandemic, given that things are on video? You know, because I know there was a lot of, you know, we were talking about blind CVs and things like this to try and reduce bias. But now, you know, video is an interesting one. You know, we talked about people not wanting to show where they were living. You know, if you're interviewing now from your bedroom. Yes. You know, yeah, exactly. A bit more a bit more difficult. We've we have used video assessments for quite a while initially to screen. But but we've been doing some really tactical things but not so much changing during lockdown. It's been like a change. I think the biggest change during Covid has actually been recognising the disproportionate impact of Covid on race and ethnicity and people from different backgrounds and the Black and Asian communities being really more adversely impacted. Yes.  And then the the George Floyd incident and the ramifications and the racial injustice and the protests. Have really made people stop in their tracks. But I think if that had happened without Covid, I'm not sure it would have had the same impact. I think we felt so much more emotionally charged, you know, community focused, more maybe emotionally intelligent, just thinking of others. And then when that happened, it had such a had a much bigger impact for me on all of us and everybody. And so on diversity and inclusion, it's had a phenomenal impact. And it's made people really every single person really consider and and look inside themselves. I think, well, am I racist? Could I be? And then, of course, everyone says, well, of course, I'm not. But then they think, but have I shown that? Have I done enough? Have I stepped up? Have I intervened? Have I been visible? Have I spoken up? Am I talking to my black colleague? You know, do I understand how it feels like to be black? So I think that Covid has enabled us to do things differently. And I've talked about being busy. All of the people that I know that work in D&I have said that they have, you know, been so busy during this time because there's an appetite to do so much more, to understand so much more.  What can I do? How can I help? This is what I do. Can we do this? Can we do that? Can we, you know, which is fantastic. It's a dream. Yeah. So yeah, it's given us a massive window of opportunity. And we would it would be so sad if in six months time, things go back to how they were. And we haven't really taken the opportunity to address, to lead, to drive, to listen. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, sometimes with these things, it's it's timing, you know, like a moment in time is perfect to make a real change in society. And that's why I always find it a little bit odd or sad. I don't know what the right word is. When people try and make a business case for diversity, when really it's it's just good for society, right? It's just fair. I mean, you want people to have an equal opportunity to to make something of their self. So you're right. I think it all, you know, it was people, people to lock down some some really bad events happened. And it it just culminated in in just a big desire globally to, you know, to make a change, which I think was great. And the one thing I really hope that doesn't happen.  And then you feel like there's some, you know, there's some backlash towards the diversity initiatives and stuff that going on. And I think we need to work really hard to make sure that that doesn't happen. And if everyone feels included, you know, you don't want it to be you don't want a great cause to be undermined by by those things. No. And sadly, you know, social media, there's some great things. But also, you know, there's also can be a real groundswell of opinion that is not helpful at times like these. And of course, all lives matter. Of course they do. But right now and after the events with George Floyd, you know, we recognise that the Black community needed so much more support and help. And and that we need to we really need to come together, you know, and actually it's OK. You know, white people saying, well, all lives matter. Well, of course they do. You know, and it's like talking about it's talking about white privilege. You know, and people say, well, I really struggled. You know, I had a tough time. What do you mean? White privilege. But, you know, it's not that. I mean, what we're seeing on the news and in events and, you know, even in the UK, some of the things that we see and hear, it's not that all lives don't matter. Is that we we seem to think that black lives matter less, you know, by the way that they're being treated in the US. But also, you know, we can see the same things happening, you know, on the lesser scale, the stop and search, all of those things that happen in the UK as well. So we need to we need to just put ourselves in someone else's shoes to understand that. You know, white people are very lucky in that. I'm not saying that white people have never struggled. Of course, we all have our struggles, every single person. But the colour of our skin doesn't add to those struggles. And that's all white privileges. We're not getting judged each time we step outside our house. We're not having to worry about, you know, how we how we come across, how we look, you know, not being judged at all. And so we we don't face that.  Definitely. And to your to your earlier point, with all the things going on, it's nice just to take a breath and appreciate, you know, the challenges that others are going through. And I think people are doing that. And, you know, we're moving in the right direction. Yeah, which is, yeah, I think we are. And the fact that we're having these conversations and are being really open, you know, we held straight after all those incidents, we held some listening sessions with our leaders, with our multicultural network. And I know that lots of other firms across the industry, you know, were doing the same, but that had such a huge impact. Just listening to the stories, to the everyday, to the day to day life. And I'd encourage anyone who hasn't really thought about it, just to listen to some of those stories, put yourself in someone else's shoes, you know, and just think about actually, yeah, what some people have to go through and how we can support them. And and that anti-racist thing, you know, be more proactive. Don't just it's not enough just to say, well, I'm not racist or sexist or homophobic, but actually, you know, or ableist, are we all doing something to to to raise awareness and speak out. And sometimes it's difficult to speak out, but when you hear something or see something that's inappropriate, we have to do that. And I think that these times give us license to speak up and speak out. Absolutely. Definitely. And storytelling is such a powerful way to communicate now. Right. I mean, it's happening in or with everything. And I think even even sharing because, you know, the good side of technology, the good side of social media is you can share stuff and if you see someone's story that's worth sharing, I mean, you know, show the love and share. Right. I mean, absolutely. And you can you can certainly you can certainly do your part even in that small way. Yeah, definitely. And diving is a big part of that, obviously. It's a big storytelling. So, you know, and it's really accelerated the conversation. And I definitely think that personal stories, you know, personal impacts are just the way that we can open our minds to difference and understand what it means to be different and the challenges that it plays and understand what we can all do, you know, and become allies and and just have more awareness. We're going to need all those skills going forward when you think about, you know, and our workplaces are better. They're richer for it, you know, having all those, you know, that rich diversity of experience and diversity of thought is just brilliant. But we need to improve our own cultural competence to really take advantage and value those differences. Definitely. And I think, you know, if there's a cloud, if there's a silver lining amongst the covid cloud, it's that I'm seeing so many companies now open to hiring from a much wider geographical scope, which, of course, improves diversity, right?  You can hire someone anywhere. I mean, they're going to be working from home, probably anyway.  But, you know, I think I think that's a wonderful thing. And a real opportunity. Definitely. Well, what a beautiful place to end. Catherine, thank you so much for joining me. No worries. It's been great to be with you today. Thank you. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to hopefully seeing you face to face one day. Yeah, that'd be nice. It's a real life. You should get a coffee. All right, great. Thanks, Lewis. Bye. See you. Bye.


Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you my name is Adam Payne County administrator and co-host of this program with chairman Roger Distruty and today we're pleased to have not one but two guests with us from one of our very very important programs one of our very important departments the Health and Human Services Department and within that department a number of very important programs one being public health so with us today is Tom Eggebrecht our Health and Human Services Director and Dale Hippenstiel our Public Health Manager welcome gentlemen thanks Adam thanks now we're gonna have to tag team this a little bit between the two of them and Tom's been here for three years and Dale for 12 so Dale's got the tenure but Tom's the boss so I think we'll try to balance this out pretty well and it's been a very good team in fact we have an excellent team at the Health and Human Services Department a lot going on a lot of programs and services and Tom if you could start by just giving our viewers a little flavor for the roles and responsibilities of your department sure nice to be here first of all thank you Adam yeah our department I think most people know provides a wide variety of services we've got 180 employees and we operate out of three different work locations starting with our job center which is on Wilgus Road a little bit west of Taylor Drive and there our staff provide eligibility determination for Medicaid and food share assistance and we provide employment and training programs go a little bit west of that to Sheboygan Falls and on the north side of town we operate an aging and disability resource center so staff there provide information and assistance for individuals and families that are inquiring about long-term care we offer our senior meal program and coordinate volunteer driver assistance through the ADRC we also provide adult protective services and benefits counseling for folks who are struggling with social security information things of that nature our main building is located downtown across from Fountain Park and there we offer behavioral health outpatient services as well as case management child protective services juvenile justice and as you mentioned public health and glad to have my partner Dale with me today and for those watching this program and coming and going in the city of Sheboygan some might get the appearance that new additions going on at your facility well what's happening yeah someone asked me recently if our department was being torn down and I said no it's just getting a facelift so we've actually had a stucco facing on the east side of the building that has deteriorated over the years so it's kind of acting as a sponge at this point so that's all being resurfaced and we'll have a kind of upgraded appearance to the building when it's all done yeah we need to take care of our infrastructure too so about 180 employees 30 31 million dollar budget it's our largest department budget critically important programs and services for the neediest of the needy and as you said one of the areas very important public health and Dale you've been our public health manager for a number of years now I'm sure people are familiar seeing your name from time to time in the newspaper and please tell us a little bit about your area and the core services provided sure I could spend a whole program on public health so I'll try to keep this what belongs in this day and age we've seen a change in the public health services that are delivered throughout the state in the country there was a time where you'd come to public health and all you would think about are immunizations you come in and get your chickenpox shots and you come in and get your your polio cubes from the old days those those kinds of things we still do a lot of those kinds of direct service activities we do a great deal of communicable disease investigation people would be quite surprised to see our list of diseases that are reported to us by the laboratories and the hospitals and clinicians doctor's offices in Sheboyin County that that we have to follow up on presently we're in a the state has a very large number of pertussis cases which is whooping cough and we've experienced that here we've experienced that in the schools these are real life kinds of things that our people are involved in we also do our women's infants and children program and maternal child health childhood lead poisoning programs at an abatement identification and so forth one of the one of the more interesting programs that we do is the environmental health component and that is the inspections and review and consultation of the restaurants the swimming pools the spas the hotels the campgrounds the summer camps public water supplies around the country kind of a little known program our restaurant owners generally are very supportive of that and our staff does a great job in helping those folks and we're we take the educational mode in that area the other large component that we've really seen a change is we are into collaboration we we finally learned in public health that we need partners and we'll talk a little more later about some of the partners in the community health center so you know again I could go on about programs and public health and I love it great great staff and I and I have to say that this county has been very supportive I look at my friends and the eastern side of the the state and and people are just struggling to keep services together because of cuts and budget cuts so it's it's really appreciated here well what Roger and I appreciate is the excellent leadership that the two of you provide in the team you have in place so we have so many hard-working caring dedicated people in public health and throughout the health and human services department and for those of us from time to time who you know get into some of the detail and the critically important work that's done it can be heart wrenching gut-wrenching work very very important and what I've particularly been pleased with with public health Dale and your role in leadership there is the collaboration with the schools and everyone else with emergency response planning if there is a disaster I know you've been active in that area and then as we're going to talk about in a few moments the Lakeshore clinic so we'll get back to you in a second Tom we've been feeling the pinch from the state for years counties local units of government across the state everybody's being asked to do more with less I don't think there's a department in the county that hasn't streamlined to reduce their staffing or done what they could to be part of the solution what's happened in health and human services over the years because you and I both know we have a smaller department today than we did a few years ago absolutely Adam and I think it starts with one of the key things that Dale commented on collaboration so as we look down the road and we understand that we're not going to have the same resources in the future that we might have today it's pretty critical for us I think to try to integrate care what I mean by that is in the past we may have been able to have three or four different individuals work with a family the more we can prep and support an individual staff member to provide assistance at least on a baseline level we're going to be a little bit better off so Dale and his staff have been great partners in terms of integrating care within the department we've got a public health nurse that's now assigned on a part-time basis to the ADRC we have another public health nurse that recently this year moved from public health responsibilities into behavioral health responsibilities so as a byproduct of that we're able to reduce some expense we're able to capture some new revenues we're able to cross trained staff and they can kind of learn from each other and at the end of the day I think we provide better service obviously health related knowledge is a key ingredient in terms of aging and long-term care so now the participation of that staff at our ADRC has been very much welcome very much appreciated and that's a great great model for us to continue pursuing we've also I think looked at vacancies quite critically we've got supervisors now that have broader spans of control we've got case managers that are carrying larger case loads and kudos to them so Dale talked about the quality of staff that we have and in all honesty without them and their buy-in and their motivation and commitment that wouldn't be possible so a variety of approaches are helping us and health and human services like many of our county departments mandated programs that we mandated by the state that we need to administer and as just part of the exercise of preparing for today you know we all kind of looked at our history a little bit and it caught me off guard a little bit that literally the health and human services department has 15 million dollars less coming into it today in 2012 than it did in 2007 predominantly state and federal funds but please touch on that a little bit what's happened with with the funding that you rely on and of course what is that meant for the programs that those funds used to used to help keep going yeah you're right adam i think the the delivery of service on the local level is undergoing major changes part of that is due to state and federal policy shifts part of that is also due to erosion of state and federal funding that previously may have been directed our way as you mentioned as recently as 2007 our department budget was nearly 47 million dollars for 2013 we're going to be under 29 million dollars so there's several you know explanations for that in the area of long-term care counties had a role in terms of arranging and providing and coordinating care for vulnerable populations for many many years in 2008 the state went to a private managed care contract model that moved those dollars from county government to private entities this year we received funding reduction for income maintenance programs in our county along with nine others partnered to create a regional collaboration to try to hold those programs together next year we're going to lose our w2 funding from the state that'll also go to a private regional management entity and the funds state and federal funds that we were using in the arena of children's long-term support services are now going to be managed through a new third-party entity so we've seen significant erosion of those funds in our budget and as that happens it puts increasing pressure on local property taxes to to hold baseline services together our contribution toward corporation council doesn't change our contribution toward building services doesn't change our contribution toward information services within the county doesn't change but what does change is the share of state and federal funds that helped to support that previously are no longer available to us so levy contribution has remained actually quite steadfast has grown a little bit since 2007 i looked at that and i think we've seen about a one percent per year increase over that interval but over the last four years our levy contribution has decreased by about one percent each year so and when you say levy the property tax the property tax absolutely right so again as dale mentioned and i will reiterate it the support the contribution the embrace from the county board and the taxpayers has been tremendous so i know that the people in need of service appreciate that we as a staff appreciate that so very much but as you as you're pointing out changes in inevitable the state was in a situation a world of hurt needed to make some changes changes have occurred are occurring we do see less state and federal funding just trying to hold the the line on property taxes and the county board's been very successful with that departments have either had the line held or seen modest decreases as you said in the time when there's demand for more services so the viewers may thinking okay that's all finding good we're hearing there's less money coming from the state and federal government the county property taxpayers may be picking up the difference or struggle the board struggling to hold the line but what does this mean for the people we serve what what are you hearing from the people we traditionally serve that in the past may have relied on county staffing or programs and now we're relying on other forms of assistance how's it worked okay it's funny we we annually by statute are required to have public hearings as part of our budget planning and and one of the comments that stood out for me this past summer as we were planning for 2013 we had a an individual i don't even know if he's a department consumer in all honesty but he was aware of the fact that we're going to these regional models he understands that there's new service delivery mechanisms and he urged us to to try to resist that to try to prevent that because as he said it was so important for people to have local access and local voice this past monday i sat in on a listening session related to this new state long-term care delivery program called family care it was arranged for our legislators and it was interesting for me because a number of the folks who showed up for that listening session were previous consumers of services through our department and their message was they mourn the loss of relationship with the staff members that they knew they they mourn the loss of quality of service that they felt that they had and i think most importantly they felt like their voice was no longer as as heard as it may have been in the past because as services shift into private non-governmental entities access isn't the same responsiveness may not be the same and one of the common messages i heard was we don't know who to go to with our concerns anymore and i'm i'm sure that will improve over time but it it made a big impression on me just how valuable the service that we have provided has been in the lives of so many people nice to get that kind of feedback absolutely roger i'm going to turn it over to you sure as you know earlier this year the united way and other community contributors shared some exciting news about the health care access to people that didn't have health insurance before or are uninsured completely uh dale would you please tell us a few things about lakeshore community health care center that's a topic that's like public health we could go a couple of meetings but i'll i'll try to focus for you yeah we we were awarded a new access point grant through health resources services administration of the federal government and we'll talk in a couple of minutes about how that came about what it what it does is it allows us and we're in our infancy just starting it allowed us to affect services for folks that are uninsured or underinsured and that could be medicaid that could be people large large deductibles a good example is is the dental services we're now providing if we think about the shoreline if you there there's an area all the way from green bay down to milwaukee where very few dentists except medicaid as a payment source so anyone that was on medicaid or uninsured simply could not access a dentist unless they went out of town and and that was still difficult so so the the clinic itself will be partially funded by the federal government partially funded by it's not a free clinic as i i iterate to to folks you know you have to pay your copay there's a sliding fee scale if you don't have insurance those kinds of things it's not a and it's meant to be a a medical home for these folks there will be dental services there will be primary care services in other words your family practice pediatric kinds of things and there will be some behavioral health services all integrated in this in this program thank you i was pleased to be able to attend the initial meeting with some of the background of the people who helped collaborate and start the clinic can you give us a little background on how some of the initiatives started and collaborated with us to make it happen sure yeah that again that's a that's a bit of a that's a six-year story and i'll do it in one minute because i practice this one the united way did a needs assessment community needs assessment a number of years ago trying to focus on impact projects where they could put money where they could steer their resources to actually see change in the community one of the things that popped right to the top was access to health care for folks that are they have no insurance or are underinsured and you know through that process which was very it was gruesome almost because you really had to get people to agree on what they were doing so after that happened both of our hospital system stepped forward with st nixon aurora and our medical systems and united way they pulled their money we were able to go out and write a fairly detailed grant for this new access point program and the first round we were not funded this was two years ago and then we found out this year this summer we were funded so we're really excited about it we're partnering with connoisseur community health center we're we're seeing a lot of excitement within the community so we have lots of partners interesting thing about the center is the board of directors and it is nonprofit the board of directors of the center has to be made up of a majority of people that use the clinic so that voice is tom talking about family care that voice has to be heard can you give us your perspective of the overall health of our community oh sure we we are fortunate in wisconsin at the university of wisconsin medical school has a population health program and they have rankings and it's interesting that we are out of 72 counties just overall health we're about 18 okay now there's a number of factors that go into that we won't talk about we we still see access to care we still see this population that needs needs to we can we can create insurance but we still have to have access when you but just to clarify 72 counties we're ranked about 18 about a number one excellent whereas number one is excellent yes i'm sorry yeah very good and that's the 18th out of 72 yes which is so not too bad not too bad we're doing well we we've seen a decrease in teenage smoking that's really good we have not affected obesity and binge drinking too well that's that's a tough one in this community so we're you know the the healthy shaboy in 2020 group has a number of committees and again collaborations that that are doing lots of programming to clarify that question you asked earlier mr chairman you know the need for the lakeshore clinic you said under insured individuals or folks that have no insurance so when you look at the health of the community the by and large we're pretty healthy room for improvement but how many people in this community how many people in this community have no insurance or under insured and are going to utilize that new lakeshore clinic as a godsend for them you have nearly 18 000 people in this community that are on some sort of medical assistance program or under insured or have no insurance that's incredible that's a lot of folks out of 112 000 people right right and deal i understand acuity was one of the major donors to get us ramped up absolutely and they have offered $100 000 to help us this year can you explain about some of that funding sure how people can help toward that yeah that's a great question last year they did provide us a a grant $100 000 grant to to begin our nurse practitioner mid-level program and we now have a nurse practitioner and so that that worked well this year they threw a little little curve at us a little zinger and their foundation said they they thought about it and said let's let's challenge that community health center board you know they they talk a pretty good story let's see what they can do so they came back last month and and said yeah we will we will fund you in 2013 through the foundation up to $100 000 but only of which you can match so theoretically if we can raise $100 000 in addition to that you double your money so we have a pretty intensive as adam knows a pretty intensive effort taking place beginning to take place on obtaining new funds from individuals from other foundations from corporations and i think people will will step up when they when they understand the need we'll deal thank you for your leadership and and the county board did provide a one-time purchase of the dental equipment and it was a collaborative effort is there any other information you would be able to give to some of our viewers sure the the clinic phone number and if you obviously some people aren't going to have a pencil in front of them and they call my office at public health just call the health department or health and human services we can provide you more information the the clinic number just to talk to people to get a dental appointment or a medical appointment that number is 7-8-3-6633 again 7-8-3-6633 and and or they could call our office and we certainly can help folks with that on the acuity side on the fundraising if people are interested in in offering it could be ten dollars it could be a hundred dollars whatever people were willing to to part with if you may they could call the clinic at the same number 7-8-3-6633 or they could call united way at 458-3425 as this is a collaborative project and we do those are those are tax deductible we have forms that people can fill out that they would be available for folks to to engage and get back to us thank you deal and tom thank you so a lot going on and for our time is pretty limited already here but tom i'll turn it back to you for a couple of minutes any new initiative new initiatives in the health and human services department kind of in line with what dale is addressing adam for state and federal governments the same thing is true for us hospitalization inpatient care is a huge cost driver for us so that shows up in our department largely in the arena of behavioral health so we have a number of things in place planned for the new year number one we're going to take a therapist position and redeploy it in the form of case management so that we can work more closely with persons who have been hospitalized make certain that after care is being provided make certain that it's working we're going to expand psychiatric hours so that if folks are being hospitalized because they can't gain access to a psychiatrist or necessary medications we're going to try to fix that we're training our staff on new therapy approaches that have been proven through research to be effective in reducing re-hospitalizations this year we've actually trained consumers to start supporting other consumers in the interest of providing a better safety net and after care and in the new year we're going to start deploying those consumers in that interest um earlier this year i participated on an ad hoc study committee related to our juvenile detention center and i'm pleased to say we're going to continue to offer juvenile detention services in sheboygan county one of the things that that came out through that study process is that we need to do a better job of getting treatment to kids as a component of that program so in 2013 for the first time we're going to introduce some mental health treatment as a component of juvenile detention and then lastly i'll mention too that sometimes we end up with kids in tough spots uh who uh for whatever reasons are in situations that don't allow them to be safe or to achieve permanency so we're going to expand some legal services in the interest of trying to get those cases through the court process and promote better outcomes for those kids so a lot of things in the hopper adam a lot of things to keep us busy yeah and what's encouraging is a lot of those new initiatives aren't as a result of new money it's a result of excellent management and teamwork amongst your staff to streamline and establish priorities and and make adjustments and that's a real credit to you and your team again it takes everyone on the team to make that happen so i'm really fortunate to be in the spot that i'm in and fortunate to have guys like dale and the rest of our staff to assist with that yeah well fantastic and and if you want to learn more about the health and human services department because trust me we just touched on it there are a number of very important programs services helping a lot of people in great need here and if you need more information or want to learn more don't hesitate to contact either two of these individuals either of these individuals or contact the county clerk's office or the health and human services department and we'll get you the hands of people who can help you but on that note i'd like to transition just briefly to another and that is in government we can't be all things to all people the health and human services department as we all know in this room and you certainly know we can't do it all government can't do it all and that's why united way and the new lakeshore clinic and collaborative efforts to help the neediest of the needy in this community are so critically important as these gentlemen know this year i have the honor of co-chairing the united way campaign and we have a we have a a goal of raising two and a half million dollars about two percent more than last year and we lost our county our united way executive bill wiser recently which is a blow to all of us the united way family but what's so wonderful about being part of this family is how many people step up and work together to help make good things happen and to help people in need and when you hear about literally not hundreds but thousands of people that don't have any insurance imagine having a toothache or your son or daughter having a toothache and not being able to go to the dentist to take care of that pain people are in that situation so if you have a chance if you haven't participated or would like to learn more and how you can help the clinic be successful give the united way a call and and we'll certainly i'll be glad to talk to you if you're someone watching this and you have no insurance and you're suffering right now you're in pain from a toothache or something like that contact our new clinic i mean there's there's a lot of demand right now but certainly we'll do our best to see as soon as we can so on behalf of the four of us here and shaboydon county thank you for your support toward the united way towards shaboydon county government and also a shout out to acuity and their incredibly generous offer of another another a hundred thousand dollars to match to raise funds to ramp up this new clinic so thank you and thank you gentlemen for being here today tom eggebrecht health and human services director dale hippensfield public health manager and of course our fearless leader roger distrudi county board chairman chairman next month we'll have our planning director here erin brault and until then happy holidays


Okay, welcome back to BC 106 interpreting scripture. It's our second lecture for today. I hope all of you are following and understanding. Let's go back to where we paused. I'm going to share the PDF. Right, so we're looking at the translation philosophy. In other words, how did the translators go about their translation? So first, we said there's one group of translators who would do formal equalism. They do word for word translation. They are trying to be as close to the original text as possible. Then there is functional equivalence, which is thought for thought. What was the person thinking? That's what I want to say here in the translation, thought for thought. So there's a little bit of interpretive process which the translators are doing for us, and hopefully they are right. Then there is the optimal equivalence. That is, I'm going to try to keep it word for word, but at the same time, I'm going to try to bring out the thought for the benefit of the reader. So that's optimal equivalence. So the Hallman Christian Standard Bible, I think it's what it's, it's CSP would be word for thought and word for word and thought for thought and optimal equivalence approach. Then there's another approach, which is meaning for meaning or equivalent meaning. So that means, what was the meaning of what the person was saying or writing? Let me convey that meaning in today's language. The goal is, so the passion translation comes as part of an equivalent translation, essential equivalence meaning for meaning. So here again, the translators are doing their part in interpreting the text and trying to keep trying to communicate the meaning of what was written for the reader. So they're doing that bit of interpretation. And finally, or another translation is a paraphrase. So in the paraphrase, the goal, you know, they're not looking at, you know, word for word or thought for thought or meaning for meaning. They're more like, let me say this in a very simple story form for somebody who likes to read it that way. So there is, they're not looking at accuracy, but they are looking at, let me capture it in a very interesting way for somebody to read. So, you know, so there are all these different translations of the Bible. And so when you look at it here, if you put a look at it as a chart, and you'll be seeing this chart once again in your second year, we'll go through it again. If this end, the left side, as I am looking at it, is accuracy. That means it is close to the original text. And if this end, if it is on the right side, end is relevance. That means it's close to the reader's understanding or making it easy for the reader to read. But it is further away from my inaccuracy. Then this is how the various translations of the Bible would be laid out. The one that is closest to the original text is the interlinear Greek, the interlinear Bible, which would have the Hebrew and the Greek words. That means it is literally translated. Then you see the New American Standard Bible, the amplified English Standard, revised King James, New King James. And then you have thought for thought, you know, of some of the common translations, the NIV here. And then you have the paraphrase, that means they're quite further away from, you know, being close to the structure of the text. But they are trying to be more relevant to the reader. You have the living Bible, and you have the message Bible and contemporary English version and so on. So the passion translation would probably be somewhere here, where it's meaning for meaning. So it's still away from thought to thought, word for word, thought for thought. They are here somewhere. They're doing of essential equivalence, meaning for meaning, but they're not doing word for word or thought for thought. Now, all of these different Bible translations, they have their benefit, you know, because there may be some people who just want to read something very, you know, read the text in a very, in a very light way. They just want it easy to understand. Then we could tell them, yeah, you read the message Bible or you read the living Bible or contemporary English version. It's in modern English. It's easy to understand, you know, the Good News Bible. So it's very easy. So it makes it easy for those people. So it doesn't keep them away from reading the Bible. At least they will read these translations and they will understand and learn certain things.  I really want, you know, something that's closer to the text, but yet I want it in my modern language. Then, you know, we can give them the passion translation. We can give them the NIV, those kinds of, they'll feel comfortable with that. But then there are those who say, well, I really want to be as close to the text. I want to study my Bible. I want to study, you know, do a lot of intense focused study on things. Then that's where we tell them, you know, we would recommend when you're doing serious Bible study to be as close to the original text as possible. You're going to look up the original words, the meanings, then you're putting in a lot of effort. So then we say, okay, then why don't you use, you know, the New King James or the King James or the New American Standard Bible. These are, you know, very close to the original text and good for some, those of us who want to do serious Bible study. Okay. So there's nothing wrong with, you know, I personally don't see anything wrong with having so many versions or translations because there are different leaders who will benefit from all of these. But keep in mind that sometimes when the scripture text is paraphrased or is you're away from proximity to the original text, the meaning can also change. You know, there are some verses which you read, if you read from the Message Bible or the Living Bible, it could just mean totally different from what, you know, you would, when you're reading the New King James or the New American Standard Bible. And that becomes a little challenge, you know, because what you read in the Message Bible, they have put it in such language that it's so different from, you know, the actual text. It's okay for somebody who wants something easy to understand but then to teach from it or to, you know, to establish doctrine or something that would be very difficult. So that's why for Bible study, we'd say get as close to the original text as possible. Okay. Any questions before we, here's just a list of all these common versions. Before we get into methods of Bible study, any questions or anything you want to discuss in terms of translations, you know, and of course, I've only spoken about English translations. I don't know about other language translations, but I'm suspecting they would be doing something similar, but I don't know. Any questions on these English translations and, you know, why there are different translations of the English Bible and so on. Everything is clear. So, all right. Thanks, Joy. Good to have you back after some time. So, if, you know, some people ask, which is the best Bible to use if you're going to study the Bible? So you'd say, I mean, I would say, you know, go as close to the original text, you know. So maybe take the New American Standard Bible or King James or New King James. And the King James may be a little difficult to read because it's old English. So take the New King James. So I would say go close to, if you want to study. Okay. If you want to study. Now, here's what I do. And I will be explaining this to you when we talk about the tools for Bible study. What I do is I like to read the verse, especially when I'm studying the Bible, not in my morning reading. In morning reading, I just use New King James. But when I'm studying the scriptures, when I'm, you know, looking into a topic, what I like to do is I like to read the same words from different English translations because then, you know, you can see, okay, in the bringing out, this is what is the main thought or the meaning that they're bringing out. And it also helps us communicate in contemporary English to people. Or we could say the same thing in different ways.  Sometimes you say something with certain words they may not understand. You say the same thing with another set of words they may not understand. You say the same thing with a different set of words they will understand. You know, but you've said the same thing is just that you're using a different set of words and they get it. So that comes, so that's why I like to read different English translations because they're using different words, English words to communicate that same idea. So it gives us you know, the ability so I can say the same thing like this, you know, so it's a learning for all of us as well, especially when we are speaking to, you know, today's younger generation. It's good to use more contemporary English that they can understand other than, you know, the New King James even, right? So I will share that a little later how we can do it. So from a Bible study perspective, it's good to use a Bible that is close to the original text, you know, pick something like that. From a communication perspective, if you want to speak to an audience then use something like, you know, just read something like the passion translation, the meaning for meaning, you know, sometimes I also look at the message Bible, the living Bible, they make it easy how to say it in an easy way in the audience. So it's useful. Okay, now let's move forward to talk about different ways to study the Bible. Now I wish we had time to, you know, just demonstrate each one of these ways because each one of these are very important. But, you know, let's see, maybe it was the end of the course, but I'm just going to explain different ways to study the Bible. Then we want to talk about the tools we can use. And then from next week, we start talking about all the rules, you know, these are the rules you must follow when you're interpreting scripture. So how do you study the Bible? I'm going to share with us some of these ways, very interesting ways to study the Bible. The first set of ways we refer to as more of a devotional or studying short passages.  So for me, I might usually read one chapter, right, or sometimes even half a chapter. So I'm just reading a passage. But then in that, it's part of my devotion, but I don't just read it, but you also want to study it. So we will get into that. What should we do, you know, the devotional method, verse powers. So we will get into the details of each of this, this just overview. Then another way to study the Bible is, of course, to study a character or to do a biographical study. So when you're studying a character, that means, you know, example, you look at Genesis 39, Joseph, in part of ourselves, and you study, okay, what happened in that situation? Daniel, you study Daniel chapter six, or what happened to Daniel when just, you know, he was thrown in the lion's den. This is that we bring out from the character that, you know, bring out, okay, these are the things that we can follow. Whereas in a biographical study, you study his whole life from birth to death. So if you're looking at Joseph again, from the time he was born, all the things that happened in his life, all the way till he died.  That's a biographical study. Whereas a character study is, okay, you're looking at a certain time frame of the person's life and you're learning. So we can learn from both, right? Both are very interesting. So that's character or biographical study.  So those are very useful, very important characters.  Then there's another way to study the Bible, which is thematic or topical or we call it word study. You know, people use different, different things. They say thematic, topical or word study. That means you study a certain topic in the Bible. So example, Holy Spirit. So you go from Genesis to Revelation to Trinon. See, what does the Bible say about Holy Spirit or healing? So you study from Genesis to Revelation. On that particular theme of divine healing or subject on faith or finances or family, marriage, so many topics, you study from cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation on that topic. Now, this is, again, I feel very important. This is where I actually spent maybe, or I would say I spent most of my time doing this kind of study, because then it makes you very clear as far as that topic is concerned. Your mind is very clear. This is why, because you've studied from Genesis to Revelation, you've gone through it. You're very clear on that, you know, because you've seen from Genesis Revelation on that subject, you're very clear. You can speak the authority because you have studied, you know, on that topic. So I like to do this, encourage you to do this, and we will talk about how to do it on certain things. The other thing is, if somebody says, can you, it's, you know, can you speak on this topic? Sure, you can easily speak on it because you've studied it from Genesis to Revelation, you know, in each book of the Bible, this is what it says on this topic. And then you can weave it all together, depending on how much time you have, or you can break it into subheadings and present it. But it's very useful if you want to master certain topics. Another approach is chapter, chapter study. So that means take a chapter and get into the details. So a lot of expository preaching, expository preaching usually happens out of your chapter study or your book study. So the chapter studies, you take one chapter and you look into the details of the chapter, you break the chapter down very nicely. Now, usually when people preach from the book of Psalms, of course, you can do this to any chapter in the Bible, but usually when people preach, okay, today I'm going to preach from Psalm 40. Wonderful. So what have they done? They've done a chapter study. They've gone into Psalm 40, broken it down, understood it, and then bring out the key points, the key elements in that Psalm. You know, so like that you can do it to any chapter. And within that, there are two ways you can do it. You can do a summary method or you can do an analysis method and we will talk about both. Okay. And then lastly, there is the book study. Book study means you're studying all the chapters in the book. You're studying the entire book. You would also look at the background. You would also look at the culture that, you know, a lot of things you look at the historical, the cultural, the setting, the people to whom it was written, etc. So you would do a lot of study around the book, then get into the book chapter by chapter. Book study also is very good, especially when you, especially for us, you know, I think all of us should at least study the New Testament and some of the main books from the Old Testament. Of course, Old Testament is very big, but at least New Testament we should do book study so that we can really, you know, get an understanding of each of the, especially the episodes and other gospels are easy for us to read. They're a recording of all the Jesus said and taught and we are familiar with it. But book study of the episodes, I think, is very, very important, especially for us in as we preach and teach. For that matter, any book, but especially I would say, you know, the New Testament. So in studying the book, sometimes people can do focus on the background. Some people can focus on do a survey, meaning this is the essence. They're bringing out the essence of the book. And sometimes you can go a little deeper. You can go into a reference synthesis method. And you're combining both background survey and in-depth study of the book, right? That means you're going worse by worse. What is the same? Everything. So you can do it at different levels. You know, some people may just do a background, they may just do a survey, meaning high level. This is the essence of the book. Or some people will go right, deep into the book, worse by worse. So there are many different approaches in book study as well. Okay, so at a high level, there are many different ways to study the Bible, the devotional or studying a single passage. That means even a few verses. You can do character. You can do topical. You can do chapter. And you can do book. Right? So let's get into these a little bit more detail on these. And I would encourage you, you know, to try work on these things. Of course, it'll take time, but it's very useful. So let's talk about the first one. In your devotional or passage study. That means you're taking a small passage, maybe three, four verses, five verses. Maybe it could sometimes be a full chapter. But in the devotional study, your goal is to, it's like an immediate thing. Like, how do I apply it in my life? So in devotional study, the approach very universal, I mean, globally, people refer to it as the inductive study method. Like we mentioned earlier today, it's a very simple way to study the Bible, very simple, which we, I think all of us are already, you may would already use in the way we read the Bible. So you read your passage. So you select a short passage. You read it very carefully. That means you meditate on it. You visualize the scene.  You know, what is being said? What is happening there? Now, what do I see? What do I feel? You know, how does it apply to me? So to do that, you ask three simple questions. What is the text saying? What is the meaning? And how do I apply? Simple. What's being said? What does it mean? How do I apply? So that's part, that's called as inductive Bible study, which we use in our devotional method. And sometimes, you know, you could actually practice this. That is, you can write it out. Okay, today I learned this, you know. So when I read today, first on three and four, of course, I try to tie it back right from chapter one. I am seeing, I'm following the train of thought. So what is John saying? So even though I made a chapter three and four today, I'm trying to connect it back to how he started because it's a full train of thought. But I see, okay, he's talking about love. Chapter four is all about God's love for us and our love for people. Okay, so that's what he's saying. But I remember, I can see, hey, he spoke about it in chapter two itself. He spoke about it in chapter three, and he's saying again the same in chapter four, he's talking about the importance of loving people. And he's all connecting it back to fellowship with God, because chapter one, he says, if you want to fellowship with God, you have to walk in the light. In chapter two, he says, if you hate your brother, you're in darkness.  Chapter four, he's saying, how can you say you love God if you don't love somebody?  Right? So it's all connected back to fellowship with God. So I cannot, and that's what he says, you know, if you walk in love, you're in God, God's in you. If not, fellowship with God is not possible.  How does this help me become more like Jesus? Okay, God, help me to love people. Make sure that there is no hatred, nothing wrong in my heart. So what you're doing is, you're taking that passage, applying it to yourself. The same thing you can do to the same passage, you can look at it worse by worse. So in that passage of it, there are six verses, each verse, you can do the same thing to each verse. You know, what do I see? Sometimes every verse is, you know, has that you can do the observation, meaning an application to every verse. So you can do worse by worse for that. And you can write down the personal application of each verse. So here you might write down, you know, suppose you read six verses, you're looking at the whole passage and you're writing like a summary of the passage and application, or if you're looking six verses, you can write down six applications. Each was what it means. Okay, but you're doing the same thing. You are observation, interpretation, application. You can do it to the whole passage, or you can do it to the individual verses. Okay, so this is one way of studying the Bible. Now, as you keep doing this, you know, eventually you're going to, you know, if you will learn so much, we will learn so much as we do this inductive approach. Okay, character study, like we said, you are going to look at a small section of time in the person's life, or you can look at their whole life. Right, so example, example Daniel, you could read just Daniel chapter six. And if we look at just that chapter and we study Daniel only in chapter six, we are doing character study. And we're saying, okay, what can I learn about Daniel? Well, you know, it starts off by saying that Daniel was very good in his work. He was a man of an excellent spirit. He was excellent in his work, and under King Darius.  And so Darius thought of, you know, promoting him. And then you see how there was people who didn't like that. There were people who didn't like that. They wanted to put him down. They came up with a plan to put him down and trap him.  But then you see, you know, how Daniel had a discipline from an early age, he would go three times and he would pray towards Jerusalem. And then even though the law was passed, nobody should pray to any other God. Daniel went and still prayed. And even though King Darius really liked Daniel and really honored Daniel, he had to, you know, have him thrown the lines then and God protected him and so on. And then you can talk about, you know, various aspects of Daniel's character.  But you're looking at a certain timeframe in Daniel's life and we are learning from, oh, I must also be like Daniel. And it encourages other hearts to follow that example. So that's character study, right? So you're zeroing in and you're putting the spotlight on a certain time in that person's life and you're looking at it very carefully. Now, sometimes you might notice some mistakes the person made, their weaknesses, their failures, and then we learn from that, okay, we shouldn't make those same mistakes. You know, what, how would I do? How would I react if I was in that situation?  So this is character study and God can, you know, speak to us even through that. Now, if you extend that, like we said, to the entire life of the person as given as revealed in scripture, then we are doing a biographical study. So if we go from Daniel chapter one all the way through end of chapter six, because the rest of book of Daniel is all prophecy, you may pick up a few other things in the other chapters, but basically it is the biographians with chapter six. And you look at, you know, this is what we can learn about his full life as seen in scripture, how he comes as a, how he was taken into exile as a Jewish boy and he learned the language of the people and yet how he was faithful and all of that. So you do his whole entire study. That's a biographical sketch. And again, you do the same thing. What can we learn from Daniel's entire life and how does, how God works with somebody over time? So that's again, another way to look at, to do character study. Right. Now when we're doing thematic or topical study, here we are deducing things from, so that what we're doing is we're going to try to look at all the scriptures that are speaking on that team or topic.  That means this is what the Bible says about this.  This is what the Bible says on the subject. Why?  So doctrine is often established through this kind of study. You have to look at the whole Bible on that theme. A lot of, the other studies will give us a lot of inspiration and a lot of instruction. But doctrine is normally established through this kind of study of a complete word study or a thematic or topical study you establish doctrine. So in this, basically what you're doing is, okay, topical, you take up a topic and you go through the whole Bible through all the verses that you can find that speak to that topic. Now, for this, for doing this, of course, we can use tools, but we also need to know the Bible in order to do this. You need to know that, okay, in all of these books of the Bible, this subject is addressed in some way. So we can use tools. We can use cross-referencing and I will show you, you know, the tools we have available to us to do this very quickly. But basically what you're going to do is you're going to find out all the verses that you can get on this topic, on this subject. And then you're going to answer specific questions. So, for example, suppose you say, I want to study what the Bible says on healing. So what do you do? Well, you have to get all the scriptures from Genesis Revelation that speak on healing.  What are the ways in which he heals? How do I receive healing? Why don't people, why don't, why doesn't everybody get healed? What are the different methods through which God heals?  So basically, you're organizing your conclusions into a structured outline or into a structured set of conclusions, you're putting them together. Right. So then you can communicate that. Right. And so this is, you know, it is, it is challenging, but it's also most rewarding way to study the Bible because you understand very clearly on the subject. So some of the books that we have written APC books now, the book on faith, we haven't printed it yet, but the book on healing and deliverance or gifts to the Holy Spirit are all topical studies. That means we try to bring together everything the Bible says on that subject. And so, for example, in ministering and writing that book, ministering and healing deliverance, I said, okay, you know, let's bring together everything that you can possibly find on this subject. So you don't even have to look anywhere else because here in one place, you have brought together in a very organized way everything the Bible says on the subject, you know, so we try to cover that. And similarly on the gifts of the Spirit or other topical books, you know, they're the outcome of such a study. So you basically get all the verses, all the passages that speak on that subject. Then you make your questions or your categories of things that you want to have answered, then you organize what you find into those conclusions. And sometimes new categories may come up as you're looking at the scriptures.  I wish I could show you practically how it's done, but let's see, maybe just the end. Similarly, you may want to do a topic or you may want to do a theme, you know, you could pick a theme like who we are in Christ or redemption, you know, the overlapping can't differentiate between topic and theme. They're almost similar. And so you get all the verses on who we are in Christ or our redemption. And you put it in a way, you organize it in a way that is very easy to understand and communicate. And similarly, do four words. So you pick a word like faith, or you pick a word. And then you look at all the scriptures that have that word, you know, wisdom or righteousness or, yeah, just in any word. And you go through all the scriptures and then you put it all together in a very structured format, right? So whether you do a topic or a theme or a word study, the approach is very similar. Okay. Let's just do a little bit more and I'll pause. I know we have about 10 minutes. So how do you study a chapter? Chapter study approach. There are different ways. One is you can do a summary of the chapter. Or maybe let me start this next week. I think it'd be over too much here. Let's pick up here. Let's pause for any questions. Is everybody's okay with your following so far? Any questions on these things? So next week, we will look at the other study by the study methods. And then I will also share with you the tools that we could use. And I use this tool. I use Esword a lot. So this is the tool that I use. I've been using it from the time it was first released, I think back in 2001. So this is how I study the tool that I use to study the Bible. I will explain this to you next class next week. You see like in one place you can have many, many, many versions. So if I just select, you know, you can select one verse and you can say compare. And that same verse you can read in many different translations, including Hindi. And, you know, you can read it. So it's really interesting study. Then, of course, New King James is the default that I use. And then there is the certain commentaries I will mention. There are lots of commentaries, but don't read too many. You'll get confused. So I will mention a few that are useful to have. And then there are dictionaries. Again, there are many dictionaries, but I'll tell you the ones that I normally use so that they can give you the words. And of course, this tool helps you look up the Greek word, the meaning of the Greek words and Hebrew words as well. So very useful. And then you can do searches. So if you want to search for the word faith, where does the word faith appear in the Bible? So it tells you, in the King James Version, the word faith appears in 231 verses and 247 matches. So here are all the places where the word faith is found. So this is very useful when you are doing a topical study or a thematic study, right? So we'll go over this tool next week. And I'd encourage you to do this. There are other tools as well, which I will mention, but this is the one. Eastward is what I use. I've been using it for a long time, and I really like it, right? So I'd encourage you to make use of that and study the word. Okay, we're going to close now. Thank you all for being on the class. I hope these things are useful to all of us. And I just want to invite somebody to pray, and we will pause for today. We'll pick up from doing the chapter study. We'll pick it up from next week. Okay, could somebody pray and then dismiss us, please? Thank you. All right, somebody can pray? I can go. Go ahead, Zoe. So, Lord, thank you so much for this for today, for every teaching. Thank you because you are opening tools and your ways to know your Lord and because all the things that you are setting up in our hearts, we ask you for this day, and we ask you that you're still putting hunger in our hearts to read the Bible in many different ways so we can learn more about you so we can understand everything you can say and everything you have to say for us and to the world. And we ask you, so you protect us today and that everything that we're about to do, it's on your hands, Lord, and everything that we're about to say. It's on your mouth either and that we can be light wherever we go. In the name of Jesus, amen. Amen, amen. All right, thank you everyone. God bless you. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon or rest of your day. See you again next week. God bless. Bye now. Thank you, Pastor. Bye. God, God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.