just felt tonight I kind of knew my set list ahead of time and and the heart was right but I just felt like we were supposed to come in differently tonight and I just wanted to give some context I felt like we're supposed to come in low come in gentle come in humble come in reverently because I believe with when the Lord begins to speak like that he's looking for a response from us in a way that we acknowledge like okay that's you Lord that you're speaking and I think you're speaking a lot of different things through a lot of different ways even through that conversation but I just wanted to come in and just say Lord you have our attention tonight and just as we engage in worship and I just wanted to make space for the voice tonight so I don't totally know where this that's gonna go but we're gonna open it up we're gonna welcome the Holy Spirit we're gonna worship and and that's enough so Lord can we just lift our hands tonight Lord tonight we invite your holy and your precious presence into this house into this space not just this physical space but into the home of our hearts and I pray that you would have your way in the depths of who we are I pray that you would do a great marking work in our hearts tonight I pray that you would have the glory that you desire from each and every person here I pray that the full manifestation of grace that you put on them would be touched tonight would be revealed tonight Lord we give your hearts and we say calm circumcise us afresh make us sensitive in ways where we've grown calloused make a sharp in the areas that we've grown dull I pray that you would awaken us in any area that we have been asleep Lord that you would awaken us with your voice that thunders but it's so gentle and so kind Lord we just welcome you we welcome you Holy Spirit in this place and everybody said amen again sing I love and I hunger for you expression of worship that you are desiring from your own with all of our hearts with all of our hearts and we say we want to bring you bring you the thing that your heart desires Jesus so do a work in our hearts as we continue to move into worship as we extoll your holy name I do pray that you would mark us by the power of your Holy Spirit tonight and you would set right the things in our hearts that are not quite right Lord that you would bring a cleansing and a renewing and a purification into our hearts for the renewal for the sake of the glory for the sake of the move of God that is on the horizon Lord we want to be a people who are ready we want to be a people who are rightly in alignment with your voice and with your heart in this moment and in this hour so Lord as we journey and worship which you do the thing that only you can do I pray that fire would fall tonight on everything that's presented to you we present not just our songs and our lips tonight we present our entire bodies as an act of worship as a moment of consecration we place them on the altar tonight and we say oh come and consume God all we are come and consume God all we are we are yours we were bought with the price and the life that we live is for your glory so be exalted or king of kings and the Lord that wants the sin that wants to cling so closely Lord but to strip it all off that we would run in such a prayer in such a way to boost our feet to run the race like we have never run the race before oh Lord it says those that wait upon the Lord they shall renew their strength and they shall mount up on wings as eagles and I ask that the wind of God would begin to blow leaders into all that you have and into their communities Lord oh Lord Jesus I pray and your honor in this land that your name would be exalted that you would move in great power tonight in Jesus name everybody said amen say one more time one more time so good I was thinking about how God will take moments and places and he'll fill them with his glory and that's what makes it a moment just thinking about Moses how he approached a bush that he had probably passed thousands of times and on this particular occasion in Exodus 3 it says he saw that the bush was burning but yet it was not consumed and he said in his heart I will turn aside to see to see what this is and the Lord spoke to him out of that bush he spoke to him out of a bush a bush as a shepherd I mean this was familiar territory to him he's probably walked by taking care of the sheep hundreds thousands of times but on this occasion the Lord put his glory on something practical in a moment and in a place and he spoke to Moses and it not only changed Moses activated the next season of his calling but it resulted in the deliverance of a people I'm just thinking about moments like this at conferences that it's just it's just a building and we're just people and these are just instruments but yet when God comes and he fills a moment like this with his glory our heart cries out Lord I'm gonna turn aside and I want to see what this is and I want to hear what you have to say to me and I believe in this room even in moments like this it's more than I just think it's so important that we recognize it's it's more than just walking out of here gone that was an amazing worship set it's moments that we say the Lord was there and he spoke to me it's something got activated in my life that I'm walking out of here different than I came in the next season the Lord has spoken to me about the next season and I really believe out of this room when we go back to one of the cities that are represented in this room and you are leading your church leading your ministry what God speaks to you here this week and maybe it's even tonight it's not just going to activate the next season in your life it's going to bring about deliverance and freedom not just for a thousand people in this room but tens of thousands of people across our city across our nation and potentially a generation how many know God can trigger a move across a nation in just one moment it just takes one moment it just takes one bush it just takes one bush but here's what Jesus here's what the Lord said out of that bush Moses take off your sandals for this is holy ground it's holy and it's sacred and so Lord tonight in this moment in this place we turn aside to you with our whole hearts we say Lord we want to hear what you're going to speak to us out of this moment in this place out of this bush Lord what will you say to us and we want you to know we're approaching this it's holy ground we're taking the sandals off of off of our feet tonight and we're coming with nothing between us and you this is a holy moment and we say Lord what will you say to us Lord and I'm even praying about things that have been said this afternoon and yesterday seeds out of the middle of messages and moments and prayer meetings and workshops just a seed Lord what is it that you're highlighting and what are you going to germinate as your presence waters that seed and what is the fruit that's going to be born out of that only you know that but we just say we are standing on holy ground and we want everything that you have scheduled for us and what you're even going to say tonight so just put your hand over your heart tonight all across this room and just say this is holy ground speak to me father give me ears to hear what you're saying Jesus you can go ahead and take a seat tonight readiness of the Lord here tonight and I want to I want to steward that I don't want I don't want to shift anything off of that I don't want the dove wasn't that weighty today I mean I'm ruined one word remained I I'm gonna be up late tonight thinking about that word we want the dove we want the dove to remain tonight I was I normally closed out the the last session of a rye shine this last year God has given me just an incredible privilege to run with a man that I have grown to love and he's been here many times but this is the last year it just feels like God has just like on ramped us together and we've done several things together New York and Atlanta and different places like that and what's unique about Corey Russell I'm gonna tell on myself here in 2000 I think it was three or four had a young man in our church when we were trying to get prayer culture developed who came and he kept bringing me these tapes of his favorite preacher a guy named Corey Russell and he would make me listen to them and and I told him I said I love Alan Hood and I love Mike Bickle but I can't stand this guy named Corey Russell he keeps preaching shut it down and go to prayer and I'm like I can't shut it down I have to have children's ministry and youth ministry I'm a local church pastor now I'm serious that like literally I told him I said this oh this guy just irritates me and I will tell you what's ironic about that number one it was my fault I was a knucklehead I really was I publicly repent for that but now literally one of my favorite people on the planet and my favorite preacher the one who every time he preaches my heart just comes alive is Corey Russell and it's a privilege to call him a friend to be able to run together for him to speak into this house and I said this year I said I'm not supposed to speak the last session I asked him when we were in New York together I said I know your schedule is crazy but can you come and bring a message I feel like you're supposed to close out or I shine so everybody shut it down and will help me a welcome to the platform Corey Russell come on up privacy privacy I love it I love it I love it I was very naive I was literally I'd preach a lot of those messages with Billy Humphrey here in Atlanta we would when when I'd go to Atlanta we've been running together over here forever and I always preach Malachi 110 Malachi screamed to the priest he good who who among you would shut the doors so you won't kindle a fire on my alter in vain and I just preach shut it down and I was really naive but I still believe in the core of what I was saying and now we just have some dressing and some diplomacy about me on how I say it there's some we'll just see how it goes as we get going but though it's such an honor I I am just undone I'm humbled I'm honored to call Lee Cummings my friend I am blown away with him Jane the team the leadership this house let's just give radiant the team a hand I'm just so grateful for you guys man all of the hosting you guys have done for this it's absolutely amazing and I'm just honored and humbled that you would even ask me to come and speak I mean that and I am you're gonna hear an accent it's from northwest Arkansas and I just grew up in a town of 3,000 my dad was a air conditioning factory worker and my mom was a school teacher and I didn't know anything and I went through my normal years athletics was everything but I didn't know Jesus and I once athletics was out of the equation I went deep into drugs and went off to near Little Rock Arkansas to school and and I and I and I came home after my first year in college and I got my first DWI and I couldn't afford to go back to college where I was at so I had to go to a community college in my hometown and ended up hooking up with my good friend my friend's name was Zach and Zach had a praying mom the kind of mom who's got who's praying women in here come on somebody these are kind of women I would come to his house high as a kite just walking through the door and she'd be waiting at the door 3 a.m. and just be praying in the spirit and anointing everybody with oil as you're walking in I stayed at his house another night just a little tipsy and I laid my head about to crash and right when I did I felt something all over my ears she had put anointing oil all over the pillows I know some of y'all got prayer cloths underneath Timmy's bed right now you know it's T minus 10 when you got a praying mom like that and so it's she's gonna get him and all of his friends and so it happened we had been up partying and we came back off this drug high and my friend was weird for about four months he stopped talking it culminated on February 1st 97 I showed up at his house another day to hang out with him and he comes running out the front door screaming at me Corey it's heaven or hell it's heaven or hell you have to make a decision right now I'm backing up going what the world's going on he goes you got to give your life to Jesus and I go I'm not I'm leaving and and I end up grab my buddy and we leave and we know we had heard back that mom had led him through a three-day deliverance breaking the power of the devil off of him praise God he gets saved I get angry you don't get saved at 20 when you have such a bright next 10 years ahead of you in my mind two weeks later he showed up to college I was still in school barely and he said let me take you to lunch and for he said for those four months the spirit realm was opened up I was seeing angels and demons seeing what was controlling people and Corey I need you to know you're controlled by demons darkness is all over your life you need to give your life to Jesus hell is real give your life to Jesus and I said dude shut up take me back to school so he drove back to the college and pulled into the parking lot right before I get out of the van the Holy Spirit filled the van I didn't know what he or it was but I began to feel the presence of God move and before I knew it I was shaking violently like I was having a seizure and I was seeing a tug-of-war battle between light and darkness over my soul he pulled in the back of the parking lot and I guess his mom taught him one prayer he goes in the name of Jesus I bind the anti-Christ spirit he went for it and I literally began to choke around my throat I couldn't breathe I knew I had to get out the name Jesus but all I could get out was jeez and so I kept trying to say it I went jeez it kept getting tighter jeez it kept getting tighter he's in my ears screaming say it say it say it I'm trying and I remember just taking a deep breath with all the power inside of me and just scream we're having a full-on conversation while these things run my neck I'm trying and I just remember Jesus and right when I screamed his name the hold broke off my neck God came and breathed into my mouth and all I could say for the next five minutes is I've got air I've got air I've got air he jumps out of the van dancing running around the van saying Jericho's come down I didn't know what Jericho was it sounded deep and then after about five minutes all I can say is I've got air I've got air I've got air and I heard a voice is clear as day coming on my mind the voice said get out of the van get on the pavement and give me your life your mind so February 18th 1997 college parking lot kids running everywhere I jump out of the van get into the pavement get on the pavement and I go Jesus Christ I give you my life I'm yours Jesus Christ I that was my sinner's prayer Jesus Christ I give you my life I'm yours and that moment I passed from death to life I was delivered of all the drugs the alcohol the perversion one touch of the royal presence of God and then I went home that afternoon and set on my porch swing undone for the next two hours by how blue the sky was and how green the grass was and how loud the birds were it's like I had been dead for 20 years and I was alive within a month I had a drug ring of friends that had encounters like that are bigger in their explosions I end up leading my little brother to the Lord who went crazy for Jesus in the high school and over the next six months we would see half the high school come to Jesus we would begin to have about five meetings a week till three in the morning and we got baptized right into a move of the Holy Spirit and I began to gravitate to my best friend's mom and her friends I'm like these women know God and so I kid you not I spent the first two years of my Christian walk hanging out the majority of my time with two 50 year olds and one 80 year old woman I want to tell you you want to get friends get on fire it has a magnet about it okay and those those girls taught me how to pray this before we had streaming or anything else like that we'd have a CD or something but it'd be me in that 80 year old and I'd just be praying in the spirit at 6 a.m. saying come on Lila pray come on Lila pray just scream at her and she'd just smile I got I felt so in love with the place of prayer I began to connect the dots that what I was experiencing in that move of God was the result of the years and decades of faithful intercession that preceded what we were experiencing and so I spent a long time with that I married my beautiful wife in 1998 come in in August 25 years we've been married come on we had our first daughter in 99 and then the Lord began to connect us to in that season we were in my engagement season it'll be one of the things I'm gonna talk into tonight the Lord really marked me out of Isaiah 40 and called me to be a voice in this hour and I just remember laying on my back in the middle of that season saying I don't want to be an echo I want to be a voice I don't want to be an echo I want to be a voice I don't want to be a parrot that spits back all the famous teachings of the day I want reality in God had our first daughter in 99 then moved to Kansas City where we would spend the next 19 years serving the Lord in the house prayer then spent three and a half years in Dallas and we're now in Denver at house Denver and we're joining this thing with you this is where all of our streams have found each other is that we're gripped the Lord in and I'm gonna speak into some of these things tonight but in 2016 the the face of Jesus as shepherd really marked my life in a profound way and someone who had been a part of a missions base you know we love the church we're praying for the church we're after the church but I don't know I don't know if I had truly connected with the the Lord's heart for the local church and in 2016 I literally spent 365 days absolutely undone with the face of Jesus as shepherd and he really began to turn my heart towards the local church and he showed me Corey the future of the prayer movement is in the local church the future of the prayer movement is in the local church the future of everything that I want to do is in the local church the Lord really began to wreck my heart and it was in that season that he just began to stir within me I I just want to come in and talk to you tonight because you are we're we're raising the flag we're driving it in the ground we're not gonna give God rest we're gonna plant prayer rooms at the heart of our churches this is non-negotiable it's not the new fad this is what apostolic foundations are about ministry to God above every other ministry ministry to God takes priority over every other ministry and we are in the middle of turning that ship and you guys are hearing this it's resonating in your spirit and we're beginning to go on a journey of God how can we plant prayer rooms in the heart of our churches and there are many dynamics we're wrestling with this in Denver right now and I'm just one of the things that's really touching me in this season is a lot of us just say okay you got to put a prayer room in there because you want to worship Jesus Jesus is worthy of worship we want to minister to him and that is one of the primary realities of why we're putting prayer rooms in the heart of our churches is Jesus's first ministry but I'm thinking tonight because it's not only the ministry to Jesus this is the other thing that's burning in my heart as it relates to speaking to pastors and leaders it's the place it's what we call the apostolic incubator it's the place where the word of God begins to match the spirit of God in his messengers and in his preachers and it's in the place of prayer that we discover the word of God I love what's happening with the worship movement and its explosion I love what's happening in the earth right now but if there's I'm feeling as I'm coming into tonight a burden for the restoration of the preaching of the word of God and for the restoration of the prophetic spirit on our preachers and not just our preachers I'm talking about our worship leaders I'm talking about our musicians I'm talking about our children's pastors our youth pastors our married couples pastors family pastors I believe that he's calling all of us to the place of prayer so that we can rediscover the word of God and that where we can get weight and the prophetic anointing back on our words that I can I'm feeling second Timothy 4 tonight where Paul is charging Timothy before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead as appearing and his kingdom what are you gonna charge him with preach the word be ready in season and out of season convince rebuke exhort with all-long suffering and teaching why for the time will come will they will not endure sound doctrine but according to their own desires because they have itching ears they will get as many YouTube teachers TikTok teachers and Instagram teachers they can find that will align with what they want to hear see we're not just planting prayer rooms because hey that's the cool thing of Lee saying do that and a couple other people will try it it feels boring and useless don't know what we're doing now I'm being honest with you guys we're after apostolic just foundations that's coming back to the church we have fallen so far and I feel like the current run of the meal Sunday only Christianity is putting band-aids over a gaping wound it's not truly healing the the the crisis that the culture is in and where the backslidden church is at we've got to have words that have been formed in the place of prayer and fasting that does more than puts band-aid over gaping wounds but that can bring true healing can you go with me to Jeremiah 3 I want everybody to tell me to Jeremiah 3 we're getting our voice back we're gonna get our voice back I'm thinking tonight of Josiah King Josiah when he began to release his reforms in Jerusalem first thing he did he goes get back to the temple clean out the temple and while cleaning out the prayer room that's where the book of the law was discovered the word of God will always be rediscovered when you begin to prioritize prayer I feel like God wants to mark some messengers and preachers and leaders tonight songwriters authors let's look at this message right here this is Jeremiah prophesying one to his generation but ultimately to the the generation of the Lord's return and he he's gonna give a call of repentance he's gonna go return oh backsliding children says the Lord look at this phrase you ever heard repentance in light of seeing God as a bridegroom he says for I'm married to you y'all way is speaking to Jerusalem saying we're in covenant with one another return back to me for I'm married to you I believe that God wants to restore a repentance call in light of a bridal paradigm and understanding of God's heart as a jealous bridegroom that's not some fringe revelation of God it's strewn through the whole word of God is that God is a bridegroom and I believe our greatest way to call people into repentance is in the context of a revelation of God is bridegroom because I'm gonna take you one from a city and two from a family I'm gonna bring you to Zion here's my gift to you I will give you shepherds according to my heart and I want you to keep this up here I will give you shepherds according to my heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding God says I have a gift for a backslidden church I have a gift for a leo to see in church that's not in touch with how much they need God how blind they are and how out of touch with reality they are the gift that I'm going to give to a backslidden church is shepherds I have a gift me the sovereign Lord is going to give to the church to my people to Israel to the church to the people of God I have a gift and it's shepherds such an interesting phrase and I love this phrase shepherds which speak of the heart of God and then he says this according to my heart when you read a phrase like that what do you think of David first Samuel 13 when the kingdom's being stripped from Saul he says Saul I want you to know that I found a man after my own heart what does it mean that God's going to give to the earth shepherds that have been fashioned according to his heart I believe that many of us have been in a seminary over the last decade and that and the seminary is discovering the ways of God the heart of God and the knowledge of God many of us have walked through Psalm 22 seasons of my God my God where are you and it's leading you to a Psalm 23 revelation of the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want see God's not going to give leaders and messengers to the people of God that are just walking around with Bible verses plastic theologies some nice devotionals he's not going to give to this generation some plastic superficial leaders he's not going to give to the church leaders who just look for what's the popular teaching podcast and let me take all their teaching and give that he's actually been forging something in his leaders over the last decade and it's called the baptism into my God where are you and the knowledge of God that you're discovering isn't plastic it isn't superficial it's the real knowledge of God it's something you've discovered in your dark nights according to my heart according to the dream that I had look at this they're going to feed you I really believe that we're growing in that Amos 811 a famine of hearing the word of God I think we're in those days of the famine of the hearing of the word of God and he goes yeah there it is not a famine behold the days are coming that I'm going to send a famine on the land not a famine of bread nor thirst for water but of hearing the words of the Lord what happens when you're in that gap where no one wants to listen to sound doctrine anymore when you're in a gap where no one can hear the word of the Lord anymore what is God's answer to the growing crisis and cultural conversations and pressures that we're finding our people in and when there's all the lust and the seduction and all the attention grabbing realities that's going on its shepherds its shepherds according to his heart who feed people can I just submit to you it's time for us to break through the superficial some of you are coasting because you followed the right path from your 20s and you move from that position to that position and you're starting to hit the coasting of what you saw 20 years ago about your life and I just want to submit to you that possibly God could be calling you back into your 20s of seeking God the way you used to when you had no position some of you are in coast mode and you're into just bringing another word to just keep the ship moving and I want to submit to you that God wants to cut you and God wants to deliver you from superficial and begin to birth a new cry saying God I want the knowledge of God I want a spirit of burning on me when I read your word God I cannot feed them on plastic are you coasting are we coasting in this hour or have we been freshly cut saying God I need you to feed me it's time for the body it's time for our leaders to break through the ceiling of the spirit of religion and break into that blue Pacific Ocean called the revelation of Jesus Christ Paul says in Ephesians 3 8 this grace has been given to me that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to me who am less than the least of all the saints see this is what I'm fearing in this hour is worship exploding all the things are exploding but I'm not hearing the word of God proclaimed I'm not feeling I'm wrestling in my own life and on our leaders the spirit of burning on the word of God in our preaching why is it God always moved when you don't get to preaching time when the worship went too long what if God was moving so strong worship went for 15 minutes and the message went for an hour and a half what if God was moving so strong in a service no God's only moving strong when worship takes over the message man God moved we didn't even preach we got capacity to say that's the power of worship it does sustain us but our capacities for the word of God have become so low we're fighting with all the distractions and all the social media and all the images and we said all right 25 minutes all right 22 minutes 20 minutes four stories keep them entertained for four more seconds to a people who truly don't love the word of God to a people who spend the other six days and 23 hours of their weeks not looking at the word not having any appetite for the word that's usually one of the signs that you're entering into rigor mortis and death is you lose your appetite and I believe one of the greatest indictments on the church in this hour is we keep catering it to people on their deathbeds we were catering it to the people saying hey man we don't get religion we're free from that we're free from the ocean of the discovery of the knowledge of God a man on the other side of these pages with burning eyes and burning words from Genesis to Revelation he wants to take you on the road to Emmaus you think Jesus showed up in Matthew no we need the burning heart again friends do you love the word of God is it your daydream is it what you need when you need a break is it your number one source of entertainment he wants to restore it the word of God in his shepherds where you feed you and it begins with God no I'm distracted I lose my way I need to get back to some early things I love road to Emmaus these two disciples weak guys with really limited theologies trying to make sense of what they've heard there was so much an unbelief they're going on this road talking about men we had heard these stories about the women fine they couldn't play Jesus had raised from the dead it didn't make sense to them and so they're walking and then Jesus shows up in his Clark Kent outfit and just starts walking with them I don't know if he's hiding glory or they're blind I don't know but they're walking and Jesus goes hey guys what are these things you're talking about and they go the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth a prophet all these things we thought he was going to do for us but he died now we heard stories about a resurrected Jesus goes guys you are so foolish to believe in all the prophets have said and then it says in beginning at Moses and then he walked them from Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy he walked them through the Psalms he walked them through the prophets showing every place how Messiah must first come and suffer and then be raised into glory Jesus takes them on the Bible study and he goes okay guys I'll see you later here's a point of revelation God will always give you a measure and says does that make you happy you satisfied it says that Jesus acted as if he would go on but they constrained him they tackled him brought him into the house they said at the table and as soon as he breaks the bread and hands it to him their eyes were open and as soon as their eyes were open what did Jesus do he vanished how many of you have seen someone vanish in front of you if he vanished right in front of me I would look at you and say did you see the guy vanish he vanishes and they look at each other and they go back to what they were discovering and feeling on the road earlier in the day and they said did not our hearts burn within us while he unfolded the scriptures to us more powerful than a vanishing man is a burning heart when Jesus is leading the Bible study do you know it was Jesus in the burning bush do you know it was Jesus that wrestled with Jacob all night you know there was Jesus that showed up to Joshua before he came into Jericho you know it was Jesus that Isaiah saw on his throne it was Jesus who touched Jeremiah's lips it was Jesus Ezekiel saw that Zachariah saw friends we need a burning heart again back on our shepherds we need to break through the peripheral and begin to cry out to get into that blue ocean called the knowledge of God there is a realm of revelation and fascination Isaiah 6 gives it to us because here's the first way to enter into proclamation you need an earth shattering revelation that you don't know who you're talking about there's got to be a whoa the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple and I heard the seraphim sing to one another holy holy holy Lord of Host the whole earth is full of his glory and the post of the temple was shaking by his voice and then Isaiah said whoa is me I am undone for I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the Lord the King what's the undefiled speech Isaiah's feeling what's the defiled speech he's feeling does you have a cussing problem what's the defiled speech I'll tell you what it is after hearing the undiluted proclamation of heaven's witness concerning the glory of this man Isaiah has already a prophet realized I don't know who I'm talking about I'm so unclean I'm so defiled I need lips that are restored I want you to understand this your lips get exposed when your eyes get open lips get exposed when eyes get open and from everything of our preachers to our worship leaders to our musicians to our pastors to our parents the issue is the lips of the priest should keep knowledge and we're in a crisis I keep feeling it as I'm reading 2nd Timothy I feel like the windows closing the time is coming when no one's gonna endure sound doctrine and we keep catering we keep building new systems around the new generation and we keep acquiescing to their way when I feel like this is an hour for the shepherds to break through into a rediscovery of a love affair with the word of God see that's why we got prayer rooms that's why we need prayer rooms because we need hours you can't get this 45 minute thing a week you ain't gonna get an utmost for his highest on your way to the pulpit we've lost the lost art of marination of saturation of regurgitation of contemplation that feeds revelation we've lost the long hours of waiting in empty rooms because we're needed and that's an indictment because in Act 6 when demands were growing Apostles sent government and said we must give ourselves continually to the word in prayer we've got to have apostolic conviction again see that doesn't sound nice to the Greek widows does it why aren't you taking care of the Greek widows the Hellenistic widows they go no no you don't understand if we get out of the place of prayer and the word the whole thing falls down the whole thing gets just completely domesticated we get infiltrated with heresies we get lost away we we're gonna worship the God of our feelings we worship the God of our feelings I love to feel I'm a feeler but my feeler is in the back seat I want to live my life submitted to the word of God shepherds according to my heart who will feed you who will feed you friends we got a lot of people on deathbeds we're like Josiah we're getting I think this is what you talked about last year was Josiah you John did John Tyson did talked about Josiah this is why we need the prayer room because we need hours of empty rooms that deep talks is you from your importance that deep talks is you from how awesome you are and how needed you are as it strokes all the emotions of feeling important and the Lord brings you back to buddy you're just a my little priest called to look at me and receive my word and sing songs back to me you're called to wrestle over Bible verses you're called to burn in an empty room and you're getting seduced with full rooms oh friends let us not be seduced in this hour because of numbers this generation needs to be fed we gotta feed them we got it but you can't feed them with what you just pick up on the way it's gotta come from here and you don't get that out of McDonald's drive-thru you don't get that by an impartation service and catching your favorite preachers YouTube click that comes from the core of discovering God and wrestling over tensions in the knowledge of God God is judge God is king God is bridegroom God is redeemer the God who who brings forth redemption we wrestle with it in our own lives in the word of God to feed people in real time and space oh the lost art of waiting I believe with all my heart God's God's gonna turn this ship and I believe that the radiant network and the church is connected to this house I'll tell you what I feel when I get around you guys and I get around Lee and Jane I feel safety I feel safety I feel there is a shepherd there is a people that is going after the pillar of truth wanting the word and the spirit this is a safe house and this is the safe people you put Isaiah 40 up here just 19 more minutes guys I just want you to know this I don't want to buy into the high this is not an hour to be locked guys I just need you to understand this this is not an hour to be lost in trivial issues this is not an hour to be flirting around with coasting this is not an hour to coast this is an hour to get a fresh flame on your spirit this is an hour and it's not about standing and being loud it's not about what it looks like in the presentation it looks like reality that's been wrestled in so many hidden hours nobody knows anything about as you walked in an empty room and kept saying the same verse over for four hours eating the scroll eating it will only feed to the degree you eat but many of us we I feel like in many ways I did just something that I'd say way back in the shut it down days I believe God is ripping the feeding tube out of the mouth of the church we've been living vicariously through pastors for so long and we've got a bunch of malnourished feeding tube situations going on and we haven't taught a generation how to eat I'm in pain over this in my own ministry I was with a friend we labored for 20 years and to see the glory of the teachings of the excellencies of Christ and of the end of the glory of intercession and the things we gave a generation but we didn't really teach them how to eat it teach them how to digest and it's meditation it's you sent with the word and you say it back to God we keep spoon feeding making it the bar as easy as possible and I want to say this is not an hour to just make it on the lowest level it's time to exalt the word of God exalt the majesty of God I want to break through into that ocean Isaiah 40 I love that it says comfort yes comfort my people says your God keep it there go back that word comfort means to the heart to the heart I remember an old statement from Leonard Ravenhill when he said that a message born in the mind only reaches the mind but a message born in the heart will always reach the heart and God has a gift for Jerusalem in the coming days and it's a church across the earth that has gotten delivered from ignorance and arrogance and thinking that it's all about us and understanding that we've been grafted in to a glorious storyline a storyline that we're just getting in in the last quarter in and in the there has come so many deceptive heresies and replacement theology that we have replaced Israel God is turning the heart and I believe found in the prayer rooms is where blindness gets broken off as people it's in the place of prayer where blindness gets knocked off of us and we begin to understand that we're part of a bigger story to labor for their salvation in the same way they bore the brunt of Satan to bring forth Messiah into the earth and the Lord says I got a message comfort yes comfort my people says your God speak comfort to Jerusalem cry out to her good verse 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord this is what I want we want to see a hundred thousand John the Baptist come forth in this hour we want to see proclaimers and preachers again we want to see a cry in the midst of a silent generation where the mute button has been put on the church I believe that there's a cry and a roar and a sound coming from the wilderness and the wilderness is what we're talking about do you understand the dynamics that it produces that the headaches that it produces in your church to say prayer above everything else and I'm going to lead it we're not going to delegate this to the pastor of prayer I am the pastor of prayer we're not going to delegate this to the worship pastor I am the worship pastor that's the wilderness it's a intentional life of voluntary weakness we got to swim against the current of more clicks more likes more follows we got to swim against the current of how many more came this month we got to swim against the current of how's it working on all those things matter they do that's what I've learned in 20 years is seeing the value of all those things but as leaders and shepherds you got to swim upstream you got to simplify everybody say simplify for you to see we need courage and conviction courage and conviction to simplify John the Baptist is the greatest man born of a woman and he didn't have a big ministry or a long ministry greatest man born of a woman and wasn't that good of a leader he never did any miracles never did any big things but yet Jesus called him the greatest man born of a woman when they asked him who are you he goes I might say a 40 he had read Isaiah 40 so many times he became Isaiah 40 can I tell you something else and I want to set up some people free stop trying to be unique stop trying to be say it in a cool way do you want to shake your church say Bible verses that are living on the inside of you John preached Bible verses and it's a nation he didn't even give new information I'm Isaiah 40 voice who won crying in the wilderness and he did more than raise dead people up he raised a dead nation we need we need resurrection power on our words because we got a bunch of people that are so malnourished that haven't eaten in months or years and they don't know how to eat and we need burning words coming from burning lips that flow from burning hearts and the kindness of God is one step of God I want to burn again I want to burn again I believe he wants to release songs of the majesty of God songs of the coming of Jesus four runner songs revival songs we've been taking our students through the book of Isaiah and it says in the middle of all the judgments the global judgments in Isaiah 24 he says and from the ends of the earth we've heard songs glory to the righteous one I want you to know what the end time judgments are gonna produce it's gonna produce the greatest worship movement we've ever seen and we're not gonna be embarrassed of Jesus the judge we're not gonna shy away from those aspects of him but we're gonna celebrate him in his majesty and his ruling and dominion over all the nations of the world we're gonna love him for who he is songs are gonna come this is gonna instruct because it's the worship songs that writes theology on the heart voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God go to verse 6 well it's all about preparation for the glory of the Lord the voice said cry out he goes what do I cry he goes please bring eternity back to the church all flesh is grass all its loveliness is like the flower of the field the grass withers and the flower fades because the breath of the Lord blows upon it surely the people are grass the grass withers the next verse says grass withers flower fades but the word of our God stands forever can I tell you what we need back in the church it's a revelation of eternity this is what I'm feeling in this season we're planting prayer rooms because it's time to I really believe it's the greatest discipleship we can give I've got a vision I'll tell you there's nothing more romantic in the whole wide world to me than 6 a.m. prayer meetings and in empty rooms there's nothing that stirs romance in my heart for Jesus than seeing a handful of people that will never know their names pacing and empty rooms singing to Jesus whispering Bible verses to Jesus I believe these are the foundations that's gonna restore the word of God that's gonna connect us with his heart that's gonna restore fire on our words and it's gonna blow everything up oh I remember Raven Hill saying unction in the pulpit action in the pew unction in the pulpit we need that unction again we need that fire again back on our words amen amen let's stand I just want to ask if this message cut you in any special way and you feel like God this is what I want I gotta get back to this I'll get it I'll lose it I'll get it again then I'll lose it again but I refuse to make peace with just being busy we've got to learn how to say no I'm not very good at it I'm learning about it I want to be like those wise virgins who told foolish ones no but we want to be everybody's Messiah and helper we want to help people but the wise virgins had that powerful two-letter word on them no well that doesn't feel very loving he goes you have no idea how loving it is to teach someone else how to go buy their own oil instead of looking to you to be their source of oil we've got to disciple our kids so the greatest season of my life my 12-year-old is rolling with me every morning at 6 a.m. and I just she don't like me looking at her because I'll just start getting all happy but I just look over my corner by and she's meeting up it's happening she's learning how to eat she learned how to eat not having anything to do with me she learned how to meet him on her own and I go oh god that's it just want to get out of the way I won't look I won't look I promise what if we did that for our people what if we begin to teach our congregations how to eat and I believe that the prayer room is a context it's a context to get our children in the room and say just look at him I don't know what to do you find your way open the Bible write the Bible paint the button just say it this is why we're planting the prayer room Psalm 132 hosting his presence ministering to him sitting at his feet singing seminary or singer singing the word of God I love Caleb who am I talking to you feel a little cut if you feel cut raise your hands well I am too go go a little go a little darker a little minor I'm serious though I just you know I'm an intercessor so you feel home in a minor okay hey guys listen this isn't this isn't a fad this is gonna blow up every book you've ever read about success this is gonna blow up every metric that you've bought into it's gonna destroy everything that we've eaten from and that many of us are on the journey towards I want to say I don't want to get to the top of the hill and go what have I been doing what about the people that you've given me God have I brought them in have I fed them or have I enabled them to live immature and backslid and always the indictment is us because I believe as we go so go our people Jesus said I sanctified myself so they'll be sanctified by the truth I want to call forth preachers worship leaders pastors I want to invite you up here if you want to receive I want to pray this for you tonight come up here I'm gonna ask you don't don't sit don't sit I want you to stand because you're gonna be a lot of people that come he's just called John the burning in the shining lamp just press in press in Lord I love you in the wilderness is where he delivers you from all the illusions and the fantasies it's where he kicks all the props out from under you places that you flexed in he begins to meet you in the core of your being saying you don't live by those words you live by every word that comes out of my mouth once you lift your hands there's a wilderness community that's coming in the midst of 2023 in the in the middle of America and as things are growing and becoming more fast paced the Holy Spirit is saying go to the wilderness go to the seminary of my heart of your congregations and find yourself more there than anybody else as a statement to everyone else whatever is born of the spirit will burn the spirit whatever is born of the flesh will reap the flesh to come upon these men and women God I pray for that Isaiah 40 spirit to come upon these men and women I pray for the spirit of burning to come upon these men and women I pray for the spirit of hunger inside of us it's you and God now look at him just begin to pray now to him I want you to reach for God Isaiah said whoa is me I'm undone on the altar and touched his lips God I pray that you would open eyes and touch lips lift your voice across the room oh God I won't fry fresh fire on my spirit that's it lift your voice all over the room God we repent begin to see resurrections in our communities come on 30 more seconds I want fire that's it push through come on I want the burden of the Lord again I want the burden of the Lord again God I want the burden of the Lord again God restore the prophetic spirit to the church all across the room just begin to pray in the spirit I want my lips on fire again God I want my lips on fire again Jesus I want my eyes on fire that's it come on lift your hands I pray for an activation of the prophetic spirit the release of dreams the release of visions I prayed tonight just as it did for John just as it did for Jesus he says the kingdom of God has come upon you repent there's repentance and I feel there are many many in the church many in the church we don't know how far off or how estranged they are from God and their longing they would repent if it was presented to them if it was offered to them if someone in the pulpit said hey here is where you are off and here is how you can return the gift of repentance how much refreshing is waiting to come to the church but it needs a repentance it says repent that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord the preparation that we are longing for that we are being called to lead into involves repentance I'm not saying it's the only message but it is a critical message for the church right now but I pray that you would grace us with this message you would grace us with this message that you would help us teach people how to return to the Lord with all of their hearts Lord I pray that you would raise up the reformers that would reconnect a generation with the Holy Spirit that would show them this is where you are grieving his heart and this is how you can return into that fellowship I pray for people who raise the standard I pray that light would fill the house of God again where there has been darkness where there has been shadow I pray that the light of God would fill the house of God again oh Lord Jesus oh Lord Jesus


Great. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone. It's really great to be here. Keira and I were just commenting that the vibe in this room just feels super nice. So thanks for curating that vibe for us. As Mark mentioned, I'm from the business network and community in Spiral. As you might be able to tell from my Kiwi twang, I'm also from the far flung former colony, New Zealand. A lot of the speakers at Meaning Today, we heard a bit from Kate, and I'm sure we'll hear more from Vinay later on, are talking about the very scary reality that we are all living in. That is on our doorstep and that stretches as far into the future as it's humanly possible to imagine. I'm going to say that this scary reality does not occur in a vacuum. It is not the result of other people out there. The scary reality isn't some invisible monolithic corporation. It is us. Toxic human behaviors that are propelling our demise as a species are essentially cultural. It is me, it is you. Through my own experience and from thinking of many other theorists, I'm going to say a place to change some of these toxic behaviors, these toxic cultural and institutional and structural behaviors can be in community. It really feels funny to be a cis white girl standing on a stage at a conference about meaningful business from relative privilege, talking about community like it just went to Burning Man and discovered it. But given that I'm in the mother country of dry ironic humor, thank you, I'll just put that over there as my kind of ironic self-awareness caveat. Yes, I know community, been around for a while. But I do think there is something about refinding it, especially in the West, so-called developing cultures, developing countries. I don't think they're in the same place of extreme isolation and loneliness that we seem to be over here. So what I'll do today is talk about a few stories from my own experience with some crazy misfits, way out on the edge at Inspiral, developing new structures for working, new businesses, but also new ways for relating that support kind of working and having fun and flourishing in a new economy. So this is the premise of this talk today, doing business in community. And community can really form in the most unlikely of places, a social business group. And I think it can do several things. It can help us look inwards and start to work on our own crap, our own neuroses, our own egos, our edgy angles. It can help us have new ways to organize, to collaborate, to get along. And it can also produce tools and businesses for livelihood and to help other groups, other people organize in new ways. That's a little bit of what Inspiral does, and we'll get further into that very shortly. Within the Inspiral universe, I also do do some work. I don't just go around to conferences and talk about my opinions. I work on a startup called Greater Than, and we have some software called CoBudget. So I'll talk a little bit about that today as well. So Charles Eisenstein, one of my favorite writers and theorists, brings forth this notion that community and people really flourish when we actually need each other. And that's a really important notion for CoBudget. The idea that when you put money in the middle of a community, of a business community, you make livelihood very important, there's something to group around. That's more than just a common purpose. In society, we do have a pretty big lack of community. We have extreme isolation. In the 1980s, 11% of Americans responded to a survey saying they sometimes felt lonely or isolated, or they frequently felt lonely or isolated. In 2010, that number ricocheted up to 45%. 45% of people saying, yes, I frequently feel lonely, and I frequently feel isolated. And loneliness is this feeling of no longer being needed, and no longer being able to call on someone to help you out. But it's more than just getting, it's about reciprocity. You need to be able to give as well as receive to not feel lonely. And the disintegration of our social fabric has many, many causes, and I'm not going to go into them now. But we spend less time with each other. The internet, social media, key to this, we buy most things now as services that we used to just do for each other, that we used to just provide for each other. Now, we order it on our app. So this is really, in my opinion, a big part of disintegration of our social fabric. We do not need each other anymore. One place, however, which thankfully we still spend a whole bunch of time in, is work, for better or worse. I think the typical career is, there's a number out there, it's about 80,000 hours. Maybe a little bit less in Spain, maybe a little bit more in America.  And I'm really one of these people who's an advocate of the idea that the workplace can be more than just a place where we get our labor appropriated from us, or we sell it for as much as the market can bear. The idea, the workplace for me is a place we can really grow as people. We can do a lot of the self-development. We can work on our stuff. And there's many, many theorists and writers who write about this stuff, from, you know, Frederick Leloux to Keegan and Leahy to Ricardo Semler. It's almost becoming mainstream. Okay. Maybe that's going a little bit far. But I, my premise is also that we can't do this work of growing as people in isolation. And we can't do it when we're constantly in flux. So I think there's also a stat that says these days it's pretty common for a worker to change jobs seven times in their career. I think this is really low. I think it's about, you know, from anecdotal evidence, probably more about 15. And when you think about the typical freelancer or entrepreneurial career, it's, you know, it's 30. We go where the sun shines or where there's more startup capital or where there's lots of leverage. And in the old world, where most people still do their work from, we have a lot of hierarchy. We have a lot of isolation. People are in organizations experiencing individualism and disengagement and a lack of collective intelligence. So it's not, the old world of business is not a place to build these new structures and new behaviors either. So business and community. To me, a community is smaller than a network. It's about 100 to 150 people. Dumbass number. You can actually know everyone and that kind of grouping. And it is, it can be the perfect setting to start to focus on some of our own cultural behaviors and work on those things. In a business community, you can have a diversity of age. We do, it's not just yuppies and millennials. We have people who are 23. We have people that are 65. You can have a diversity of gender and hopefully ethnicity. A business community is a place to pioneer, as the meaning tagline puts it, to be pioneers and make doing this work of social enterprise and kind of systemic social change not unapproachable. You can go there if you're not privileged and you can go there if you're not extremely naïved if you're doing it in a place of community. As my colleague Rich Bartlett from Inspiral and Lumio says, in small committed groups, we can choose the behaviors that we want to encourage and we can choose how much time we want to spend working on these new habits together. Doing business in community is like a long-term friendship. You see the worst of people. You also see the best. And it does take work. It's like any relationship work worth having. It takes a lot of work. So for me, key ingredients of business and community is self-management, which I'm hoping a lot of you have heard about. This kind of theory that we can have a lot more autonomy in the way we work. We can have a big focus on really knowing each other and bringing our whole selves. And there's also this concept that I'll talk about today very quickly, cooperative entrepreneurship. A thing that we're playing around with right now at Inspiral is this notion of a livelihood pod. And this is like a new structure for organizing where a bunch of freelancers get together and start to kind of collectivize and try to get around the precarity of the gig economy that so many of us are working in. And key also for me and for our team is collaborative finance. So these are some of the things I'll be quickly talking about today. So often when we do talk about working in these new ways or social enterprise or social impact business, we talk so much about the what. What are we doing? And why are we doing it? And how much impact are we going to make? And I really think that we need to focus more on the how. How are we doing this? And where? And I don't mean where in a geographical sense. I'm not talking about everyone moving down to the bottom of the world. I'm talking about the where is in the conditions and the environment that we create. So Inspiral is a network or a community of 150 people distributed around the world. There is many different businesses within the network and there is also a big contingent of freelancers and we're all working together and paying commons, paying money to the commons of Inspiral. There is a high, a very high population of web developers at Inspiral and we are also united by a common vision or purpose which is more people working on stuff that matters. This is vague enough for people that are very obsessed with autonomy to find their way through it but kind of tight enough to hold us, to hold us in something. So key to a lot of what we do at Inspiral is this concept of self-management because I think it's really, you're kind of letting a lot escape if you have a bunch of people together and you don't get them to focus on self-management. One second. So yeah, without a focus on personal development and ironing out our issues, we're just going to recreate some of these toxic structures of society. Most of the noise that happens in the world of self-management is about autonomy and agency and collaborative decision-making but a key part and what I've learned and what a lot of us have learned at Inspiral is a very key part is about relatedness and connecting to others. One of my, the reason that I get so much value from being in a business community like Inspiral is this concept of stewardship which we kind of, we took actually from a theorist and then we've been experimenting with. I have constant communications with about eight or nine people at Inspiral. So every kind of week or every day almost, I'm on the phone or having coffee with someone who is my friend but also knows a lot about our business activities. Ants is a very good friend of mine. We've been working together a lot these last five years. He really knows all of my kind of strengths as well as my weaknesses and he's not as afraid to point out these to everyone that I work with. And I'm not saying that this is new or a revelatory that we can have friends that we work with but I think it is really, really powerful when someone really knows you and has seen you at your very worst, breaking down at the end of a hard day but can also talk to you about life outside work. And here we're not actually talking about sandwiches. We're talking about how we kind of intermix life and work together every time that we talk. So one of these key things of Inspiral is that we're constantly playing with new structures for organizing. So right now I'm in my kind of third startup and I'll talk about it a bit more later. A business developing software for collaborative finance. This subject area is way out on the fringe like many of the businesses and startups at Inspiral. Without the constant support of eight or nine people that really, really love and trust us and support what we're doing. I don't think we, many of us at Inspiral would be approaching the kind of the fringe or the radical nature of what we're doing. So people at Inspiral will get up on stages at conferences and talk about what we're doing. They'll send us leads. They'll, you know, anytime we need support or advice, they'll be on the phone willing to answer. So Inspiral began its life as a big collective of freelancers. People were using the foundation or the business at the middle of Inspiral to invoice and to win work. And that was kind of, kind of how it existed for about two or three years. Then after a while new businesses began to form in this network. We have a lot of web developers. We also have designers, accountants, lawyers. So a lot of these necessary skill sets and mindsets to actually just start new businesses. After a while though, what we've been noticing is that this, this grouping, this collective, the number was too big, lots and there was not enough kind of high trust and connectedness between the people. So that started to break down. And the new kind of organizing structure that is replacing that is this notion of livelihood pods. So a livelihood pod is three to seven freelancers who are grouping together and sharing work, sharing income. So the, the, the livelihood pod I was part of, which is called Golden Pandas, we collectivize all of our income, everything we made, we put it in the middle. And every month we would have, have an honest conversation about what we needed.  But we would just sit down every month and say, okay, these are my needs. These are yours. This is what we got. I'll take this. You take that. Often it was actually quite communistic, a bit scary. And so the, the kind of nature of the pod ecosystem at Inspiral is that there's five pods now. And we have this little pod ecosystem where one pod, the Golden Pandas will get work for some of the developer pods, protozoa and root systems. And a very, very, very key focus of being in a pod is doing deliberate development. Not, it's not just about work, it's not about money. It's about how can we support each other to look inwards and start to change some of the toxic human behaviors that we all have. This other key concept, cooperative entrepreneurship is a very strong pillar of what we do at Inspiral. And this is this notion that starting systemic social businesses is pretty scary. And in order to do it and even consider doing it, it's quite helpful to have this sharing and abundance mindset. Rather than the kind of keep it close, don't tell anyone, destroy the competition, charge as much as the market will bear. Yeah, I think kind of starting something that is, you know, trying to be systemic and doing that in isolation is a little bit crazy. I think that being in isolation actually reinforces a scarcity mindset. And a little story to explain what cooperative entrepreneurship is. Lumio, who is probably the most renowned Inspiral business, which is participatory decision-making software, they're kind of four years ahead of our company, which is called Greater Than. And we're doing kind of similar-ish things. There's more about decision-making in business and organizations. Ours is more about money. But they're four years ahead and they've learned a lot of lessons that are very, very valuable for us to know about. We have calls with them and we're like, hey, what are your conversion rates? And they're like, oh, they're really bad. And that makes us feel really good about having all this information that's so accessible. As we go through some of the same challenges they went through two years ago, we get on the phone and ask them about it. Similarly, we get up on stage and pitch them at conferences. It's www.lumio.org. Great participatory decision-making software. And even earlier this year, we got them a huge custom development gig. They'll send out updates about what we're doing to their entire customer list. We're different businesses, but we're really cooperating in order for a more abundant outcome for both. Perhaps one of the best ways to explain cooperative entrepreneurship is to tell the origin story of co-budget. So co-budget is a tool that enables groups to spend money together. Like all good apps, it started as a spreadsheet. Because in Inspire, we were re-diverting surplus revenues to the commons of Inspire, and we needed a way to spend it together. So a bunch of people, Alana and Derek, got up, started the spreadsheet and then got up a basic prototype. After a while, they realized they weren't necessarily interested in doing it. So they've kind of given us the code base and the permission with no equity, not saying, okay, we're going to keep a whole bunch of this, just saying, go out, do what you came with it, do a good job. We trust you. It's a pretty kind of beautiful scenario. So community is the result of many things. Some of what I've talked about. A really key thing, I think, from what I've seen in many of the communities, business communities and networks I see around the world, is actually having skin in the game. Making something, putting something there so you can't just walk away. So you can't just, you know, get on a plane as a digital nomad and head to Bali, which might sometimes be preferable. Anti-Nazi spy, theologian and theorist Dietrich Bornhofer put it really well. He who loves community destroys community. He who loves people creates community. So this is the notion that if we're just doing community for community's sake, it's a little bit laughable. It's a little bit, you know, I better not be offensive, but you know, like religion or patriotism, making community around that just for the sake of it. What can we do that actually holds us, put income, put livelihood in the middle, have a shared purpose, have a shared mission? Charles Eisenstein is, I think, the most vocal and eloquent proponent of this theory that human relationships are being taken away from us and sold back as services. Many of us live in this, all of us, I think, live in this hyper monetized system where, yeah, everything we do becomes a service, becomes a commodity. But I think there's something around putting money in the commons and decentralizing decision making power about it, around it, that needs to be held along a shared vision and a shared purpose. So co-budget is a software tool where members or people in the group receive funds in their account, and they can allocate this money to support projects and things that they care about within a group or within a community or within a business. So by putting money and livelihood in the middle and distributing decision making power, we're really enabling people to truly participate, to really have a say, to actually be part of the community, rather than just the community on some stuff and then no power on the things that really matter. So this is the premise of our company greater than, of which co-budget is part, that tackling resource allocation and building software and infrastructure for this is super important if we're going to see more communities grow and actually have this network effect. So in Inspiral, through co-budget, we've seen in Inspiral, we've seen new ideas get enough money to get through to building a prototype. So people have raised buckets, you know, $5,000 to get the wireframes up to start their new business. And at some stage, after they've been paid for their time to do this work, they get in the position to actually raise capital. So it can kind of be like this bridging, this bridging tool. There's an amazing network called the Embassy Network based in San Francisco. It's kind of like a cooperative housing layer. They use co-budget too, and they've been doing some super cool projects like buying books for prisoners. So with their collective money, they've decided, okay, we've got some surplus. And another one is providing funds to subsidize rent for people in the Bay Area because I've heard it's a little bit expensive there. There's an amazing, brilliant digital tech co-op called Outlandish based in London. They're a big user of co-budget. This year in the lead up to the UK election, they co-budgeted money and themselves built some of those amazing web platforms showing the effect of the NHS cuts and the school cuts, showing the effect of austerity. They use co-budget to, so they've re-diverted funds from their margin, their profit margin, use co-budget and paid themselves their market rate as web developers to build this tool. They also use it for some other amazing projects like a year's supply of biscuits and super serious stuff like that. So there's lots of, yeah, super cool companies all around the world doing this experimentation with commons management and we're trying to support them through co-budget. So yeah, I think I'm getting towards the end of my time. Julianna, my co-founder and I will be doing a workshop where we actually do some live simulation of what a co-budgeting experience is like, so join us if you can. But the kind of key premise of my talk is that toxic behaviors are propelling our demise as a human species. It's not others out there, it's us and we are part of the problem as well as the solution. We can start to work on these behaviors and the best place I really think through my own experiences to do that is in community with people that aren't going to walk away, that see us at our worst of times, that see us at our best of times and who we actually truly need. So thank you so much for having me here.  So yeah, thanks so much.


Where can we meet people where they are? Now, this is one of my favorite strategies. And the simplest way is to combine your passions with socialization, with opportunities to meet and connect with people who share your passion. And this is something that we've taught inside of the X Factor Accelerator. It's one of those key unlocks for a lot of our members who are in that exact place of maybe moving to a new town, recognizing after coming out of a breakup that their social circle isn't what they had hoped. So using meetup.com events, going to classes, taking lessons, group exercise, fitness, MMA, or even team sports like kickball, beach volleyball. So having that shared passion is a simple way to combine socialization with opportunities to meet and find these high value people in your life.


Your coca-cola bottler presents Claudia Claudia based on the original stories by Rose Franken brought to you transcribed Monday through Friday by your friendly neighbor who bottles coca-cola Relax and while you're listening refresh yourself Have a coke and now Claudia Can make it everything better be ready everything is ready Fitz is coming to help with the bags They're all in a bunch in the living room. Well, how does it feel to be moving into your own apartment, Mrs Not this most marvelous thing that ever happened to me most next to getting married, of course So now we gather up our small caravan and in the dimming light of afternoon We take leave of the beautiful land of apartment to eat Turning our face to the sunset. We say goodbye to the natives. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye What are the natives of the apartment this afternoon and the sun was coming in it. Oh, it looked beautiful Beautiful and empty wish it had looked empty It was full of painters buckets and brushes and ladders and canvases and stuff is that all didn't the beds come The mattresses in the box brings came of course. We have our chair, so we're practically set we can move right it Oh, yes pots and pans arrived to have the painting look I love the colors we picked it's hard to tell it was wet and the colors underneath kept peeking through There were two painters tall one and a short one where they almost finished They didn't look almost finished to me, but they promised they would be by five. I Think I'll call mama what for why don't you ask her to come and watch for herself? She offered but I said no She'd want to do all the work of unpacking and putting away and she'd get all tired out We'll have it come over later tonight when it's all set. That's all right. I wonder where Fitz is You'll be alone. Oh, the new tenant coming in. I hope he likes it here. He's only a man. What's the matter with that? I mean he's not married. I don't see how a man lives in an apartment not married. Lots of men do poor things. I suppose they have to live somewhere though. Hello, mama. We're all set to go any minute. You know it's clean here. You saw it. How could I mess it up in an hour? This will come over later. We'll call you from upstairs when we're in. Give her my love. David says give you his love. Oh, this fits now. Goodbye and be good. You answer it and I'll go put on my hat and coat. You don't need to. You're just moving upstairs to the 12th floor. Remember. Oh, Fred, all ready for you. Oh, Mr. Norton. I don't know how to tell you. Hello, Fred. We're right on schedule. Mrs. Norton, the painters, they are not finished. They are, but they promised David they promised. Now what happened, Fred? I was up there this afternoon. And they said they... One had to go home. Oh, go home in the middle of the afternoon? The tall one or the short one? The short one. Oh, the short one. He was the only good one. How much did they get done, Fred? You know, the bedroom almost, the living room almost, the kitchen and the hall. That's about as much as they'd done this afternoon. Is any of it dry? No, hall is wet and stepladders and pins all over. It always happens, especially these days. What can you do? Can't people do something? They haven't been able to so far. They promised they'd finish tomorrow, Mrs. Norton. They'd better. I'm not going to live with two painters. Well, I guess we might as well get started. Now, where will you go? Upstairs, of course. Where else? But you can't go upstairs to move in now. Why not? We won't touch anything. And if the kitchen's finished, we can put all the bags in there. But, darling, the smell of paint is terrible. Oh, don't I know? And the heat is soft and the windows, they must all be closed. Why must they be? So the paint won't get all sooty before it's dry. Oh. Well, we'd just have to smother that saw. Not the way I expected to move, but it can't be helped. Mr. Norton, I don't think that. I don't think so either, Claudia. We can not move into that apartment tonight. I don't mind a little paint and stuff, and it's really I don't. Now, I do. Besides, the painters come in early. All these boxes and bags and beds will be in the way. We're not moving tonight. That's impossible. Impossible or not, we'll have to. We can't stay here, can we, Fritz? Not here. The new tenant called. He will be here at six. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Norton. Oh, it's not your fault, Fritz. And don't give it a second thought, Fritz. We'll be out of here long before six. Well, you leave the bags, Mr. Norton. I will put them downstairs in the storage. Fine. They'll be right here in the living room. Well, I come back up. Well, goodbye, Fritz. Bye, Fritz. Well, now what? No, darling, it's not that tragic. I know it isn't tragic. I don't mind too much, really. I guess we can't always have everything just the way we want. Now, what hotel would you like to stay at? Hotel. Can you move into a hotel just like that? Why not? That's what hotels are for. We're not from out of town. I'll feel funny. You will feel wonderful. We'll have dinner downstairs, get a room that overlooks the park, have breakfast sent up. You'll never want to leave. Darling, it's so expensive. Oh, it's not so bad. Besides, there's no choice. There isn't? None. Well, we'll be kind of exciting like another honeymoon. Well, short one. Short but sweet. Oh, I wish I hadn't packed my best nightgown. I'll buy you another one on the way. And a pair of slippers and a lacy negligence. Anything you want. This is your night, Mrs. Norton. We're celebrating, not moving. It's a date. Quick, call a hotel, David. All right, now let's see. I'll call the Gorham. The Gorham?  The Gorham, it is. For my wife, the best. I know the number of some of our best out-of-town clients go there. Hello, room clerk, please. Thanks, I'll hold on. David, I just thought of something. You can't get rooms and hotels these days. That's just a rumor. You can always get one room and a bath. I hope you're right. Oh, hello. I'd like to make a reservation for a room and a bath for tonight. What's that? No, not for a week from tonight for tonight. Oh. No, I don't care to send my bags and wait in the lobby. Thank you. Say, can you suggest any other hotel that might be able to take us in? Can't, it's as bad as that. Well, goodbye. No room? He says people are sitting up in the lobby. Well, here, give me that book. I have an idea. Try and sound as if you're from out of town. Maybe that'll help. Any special part of the country? Just sound distinguished. That's a big order. Slater. Here we are. I should have called the Slater in the first place. They've got thousands of rooms, and they pride themselves on their hospitality. David, it's getting to be almost 6 o'clock. Don't rush me. Hello? Slater hotel? Kind of connect me with the room clerk, please. I desire to make a reservation for my wife and myself with a bath, please. It's working, it's working. Will you be able to keep it up all night? Until we get in that room, I will. Hello? Oh, hello. This here is Mr. Norton, a Mr. Gaylord Ravenall Norton. I desire to make a room reservation for myself and my wife with a bath for this here evening, please. What's that you say, sir? Well, sir, it's either tonight or it's never. Is this northern hospitality? Well, you come down south, son. I'll come now, son. Certainly you have one room in that big hotel. Not until a week from next Thursday. No, I don't want a room a week from next Thursday. I want it tonight. Oh, you'll take a reservation. My name? Senator Claghorn, son. Senator Claghorn. What's the matter with this, David? Doesn't anybody love us? Well, they love us all right. They want us to sleep on a parked bench. Might be nice, but a little cold for a southern gentleman and his bride. Give me that book. I'll get us a room or a- He's hopeless, and you know it. There's just no room anywhere that's short notice. Well, what do other people do? Stay with relatives. We haven't got any relatives. We've got Aunt Louisa? No, I'm not going to Aunt Louisa. Neither am I. Why not Mama? Mama? What does she have to do with this? Everything. She's gotten rid of the extra bed and is getting the sofa covered, so we can't stay there with her. All right, then. We can't stay with her, but we'll not go to Aunt Louisa. David, listen to me. We will go to Mama's and send Mama to Aunt Louisa's. Why should Mother have to stay at Aunt Louisa's if I don't want to? Now, you leave this to me. Mama won't mind. I know it. As a matter of fact, you'll probably enjoy it. Why are you in your new apartment? Because we came to visit you. A fine time to visit. Well, we thought so. That's why we were visiting. Well, aren't you going to ask us to sit down? Sit down. Sit down. I'm sitting down. Well, now that we're all sitting down, Claudia, what are you and David and Kat doing here? We just told you, visiting.  You should be there anyway. You're very hospitable. What's the matter? Don't you like it? We like it better here. Well, don't feel as if you have to sit around and talk to me. Run along. I can help you all come over later. Well, we won't be there. You won't? No. Oh. Going out this evening? Yes, we thought we'd go out. After all, just because we've got an apartment doesn't mean we have to stay in. Like two birds in a cage. You two birds belong in a cage. Mom, you better hurry. You'll be late. I will. You will? Late to dinner. You're going out to dinner. I am? You am? My dinner is in the stove, thank you, all ready for me. Good. Then Claudia won't have to cook. I'll get your hat. I don't want my hat. You'd better wear it, mother. You don't want to catch cold? David, where am I going to to catch cold? On your way to Aunt Louisa's. You're having dinner with her, of course. Dinner? And spend the night. Oh, the night too, I see. Does Aunt Louisa, by any chance, know it? Certainly she knows that I invited her. Thank you very much. Now, what is this all about? Still doesn't understand, David. Very slow-witted, your mother. Slain to her. We are orphans in the night, mama.  Painters like the apartment so much they decided to stay another day. You're out of one apartment and not in the other. See, she's not so slow-witted, David. Just takes a little time.  Then send our poor old mother over to Aunt Louisa's doorstep. And what's the matter with your going there? Aunt Louisa has asthma, and we have Shakespeare. And there's not a hotel in New York that'll have us. I wish we could invite you to stay with us here, but we haven't got the room. I wouldn't spend another night with you two for a million dollars. David, give her a million dollars. Have you got a blank check, mother? You better hurry, mama's getting late. Remember, you're invited for dinner. And we're invited for dinner tomorrow night. Serves you right. Oh, the ingratitude. Here's your hat. Claudia, stop missing my hair. Looks nice over one eye. Not your hair, your hat. Here's your coat.  I'll button it. Now your chin, your coat. Get away from me. We're only trying to help. I'm going. I can't get away fast enough. Mama, call us when you get there. You don't feel as if we've driven you out. Oh, no. Why should I feel that? Well, you just might. Good night, mama. Don't cross the streets when the lights are green. And oh, mama. What now? I've got an idea. Why don't you come over here for breakfast in the morning? Yes. Don't stand on formality. Just drop in, mama. Is this the place belong to you? This broadcast of Claudia was supervised and directed by William Brown Maloney. Unless you're so busy that you can't get out of the house, you'll certainly do a large part of your Thanksgiving marketing today to avoid the last minute rush. When you're buying the food and fixings, don't forget to ask for that case of Coca-Cola, which plays such a large part in all Gala days. And remember, you can shop refreshed if you take time to stop at that familiar red cooler for a delicious ice cold Coke. Every day, Monday through Friday, Claudia comes to you transcribed with the best wishes of your friendly neighbor who bottles Coca-Cola. So listen again tomorrow at the same time. And now this is Joe King saying, au revoir, and remember, whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you may be. When you think of refreshment, think of Coca-Cola, or ice cold Coca-Cola makes any pause, the pause that refreshes.


What about the Secretary of State? Move the senator. Put the senator on the other side. Senator Thurmond. Hold on. Yeah, please. Taylor, hey, are you going to do it?


At the U.S. Naval Academy, future Navy leaders are trained to become the top of the line officers that the fleet demands. One midshipman in particular, Kenan Reynolds, not only displaces leadership skills in the classroom, but also on the football field. You know, I think that it's a lot of the same things. There's a lot of principles that go on on the football field that apply in the fleet. I mean, first of all, it's been a quarterback's decision making, and then having to take responsibility for your decision. You may not always make the right decision, but you are the guy, you are the leader, and you have to take responsibility. So as an officer out in the fleet when you're leading sailors and Marines, every decision you make has to be counted for. You have to take responsibility for it. So that's something I've kind of been reflecting on this whole year. Kenan Reynolds recently broke the record for career rushing touchdowns. On behalf of the Navy, go Navy! Beat Army! Thank you for watching.