All right good morning cyber traders welcome back on this lovely Wednesday and pretty good day so far we had yesterday a lot of big news coming out Microsoft is getting a hit Facebook is coming out with earnings tonight Google's doing pretty well but the overall we saw some really good bounces yesterday we're going to talk a little about it some of the stocks that we did trade that got crushed like ACR was the was the eight was one of them was pretty it was the AC AURC was one of them oh that was the one that went up really really big but we got a merger that happened yesterday a couple of good stocks we'll talk about good morning to you Ron good to see you Michael Grant Samuel Jeff everybody on social media welcome back so let's talk about what's going on right now there's one big stock that is making a big movie not hearing too much about it but Neo just had this really big pop it was been a really big mover in the last couple of days you could see it here that you know on Friday we had that really I mean on oh Monday that made a stock I made a really big move right around 1080 stock ran only it's about $12 it had a little bit of a little hiccup a little slingshot back yesterday but she's moving again this morning and you could see her on the swing trade she's been doing pretty well so you know just bring up level four here share what's going on so right here we got some big big resistance levels stocked had a big buyer that showed up right around here at 855 and you could see that big volume bar just spiked but then it tested this big iceberg going here for 43,000 shares kind of met its match right there that guy's been out there for a while and kind of backed off right there did did execute a lot of those shares but it looks like he did do some refreshing and once again if you are a student of Cybertrain University you know we have class today with Josh at phase one so don't get to missing getting those classes because you got to know understand how to trade these orders now let's talk about some of the things that we traded yesterday so we had this big merger that happened with PACW you could see how to all of a sudden this thing had a huge slingshot went from like 1050 all the way down this is old yesterday and then right away then the 750 and nowhere this stock just took off let me tell you I would hate to be the person to own that stock sell that 750 and about a couple of minutes later it just goes right back up to the price that you had it at so you know what this is what you got to be a little nervous you know it's pretty scary how that happens like actually I could tell you a couple of horror stories that had happened to somebody one of our students about 15 years ago Spadlock just got into something like that and did actually he was a really a veteran wasn't even a student he was just one of the traders in the training room I worked with a while ago that happened to him and you probably hear me talk about in my phase three but you got to be careful on that but anyway there was a merger and you could see that BANC also just had a couple of slingshots same thing and the stock is up now do we want to trade it listen those stocks are done we're not going to look at those stocks those stocks are finished there's no reason to look at them you know moving forward but there are a couple of stocks that did do pretty well and want to talk about like the APLD yesterday was just absolutely fabulous this stock from line 30 was that 880 stocks shot up over to 11 o'clock went to about 1060 I mean if you got half that move you did phenomenal it was a nice move I thought it was a little bit more on the slower side it did add a couple of shakes right here but you know it kind of was making higher highs higher highs higher highs what we're going to learn in class but that move was pretty nice that was one of the stocks that we've been watching and trading all day kava you know once again on the swing trade she's been doing pretty well I don't know if anyone see her on 72 42 but that stock's been doing pretty well right there neo you got to keep an eye on this neo so neo has been great in the past past week you could see it here right around 10 it's at 12 we saw revion what happened revion we saw a lot of these stocks have they been trading that one's doing pretty well also and then you got the ACR the AURC that thing was just unbelievable yesterday from 10 o'clock that stock went from like $16 all the way to $35 this is what you call a short squeeze how do I know because you'll get a stock that goes from you know that doesn't do nothing from 10 and then you get this big rally and comes down so be very very careful going back to it you probably heard a lot of news about it stock got halted a few times yesterday but be very very careful of the stock it's not going back on our watch list you got to be extremely advanced to trade this stock right here so and and then we had the yeah the IONQ this was also a really nice stock this stock has been a really good swing trade you could see it right from here this stock we've been watching it we've been trading it it was really good right here on this day right here on on June 28 that thing went from 10 to 13 but she's been she's been trading really strong I mean you could see that stock on the low-term chart put on a stock up to $16 she had a great move yesterday you could see that we traded it yesterday right around 930 she was just fabulous this thing ran from like 14 went all the way to about 15 shot up to 1530 went all the way to about 1580 it doesn't look like that much of a big move you know from like 1440 to 1560 the chart actually looks a little bit more like this thing was just like a rocket but great fast till flags great everything and you know what this stock it's still going to be on my watch list you know it's going to go on the on our CTO watch list now let's go through and see what the big percentage gainers and losers are doing so far this morning SIMO you know the stock looks like it was to me looks like a buyout this thing when I obviously I could trade from 50 to at 90 things up about 80% 42 points we're pretty much done with that one we're not going to be trading a stock like that a bbc this one 24 000 shares she just started moving right now it looks like you could see there's another one of those stocks that gapped up I think that looks like to me that was a reverse stock split okay be careful those reverse stock splits we saw what happened with boil remember the reverse stock split on boil you know that stock we did pretty well on it but you know that's you got to be careful then that's more of an ETF so be careful these these you know when you get these reverse stock splits they usually go up maybe a little bit but then they kind of reverse they reverse course pack w we already know about that one this one is an IPO you can see a thing just came public till ray's another one we found this morning so till ray TLRY I had this on level four right here so till ray you know once again one of those just started making a move right around here around seven o'clock you could see it got around from that buck 60 testing highs around you know 240 we got a lot we got a 200 000 share buyer right here that showed up right around dollar 80 so that one looks pretty good I mean I like till ray you know one of the canopy stocks we've done really well till ray some of you remember till ray we trade that thing think it was like in the hundreds okay I think I've destroyed lately but that one looks like it's good it looks so far it's a day trade I don't know if it's a swing trade you know we'll find out how it trades all the courses today but as of right now it's definitely going to make the watch list of that CTU uh all right so we're at 10% right now I had this stock right here is this one still good the GRR this one's cheap it's inexpensive check it over here level four got a lot of 1111's at 250 that showed up nice little ladder effect over here when it started to get around 260 and you can see it's starting to trend down but nice little ladder effect going up you know listen remember yesterday when we were trading in the market cyber traders we hear and then me and josh we were talking about ladder effect and also we saw one of them very very important it comes to trading that's me and some people somebody's just up you know upping their bid upping their bid and I think it was you know we saw it in marrow we saw it in riot we saw it on all those stocks be very you know that is a very clear indication if you want to know if the orders if the stock doesn't continue to go higher got to keep an eye on those orders all right losers let's go on a losers list and you could dead cat bounces here mxl getting hammered uh down 30 not 1.4 million shares I you know what the stock is getting is that the broke the slows you know this could be interesting mxl it's at a big support levels back in may if it breaks that this thing could be uh yeah not looking too good but you know yeah that looks pretty good if it's testing that support it might hold there you know I don't know if that's an actual pharmaceutical stock because we know they don't really come back that one looks pretty good this one obviously you know why we just spoke about that we already spoke about this one we know about this one uh this one gapped up obviously it goes up comes down down 15 percent all right we're done with the losers hop over here on the new york list okay or um AULT AULT great move eight o'clock in the morning ran from 360 up to 480 this stock was a $40 stock there's only one way to find out if the if the trend is going to still continue you got to go bring it up on see what's going on level four let's see what the street is doing got that data right here now okay so what we got going on right here we got a big resistance that showed up not a lot forth 7 000 but even though that bright line is right there you could see it kind of made that big run then that order showed up you know what you could see how basically you can't see it on an intraday chart and you ain't gonna definitely see it on an indicator but that stock looks pretty good I like it um I like the trend on it xpev look at this one going up higher nice little push it just started just now let's go look at this one nice little move on xpev we traded xpev so many times you know if you're a student at cyber train university and if you do your homework and you've been working with your instructors your your mentors here at cyber train university you know with your coaching you should have it in your journals and you know what I know we definitely covered it with you but that xpev definitely looking pretty strong right here whoo you haven't seen this in a while look at that 200 000 shared buyer just showed up there at 1720 that's not too far you know not too far like that one right there xpev follow the order but you never seen that before some of you here watching for the first time gonna probably gonna do a recording on uh on my instagram post that on there once we're done with this meeting anything else out there this one 200 dollars we're not trading this one so you know about microsoft snapchat is obviously not doing too well you know and and snapchat's not doing too well snap remember partly owned by facebook so keep an eye on that snap snap's a fun stock to trade I would put snap on there and just want to check out the brand name stock so we got microsoft so you can see it's coming back a little bit after being down but it was down more than that it looks like it bounced back a little bit to have problems with the cloud service and but I know they think they're benefiting big pretty big on their on on their uh AI system meta we'll find out I mean meta was such a great swing crate the end of the year they had 100 to about 300 meta is just doing phenomenal uh we'll see how they work out with their earnings it's going to be a big impact in today's market all right anything I'm missing I did not call outside the traders anything else expat is just phenomenal in it it's getting close to that it's getting close to that 200 thousand share uh buyer right now at 1720 that's what we're focusing on there we get and we're about 10 cents away we'll see what happens when it gets there only we're gonna know gotta jump in our trading room so let's get ready for the market open up if you're watching on social media um if you're watching this as a recording like once again you can click on that little top which I'm calling you got that qr code just take your phone scan it do a trial jump in there cyber group members remember just you see something you say something and most importantly if you are a new member here at ctu and you're in the trading room you're only supposed to watch okay because you want to make sure this is for you because it's not for everyone that's why you're here to do that trial good luck everybody one last thing I forgot to mention I have two big events going on today I'm going to be live doing open house today at 11 o'clock we change our time because I'm going to have another event I have to do at one o'clock and then tomorrow I will be on nasdaq we will send everybody the link if you want to come and watch me live at the at the floor the nasdaq exchange talking about nasdaq level three uh total book viewer and don't forget if you are a student at cyber trade university you got classes right after uh after 10 30 all right guys good luck everyone happy trading be safe and uh you know we'll see you back here when the market opens up


This paper reviews the current state of artificial intelligence AIK based change detection methods. It discusses the implementation process of AI based change detection, as well as the data sources and open data sets used for change detection. Furthermore, the general frameworks of AI based change detection methods are reviewed and analyzed systematically unsupervised AI based change detection methods are further analyzed with particular attention paid to the networks used in these methods. Additionally, the application domains of AI based change detection methods are classified according to their applicability. Lastly, the major challenges and prospects of AI based change detection are discussed and delineated. This article was authored by Wen Zhongshu, Min Zhang, Rui Zhang, and others.


Thanks for all of you for joining us today live or watching the recording. We like to start every episode of the non-profit show saying thank you, thank you, thank you to our presenting sponsors.  Many have been with us since March but been with us also means been with you because they are here to support you elevate your cause and your missions across the globe. So these are presenting sponsors that have your back and I hope that you'll check them out and find them on the internet and of course Julia has your back too. Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom CEO of the Raven Group, also known as the non-profit nerd and today I am so thrilled to have back by popular demand because we thoroughly enjoyed your previous presence on our show. Miko Marquette Whitlock, pardon me, joins me founder and CEO of Mindful Techie. Welcome back. Well thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back and I enjoyed our last conversation. I'm happy that we get to pick up on it. Yes, you know if there's been anything that has been kind of the watchword of this last you know 16 months it's tech and so in the non-profit sector it's even more important. So I'm so excited Miko to have you back because as we're talking about recovery and we're talking about a return to some normalcy or it's going to be changed forever we're looking at managing still in a virtual way. And so I thought it would be really cool to get your perspective on this and we thought if we could get you to give us the five top tips which we realize are probably going to be a five different tips in the next 10 months but really because a lot of us are struggling thinking oh my gosh how are we going to be bringing our teams back so let's get to it. What is your tip number one for managing a virtual team? So the first tip is knowing your zoom number know your zoom number. So many of you have heard of the sleep number right where there's like a number for the firm that's like your partner has a number you have a number you've already seen in commercials maybe you have the bed right and so like this whole campaign around knowing your sleep number. Well what if we had a campaign around actually knowing your zoom number right like what's your zoom cap if you will in terms of how many meetings you're going to be able to have doing a day whether you're in the office or whether you are at home because one of the things we know about the hybrid workplace is that even with people going back to work we're still probably going to see the same number if not more zoom means because they're going to be folks working from home right and so how do we actually manage that effectively can we have a conversation with our teams with our colleagues with our organizations about what's a sufficient number of zoom meetings so that we leave space for people to actually recover and to actually get the work done in between meetings. Does have a conversation about the appropriate length of meetings right does it need to be a half hour does it need to be an hour can we make it 20 minutes so 45 minutes and give people that buffer time to transition into their next activity right the other thing is does it actually need to be a meeting where it's just a bunch of talking heads right so people are are are pressed for time can we repurpose some of this meeting time into co-working time so we're actually getting the work done together right so an example of this might mean that if you find that people are perpetually showing up they haven't had time to read the materials what if you set up the first five to three minutes people to actually sit silently to review the materials to think about informed collections or points they want to raise and that's actually going to make the rest of the meeting a bit more productive right so know your zoom number this is the first tip that I have for folks whether you're going to be working in a hybrid situation whether you're working from home or in the office this is something that I encourage everyone to think about so I heard I do love that I just heard on my local news that there's one corporation and they were saying no more zoom calls on Fridays like the Fridays has become the casual like outfit day you know but more so of we are not as a company going to schedule any zoom calls for our team so that you now have a day break from this zoom fatigue unless you have a client call that requires zoom right like if you still have that interaction but I just thought wow this is really permeating our culture of how we um gosh I don't know the right word Niko but like reward or honor um being mindful right of our of our company time and that you know maybe one day a week you can say no zoom calls right so have having that balance right so um you know I would call those sort of the blackout days um another option I would add to this is one of the reasons that zoom is still taxing is that because you know us being connected this way there's a latency factor right we're not in person which is an unnatural formal communication and over time that means that our our bodies and our minds are working hard to fill in that gap that otherwise wouldn't exist if we were actually in person right so there's this increase in our cognitive load and so for many of us we are utterly exhausted even if we've just been sitting in front of our screen all day and part of this because your brain is like working overtime to fill in those gaps and so one of the things we can consider too is just going back to audio right turn off the video or just have an old-fashioned phone call or or conference call sometimes that can also lower the cognitive load and help people to be more present um in the way that you know zoom back to back to back to back um is is still taxing right I like that too okay so tip number one was great so no pressure my friend but tip number two for managing your virtual team so tip number two so I in particularly if you are managing a team but whether you're an individual you and you don't have any direct reports or you're individual and you do have a direct report having a start and stop ritual for your day right uh and we talked about this the last time tied into this concept of reclaiming your commute time for many of us if we were commuting to the office before we have repurposed that commute time to actually get more work done or to take on more personal responsibilities and that looks like for many of us we were a lot of bed and we're grabbing our phones our devices our laptops and we're working non-stop until into the evening right and so I'm encouraging folks to reclaim that commute time with and again whether you're in the office or whether you're at home or doing a combination of both having a way to start your day where you're not diving head first into the emails and into the meetings right um you know maybe that's prayer maybe that's meditation maybe that's grabbing your coffee maybe that's going for a walk maybe that's walking the dog maybe that's sort of sitting in silence you know in your car before you walk into the office whatever that is for you carving out what does it look like at the start of your day and then also at the end of your day as you transition from closing out your your work day so for me I work from home mostly and so I close my laptop like close my office door and that signals the end of my work day and it's it allows my body to have a predictable cue to know that okay it's time to shift into a different mode right so this is particularly important for people that are working for home a lot maybe even you have a small space that you're working out of something as subtle as simply putting away the laptop or closing a laptop lid putting in the drawer those small things can actually make a big difference in terms of helping you to make those shifts and also just giving you some breathing time like we're not robots right so we have to be able to allow ourselves an opportunity to recover and to have that buffer time to shift between different contexts in different roles I have a girlfriend and she was telling me that her husband twice a week gets in his car picks up coffee takes a route some random route for like 15-20 minutes and then comes back home right like that is become his cadence and the way that he starts two of his five days a week for work that it really gives him that peaceful drive commute time right maybe he's listening to a podcast and she's like and it's just as equally great for me that he's doing that yes and it's actually been written about lately it's called the fake commute so you the fake commute right so you go for that walk or you go you walk to the the take the bus or in this case you know you take the drive to go get your coffee and then you come back and you start your day and then you have something else at the end of the day that replicates that as well so absolutely so did you say you wrote about this can we find this article somewhere I did not write about this one my colleagues beth cancer you go to bethcancer.org has written about this yeah yeah I know that name I will I will definitely be looking for that yeah you know I think this would be great in terms of managing your team as well yes bring this up to your teammates and to say you know what is it you can do what is it we can do how do we honor that especially I like the ending I think a lot of times we have starts things that we that get us going but the ending it's never ending right it's just infinity kind of like your like your logo Nico I mean you have that in the glasses I see that infinity piece okay so wow step one and step two we're good again now the pressure goes and even though it's April Fool's Day we're not fooling around tip number three all right so tip number three is called establishing your rules of engagement and so for folks that are really struggling with this idea of how to create a start and stop routine and not feel guilty about that the rules of engagement hopefully will help you to do that so the rules of engagement are essentially a series of questions that you ask yourself and you can use this as a conversation tool for your team and for your loved ones for your supervisors to really have a conversation about really three basic things the first is when when are my work hours right when am I going to be available for my work and when am I going to be available for the things outside of work right and so that's going to help you to figure out when you actually pop in your start routine and your start routine the other is what are the tools or what are the communication channels that you're going to use to communicate when something is urgent versus non-urgent right so if someone has an urgent request of you should they send you a text message should they call you should they send your email or a Slack message or contact you on Teams what's the best way to reach you based on the level of urgency and what actually constitutes something that's urgent versus non-urgent and then the last basic question that you want to be able to ask yourself when it comes to your rules of engagement is what are the expectations around response times right and what happens if you're not available what's the backup plan if you're not available and something is truly urgent then what should your loved ones or what should your colleagues expect that they need to do as part of the next step and having this as part of an explicit conversation as opposed to what many of us do is we have these assumptions built in we haven't discussed them so what happens is we feel guilty for doing the fake commute maybe you're going to drive to go get your coffee you're doing your fake and you feel guilty about that because you feel like oh my god what if my boss calls or what if a client calls and I'm not available to take that when people feel like I'm a slacker or that I dropped the ball or that I'm not responsive right so thinking about what does that actually look like for you so that you can do your fake commute you can go have lunch during the day you can go change your kid's diaper and not feel guilty that you're missing something because you've had a conversation with your colleagues and they know the different ways to reach you based on level of urgency and there's some built-in conversation around expectancy in terms of response time that you've all hopefully you've come to a mutual agreement of what that can actually look like wow so I see this is an amazing workshop for a team that's going to be looking at going back to work you know if it's a hybrid if it's still maintaining the work from home piece of it yeah this is a really key thing because I can think of conversations that I've been having with leaders who are like wow there's two things my team works a lot harder and longer than I ever thought or my team's not working hard enough and I think it's the older folks that are like you know I'm used to getting up out of my chair walking down the hall and looking them in the eye versus understanding that these are the same workers that the minute they wake up they're checking their email they're looking at texts throughout the day even well after the office hours yes and so having these rules of engagement allows the you know the organization and for you know the if you're managing a team allows the the manager to say hey you know I honor you as a human being I know you're not a robot you know I know you have family responsibilities or other things that are happening but let's have our conversation about reasonable expectations and recognizing too that this this isn't something that has to be sort of one size fits all or very rigid often particularly in the nonprofit space the the work ebbs and flows with the season right you're going to have some seasons that are easier than others and so that might change some teams with even within the same organization some teams are client facing some are focused internally just on on infrastructure and so the rules of engagement might look a bit differently depending on your role in the organization and depending on the season and that's okay just see this as an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation about what this could look like for you and for your team me go I have a question when it comes to transparency right so this is in particular let's say an employee employer relationship and maybe there's a personal meeting that you need to take or you know it is there a way during this rules of engagement conversation to bring up you know this topic of hey look I don't want to tell you where I'm going to be all the time I would like to just put a block of like private time or you know personal meeting or and it could be anything right it could be going to the hairdresser or having a therapy appointment or taking your child to the doctor like for me I don't care what that personal private meeting is but how might we relay that need to our employer I think I would start by getting clear about expectations in terms of what what needs to be done and what are what are the outcomes and what are the deadlines and just focus on that right so and I think as long as you're focused on delivering on those things and you have a clear along with that you have clear understanding about the rules of engagement I'm not sure it makes sense to bring it up you know and you can and I like you know when it comes to saying yes and no one of the phrases I get people is to say like I you know no I'm not able to do that I have another commitment could we do x y and z right your commitment might be nap time right but you don't need to talk to the other person that yeah you have another commitment and generally yeah if you say you have another commitment that sounds like serious enough like someone's not going to probe generally speaking and you know but to say hey like you know I have another commitment at that time I would love to help you with x y and z how about we do a lot of like you're proposing an alternative right and so you don't have to get into the conversation about well I'm going to walk my dog or I'm going to the hairdresser or I'm going to pick up you know grandma from the airport like you don't have to get into all that yes I like that just keep it you know I have another commitment at that time but I can do this this and this what works yeah but this works this in order for this to work you have to be performing you have to be meeting that you have to be delivering on the deliverables you have to be meeting the deadlines you have to be responsive according to the rules of engagement that you have agreed upon and if you're not doing that then the the the probing questions might be okay so like what are you doing like you're not you're not meeting the benchmarks you know so what are you doing are you spending too much time at the hairdresser like are you spending too much time walking the dog let's have a conversation right is grandma visiting too often that you're picking her up from the airport exactly now that's a valid point yes so this really needs to be you know you're producing and you're really elevating so of these five top tips we're at number four and what do you have for us on number four so number four is about setting intention so I'm the mindful techie I'm all about being really intentional it's all about setting intentions and I'll describe it this way when you're setting an intention an intention is essentially your view of what a successful outcome might be for your day or for your week and so I think it's really important as we start our days in our weeks that we are setting clear intentions because they'll those then guide our priorities or our to-do lists many of us have mile-long to-do lists of things many of those things aren't necessarily relevant to actually getting us to outcomes right getting us to actually meeting some of those benchmarks that we just talked about right so setting clear intentions allows us to slow down and to actually be able to to do that and one of the analogies that I give here is about something that I learned about how first responders are trained are trained to respond to an incident so when they arrive on a scene for example for a car accident they're taught to walk and not to run so first responders are taught to walk and not to run so why is this right well one of the obvious reasons is that if you are running at the scene of an accident that you're likely to maybe fall in trip and hurt yourself and you're not able to serve the person that you've actually been called to help right but one of the other reasons is that when we're rushing and running in this in this example we actually our our cortisol levels spike our adrenaline level spike and we miss things so if you're responding to a car accident and you're running as a first responder you might notice the person in front of you that's injured but you might miss the fact that there are two other people on the other side of the car that also need your help as well you might miss the fact that there's glass in the road and you trip over and you cut yourself and again you're out of you know you're not able to help the person to your best of your ability so many times we rush into our days we rush into our weeks so I'm inviting people to take time to walk and to not run and one of the ways that you can do that is by taking an opportunity to pause and just asking yourself if you start your day if you start your week what is the what is the highest outcome that I want to achieve what's my vision for success for for today or for this week and once you've done that look at your to-do list look at your calendar and ask yourself does your calendar does your to-do list actually reflect that highest intention that you set for yourself okay I know I never heard that before I've never heard that I'm not a first responder but I have never heard that and that you know is so mind blowing right Julia like yeah not before no I haven't but I've witnessed it yeah but I think what I think about it what have you ever seen a first responder or paramedic running like darting across never but I'm always thinking why aren't they going faster yeah totally totally you know I think what I really the message here for me is looking before we get a tip number five is that intention for the week I love that as opposed to just that oh my gosh the to-do list the to-do list but really pulling that out my mother always says you know don't rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic you know because that's not helping you you've got to look at the sinking ship you know as a whole yes and figure out okay wow so you have to walk the Titanic first yeah don't run don't run and don't trip over the deck chairs you need to walk because you might need to get off the Titanic right exactly okay wow so the pressure is on my friend one through four we're damn good what about number five all right so number five is really about our technology right so we talked about some practical strategies in terms of the other ways in which we work but technology is such a big part of how we work want to give you a lasting tip here and that is around bed times and nap times so I'm a big believer in making sure that we're having a good night sleep for ourselves I'm a big believer in taking nap time if that's what you need in order to get through through your day I think that's perfectly okay but what about nap time and bedtime for our devices right so I recommend for folks that you want to those people that you wake up first thing in the morning you're grabbing your phone it's getting in the way of you actually starting your day in an intentional a mindful and a peaceful way is to reclaim some of that peace reclaim some of that space for yourself by actually charging your devices in a separate room right establishing a bedtime for your devices just like you establish a bedtime for yourself as a family you can do this by establishing a centralized charging station station and you can agree on a bedtime together as a family the other thing that you can do is nap time right so nap time for your devices that means you know during middle times that means when you're in the bathroom that means that when you're working on deadline for example and you need uninterrupted attention to whatever it is you're focusing on you know take your phone and and you know set it down for nap time just like you with your kid and then you can come back to it when you're when you're done right so nap time and bedtime for your devices so i am guilty that i use my phone as my alarm clock i also use an app on there um that's like a nighttime meditation that helps me you know go to sleep um what am i supposed to do with that right like is it okay that i still have my phone with me like how do i train myself to not check it first time in the morning after i turn off the alarm so i think this is something where if you're checking it first thing in the morning i'm actually going to recommend that you probably consider getting an alarm clock a real like a real alarm clock um and when it comes to the meditation it's interesting so i just i just practice um what is the natural day of unplugging i've been doing this for the last couple years where it's like you take essentially you know one 24 hour period away from your digital devices um and i actually bought a boombox remember the boomboxes yeah so i actually bought a boombox so i wouldn't have to use my phone or my tablet so maybe you need to buy a boombox or or some other analog um uh device if you're using that for your meditation right get you a cd or mp3 player i'm gonna get a cassette tape yes i love that though because i think so many of us have become reliant on technology um so much so that you know and they do relate this to an addiction that we continue to to you know lean on it again like i do it's an alarm for me in the morning it helps me go to sleep at night but when i wake up it's also the first thing i check yeah so that's the thing and it's if that is the thing again i'm you know get your get your real alarm clock get your boombox or some other device to help you with the sleep the sleep um meditation and um see if that helps with the attachment issue that you have with your device especially first thing in the morning okay amazon smile i hope you have something for me well you've been great and i i think that this wisdom that you've shared is really powerful because again our nonprofits are looking excitedly at recovery how we manage our teams how we manage ourselves and it starts with us as leaders and then we have to be able to communicate that to our teams and to you know create some new pathways to for success because this is a new a new time and the work certainly hasn't gone away but it has certainly changed on how we do things here's the mindful techies information it's got some great great things on your website and i love your use of video on your website along with your narratives are great nico you've done a fabulous job so quiz i took the quiz after your last um episode with us so yes check out mindful techie dot com it's fantastic yes yeah if you want the quiz really quickly so if you go to mindful techie dot com slash free mindful techie dot com slash free you can get the workbook um that they were talking about and you can get the quiz the work life balance and the digital wellness quiz um to help you really get a sense of where you are on what you can do if depending on your level of attachment to your devices i am not digitally well i am not that is a practice that i really want to be better off well when you say you know digital attachment that kind of says it all hey i'm julia patrick i've been joined by jared ranson the nonprofit nerd herself another great episode of the nonprofit show we want to remind you that the book club is launched i'm on the american nonprofit academy website it's really fun it's a lot of different books um and information that nonprofit leaders um at all levels can use and we we continue to curate this because we really believe that this type of information is just so valuable to us all again we want to thank our sponsors without you we would not be here talking with the mindful techie today and trying to refocus how we are doing things for the better um so miko it has really been a pleasure to have you join us um and our sponsors without again this this uh commitment that they've made we wouldn't be having these these enlightened articles our engagements hey everybody thank you for joining us today it's been another great episode don't you think jared absolutely and miko i have a feeling you might have a book or you might be working on one do you are you an author i i have it i have a daily planner called the intention planners you can get at the website and i'm actually i'm working on um my first long form book um although some people consider the planner book but so however i'm working on it the next book how about that let us know and we will add it to the book club would love to do that awesome absolutely well everyone as we like to end each one of our episodes we want to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well you see you back here tomorrow everyone thanks so much


Turning now to our conversation, Jewel Gingrich-Longenecker leads the AMBS Church Leadership Center as Dean of Lifelong Learning. The Church Leadership Center offers non-degree programs for church leaders. In her role, Jewel collaborates with AMBS faculty, denominational leaders, conference staff, and congregational leaders to help provide a rich array of resources for leadership development. Her PhD studies focused on the importance of deep careful study of scripture in congregations led by well-prepared teachers. Before coming to AMBS as Associate Dean in 2001, Jewel was a conference youth minister, high school campus pastor, and teacher. Jewel will start by answering several questions I have for her, and after that, we'll have time for your questions and comments, and you can submit those using the Q&A feature at any time during the webinar. Jewel, thank you for joining us, and I invite you to start by telling us about yourself. What would you like folks to know besides what I've already read as an introduction? Thank you. So fun to see the names of all the people coming in here on the chat. Great to be together. Well, I live in South Bend, Indiana about 25 minutes from here with my husband Fred. We attend Kern Road Mennonite Church, and there I am very actively involved with our young adult group, and I also serve as the chair of the Gift Assertment Committee and have a variety of involvement. So love our church, I'm really glad to be a part of it. My husband Fred is a part-time seminary student, and also a mental health recovery coach at Oakland Psychiatric Center here. We have two kids, they're grown now, Janae and Jayce, they're young adults. I've loved every stage of parenting, I love this stage, it's super fun to have young adult kids. Janae is finishing law school at Notre Dame. She's married to a great guy named Vince Kurtz, and Jayce is working in Denver, and he's living with several college students and his Bernie's Mountain Dog puppy who I happen to also love. I've been working at AMBS for over 20 years. I began as Associate Dean for Leadership Education in 2001, and then in 2014, the title was changed to Dean of Lifelong Learning, and that was to reflect growing commitment, I would say from AMBS to the Lifelong Learning curriculum of the seminary. So the importance of having our graduate programs and also these Lifelong Learning options in place in an ongoing way. So I don't know, you may already know some of this, but I'm just going to refresh your memory to say that our Lifelong Learning programs include pre-seminary programs, post-seminary continuing education, and then what I would call co-curricular options for students that are currently in seminary. So we have pre-seminary programs, the Journey Mission Leadership Program, which is for people in ministry roles, variety of kinds of ministry roles and congregations, lay ministries and pastoral ministry, who may or may not have formal theological or other higher education. Then also another example of pre-seminary courses could be short courses, our online versions of courses that are offered in full length in the seminary context, but as short courses they don't involve grades or papers or other kinds of commitments of that nature. They're just really discussion based, but they're at the graduate level of conversation. Then we also have Invite AMBS, which is really a coordinated opportunity to bring AMBS faculty and staff and other employees to your setting, and have them do short teaching assignments or consultations. Increasingly, we're doing those both in person and on Zoom. So those are just examples of you don't need a degree to appreciate some of those things. Some of what I would call the continuing education elements of the lifelong learning programs would be like the spiritual direction seminars, where we do want you to have a seminary degree, and then if you want to add a skill set of spiritual direction to your ministry, you can do our spiritual direction program, which has three years of learning opportunities. Our transition to leadership program, which is for new pastors who are just out of seminary in their first three or four years out of seminary and in their first pastorate. In that program, you have a mentor and seminary faculty and staff who walk alongside groups of folks who are also new in ministry and have the opportunity to really care for each other and support each other and help each other through that transition. We also have something now called ministry integrity circles, which are for experienced pastors who are facing various kinds of transitions. Again, they gather with peers, with faculty and staff, and have a guided peer group process. I should say that the feedback we're getting on these is that they're extremely helpful and in many ways, life-saving for ministry at this very challenging, difficult time for the church. Lifelong learning at AMBS, like I said, also has co-curricular dimensions. We have current seminary students who will occasionally take a short course or a leadership clinic often they'll participate in pastors and leaders, which is coming up this year as pastors and leaders and deep faith, February 21 and hoping that all of you are signed up and if you aren't, we'd love to have you still sign up. We're offering that online and in person. We also offer workshops and webinars throughout the year and I'd say these last three things I'm naming really serve the whole set of people. They can be pre-seminary, post-seminary, or during seminary. That's why we call it lifelong learning because there's always opportunities for skill-building, theological learning, inspiration along the way. I would just say that I sense that AMBS is just increasingly committed to keeping this making this an important part of what we do. My work personally has changed so much since 2001 and in many ways, it's a different job than it was before. Yet I think of the basic purpose of it as very much the same to connect leaders and emerging leaders with the resources of the seminary. The work is constantly changing because the landscape of ministry is constantly changing. The life of the church is constantly changing. I am never ever bored ever. I love my work. I love my coworkers. I love being able to meet and learn to know leaders, emerging leaders. I love being able to stay connected with you folks as alumni. It's a privilege to be here. Thanks, Joel. You have so many different programs going on. It's great to have just a glimpse into the overview of those and then later on, we'll have a chance for you to describe things you're working on, especially this year right now. I'm wondering if you can tell us a story about a time when you experienced God in a powerful way. Yeah. I so often feel that God is companioning me in my life and in my work. I have felt the powerful presence of God throughout this whole journey of being here at AMBS and planning, programming, and all of that kind of thing. But in terms of a particularly powerful way, I just say that in recent years, I've discovered the power of silence. I've found that being still and doing absolutely nothing for 30 minutes or so at a time is incredibly grounding for me. I'm not technically meditating. I'm not even trying to think of a particular word. I'm just still. This has been so important to me in recent years, helping me to have a sense of connection to God and also just that knowledge that it's a reliable thing. I can count on it. I can develop that groundedness when I am feeling afraid. Which I often have and I just find that. Although it's not a one-time thing, it's a very powerful thing in my life. So thank you. What a great testimony. And I often think that as we go grow older, silence becomes more and more important to us. So that's what attracted you to be part of the AMBS community coming back as an alum yourself. This is a long time ago now that you've been here. What made you say I want to come work at AMBS? Well, when I was a student here, I was so excited about everything I was learning. And I just kept wondering why I hadn't heard about these kinds of things before. The theological, the biblical spiritual pastoral wisdom that just was kind of spilling out from all of my professors. They were just a wealth of wisdom and knowledge. And I had a very strong sense that the church desperately needed the things that I was learning. And so I wanted a much wider segment of the church to have direct access to at least some of what was going on here. And I'd say that that deep desire really hasn't changed. It was very much present when I decided to come to work here. It was like, well, maybe I can help help to open those doors, create more pathways into and out of the seminary for more people in the church. Often as I talk to young adults now, I hear what I would call a desperate need. And maybe not a conscious need, but a desperate need for in-dub theological and pastoral and biblical and spiritual wisdom and knowledge. I was just reminded as I was thinking about this, that often as I talk to young or that just not too long ago, I had a conversation with a young guy who told me that he was disillusioned with the church because of the things that the church teaches. And so I asked him for some specifics. And I learned that on his list, there were a lot of things that were truly problematic and also things that most of the churches that I'm familiar with don't actually teach. So I said, well, that's not what I believe. Like, where are you getting that stuff? That's actually bad theology in my humble opinion. And he says, well, it's everywhere. Bad theology is everywhere. Good theology is hard to find. And I said, oh, yeah, I hear you. Good theology is hard to find. And boy, do I have a place for you to study. Like, I think you could actually engage with theology that you would feel good about at the seminary where I work. And I came back to ABS the next day and I said, I have a new tagline for AMBOs and new marketing tagline. Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary because good theology is hard to find. I haven't convinced everybody here that that's the right tagline, but it's fun to think about it. So I would just say that what attracted me to work here was the incredible importance of the work of theological and pastoral education. Thanks, and I love your tagline. This is the first I've heard it. So let's... It's been talking to you, Janine. With all of the different parts of the Church Leadership Center that you are overseeing and managing, I'm wondering what are some of the projects you're working on this year right now over the last fall, the last few months? What are some of the things you're most excited about or things that might be coming up in the future for the Church Leadership Center? Yeah. Well, in addition to all the programs that I named, and I should say that they are running smoothly and doing amazing things, thanks to the excellent work of the faculty who serve as teachers and instructors and consultants in those programs. And thanks to the staff, the Church Leadership Center staff, Dave Norton, Julia Schmidt, Cheryl Zaire, our volunteers, Ed and Gabe Kaufman, Chialis Twan. They're all so crucial in keeping those programs running so that I can actually now also share with you some other things I'm working on. And so one of the things that's coming up that we're working on hard is a demon proposal that has now been submitted to our accrediting agency, the Association of Theological Schools. And we've submitted a petition and it is hopefully in the works. We are hoping to focus that program on Anabaptist Leadership. It's a competency-based program giving a lot of flexibility for leaders to grow and increase their effectiveness in terms of their leadership for the challenges that they face. It's designed for people in professional leadership roles who wanna increase their capacity. And we'll hear more about that after the Board of Commissioners meets in April. But if you're interested, stay tuned and apply when you see the notices. So that's something that is very exciting that I'm working on. Also, I'm working with Joe Sawatski of the Mennonite Mission Network, along with David Bushhart and Bev Lap to work at developing contextually appropriate programming for various global settings to deliver Anabaptist Theological Education in collaboration with local church leaders, local denominational leaders. I'm in conversations with folks at this time from India, from Indonesia, from Kenya, from Uganda, from Southeast Asia. And that's in addition to the master's level programming that you probably are all aware of that we're doing in Ethiopia. And other conversations that are also happening outside of the church leadership center. So those are just a few that I'm involved in. And some days I almost can't, like, I'm like, okay, where on the globe are we today? And it's just very exciting and truly amazing to be able to meet with these folks and to imagine that there might be ways that we can work together to do theological education. I'm also beginning to work with others on developing modules focused on practical or applied leadership skills. These modules would be individually teaching skills like visioning, strategic planning, guiding good group processes, working with conflict, handling difficult conversations, chairing meetings. We'll be incorporating these modules into the seminary curriculum and also offering them as continuing education for active ministers and leaders. This fall I worked with David Kramer here in the Institute of Mennite Studies to provide consulting to a regional conference to help design a listening project for that conference for all of their churches using a research approach that I had learned in my doctoral program called appreciative inquiry. So that was exciting for me to do that kind of consulting in a different way and very fun. I'm currently making plans with Drew Straight to offer a new online short course on political idolatry and Christian nationalism for next year, an online short course in that topic as well as a webinar later this spring on that same topic, really relevant right now. And I've been helping to resource Hillcrest Academy in Kelowna, Iowa, which is formerly Iowa Mennonite School, my alma mater where I graduated in 1982. But anyway, helping to resource them in the area of strengthening and deepening their sense of anabaptist identity. I was invited to do this alongside of Tyler Hartford of the Ivana Network. The school has supporting churches for Mennonite Church USA and also from Ivana Network. And so the principal there who is my dear brother wanted Tyler and me to do this together. And since I grew up in the conservative Mennonite Conference and attended Iowa Mennonite School as one of a few conservative Mennonite students and benefited really greatly from my education there. It's just extremely important to me that Hillcrest Academy continue to serve anabaptist in that community from across the theological spectrum. And that shared identity in anabaptism would deepen among those churches. So it's just been a very interesting assignment for me and I've been enjoying it being back in that community in that unique way. Thank you, Jewel. That's so many wonderful projects. And I'm wondering, you didn't say any details about pastors and leaders but it is coming up in just a few weeks. In one month, we'll be in the middle of it actually. And I'm wondering if you can tell us what you're excited about, what should we know about the theme, about the resource persons that are joining us and maybe some insights that we haven't heard through the advertisements about it. Why should everyone be signing up for this year's pastors and leaders slash deep faith conference? Yeah, well, the title is formed in the wilderness leading in hope. And we were really looking for strength for difficult times, recognizing that people are stressed out. It's often very easy to feel like nobody's been here before, nobody's led through a pandemic in this way. None of us know what we're doing. We're all making it up as we go. And that can be really overwhelming and discouraging. And so in talking with Shana Bushhart who is the MCUSA faith formation minister and co-planer of this project, we began to just think about what does it mean that God has been faithful through all time to the people of God and leading them, showing them how to form faith even in the midst of some really tough stuff. We are not the first. And so how can we start to think about that together? And I had been reading Alan Crider's book previously at various points and somehow this emerged as, you know, can Alan in his wisdom, even from wherever he is with God now help us. And so we're just really, really grateful to Eleanor who is going to represent several chapters of the book. Grateful to Tom Yoder Neufeld who will be doing Bible studies on wilderness times and how God faithfully led God's people through the wilderness and in difficult times in scripture. Grateful to our respondents who are in various ministry context a lot of them on the younger side to be able to say, you know, this is what this material means to them in their context. And then also quite a few workshop leaders who are talking about how they've been formed in the wilderness and have found aspects of hope, ways to lead that have helped them specific experiences that they can offer to others that can offer hope. We have, I think it's something like 33 workshops or something and it's just an incredible number and it gives me hope that so many people said I have something of hope to offer. So. Yes, I was struck also by the number of workshops available both in person and online. There's just so many great sounding options. I'm wondering if you can share with us a dream or maybe two dreams that you have for AMBS. Yeah, well, this goes back a little bit to what I was saying about my work in Iowa, but also it's broader than that. And that is to say my dream is that our learning community and I define that broadly, our learning community online and in person would increasingly include more people from across the geographic, ethnic, theological, educational, ecclesiological spectrum. All studying and worshiping and growing together with a shared value on the anabaptist story and anabaptist approaches to scripture and what anabaptism offers to the church and the world today. I feel that in the face of all the polarization in the world and in the church, this work of learning to love each other across so many differences is crucial and it's transformative in what it does, I think, for our students, for the church and in what it offers and signals to the rest of the world. So that is my dream. That's a wonderful dream. I hope we can all join you in that. And also I'm wondering if you have any questions for the alumni who've joined us today, anything that would help you in your work or just something you're curious about? Yeah, I have two. How do you attend to your spiritual and mental and emotional health in this very difficult time? What are the kinds of ways, the practices, the philosophical commitments that have whatever it is that is helping you to get through? I'd like to hear about it. And also what, if any, programming, do you wish AMBS would provide that it doesn't? I'm curious about those things. Those are great questions. So if you would like to respond to one of those questions, you can put that in the chat and then everyone can see your responses. The two questions were how are you dealing or how are you keeping your mental and spiritual health in this difficult time? What are you doing to work at that? And second, what resources from AMBS would be valuable to you in your situation, whether that's retirement or ministry? And then we're ready to move into questions that you are asking. So I'll invite you to put those questions in the Q&A box that is at the bottom of your screen. And as people are starting to put their questions there, I'm gonna ask you one. Last year for pastors and leaders, you had the foresight to invite a group of singers who has now become nationally famous, girl named Tom. And I'd just be curious to hear about your relationship with that group and how you have experienced their participation in the voice on TV this fall. Well, thank you so much for asking. I'm such a huge fan, girl named Tom is just, they're quite the set of young people. Yeah, last year when I freaked out because we had a limit of 500 people that could get into that concert that we offered online. And for a few minutes, I thought maybe we would get 550 or something and we hadn't had a ticketing process or anything. And so I was really nervous and I told our IT person that we might get 500 and some people and he just laughed at me and said, what do you think? They're the rolling stones of the Mennonite church.  But anyway, it was pretty funny. And then we only had like 150 people or something. So I was way off base and worrying way too prematurely, but I felt kind of validated then this year when they won the voice. The reason I know them is because they're friends with our kids from Goshen College. And so they came to the concert at Kern Road and we had a lunch and all chatted and encouraged them to come to Kern Road if they moved to South Bend, which they then did and they lived in South Bend and occasionally would come. They were not coming super regularly. They just came occasionally. But in the course of that time then, I don't know, we learned to know them and enthusiastically planned and executed watch parties all through the fall with young adults from Kern and beyond and just cheered and couldn't imagine.  Is there anything else about that that you were wondering? No, it's just that we had so much fun talking about it here at work because so many people had relationships with them through Goshen College or other places, families. But I was struck by your sharing that at the end of it all, one of those young adults that kept coming to watch parties with you said, now we have to find another show to watch others. So you really were building community with these folks as well, like with these young people who were watching with you. What a neat, neat experience for you. And you work with the young adult group at Kern Road on a pretty regular basis, right? Yeah, we do this crazy thing where we have Sunday school for them and then lunch pretty much every Sunday. And so it's been really cool to see how lunch has really made a difference in their desire, I think to, maybe not desire, but just sense of belonging and feeling like they have a place. And so, yeah, it's really grown from almost no young adults four years ago to a pretty solid group of 15 or 16 and then a bunch of others that kind of come and go. Wow, that's great. Okay, the questions are starting to come in. Please remember to put your questions in the Q&A so that I can ask those to Jewel and I'll read the first one comes from Jennifer Davis-Sensenig and she's wondering, do you have any book recommendations? And she's thinking both theological books, novels, or other, thanks Jennifer for that question. Yeah, that's a great question. Well, recently I've read two novels that I would highly recommend. Maybe you've all read them already, but The Beekeeper of Aleppo, you've heard of that. It's a story of a refugee making their way from the war-torn Syria to Great Britain and he's a beekeeper. So that's just enlightening the experiences of that, yeah, reality. And then another one called Nothing to See Here I don't have to go into details about those, but I recently tried to take up a little bit of novel reading, which is kind of a different thing for me. If I had seen this question coming, I might have like a really meaningful theological book to recommend, but alas, I'm not thinking of it right now. I'm sure there is one. So a few people have started to answer your questions in the chat. Todd Friesen said, a daily practice of contemplative prayer has been a crucial lifeline for him, especially during this time. Elizabeth Soto said, the way she nurtures spirituality is to find a Spanish spiritual director to keep connected to her faith community. And Kathy responded just to us, not to everyone.  Yay. And she also is following girl named Tom. So a couple of you who wanna answer either one of Jules' questions in the chat. We love to see those. And we now have another question that has come in from Kathy Stoner. Thank you, Kathy. What's the process for signing up for the support groups for new pastors? So the transition group. Great question. So if you go to our website, there is information about the dates of the next Transition to Leadership group which is starting in April. And there you will see an application and the opportunity to give your name and that kind of thing. And then Julia Schmidt is the director of that program and she will get in touch with you and work with you to move through the next part of the process. So the way you get to that on our website is to go to ambs.edu backslash. Well, Transition to Leadership, I think. If somebody listening has a better address, let me know. Transition to Leadership. I can put it in the chat. And are there any particular qualifications, a certain number of years that people need to be in ministry to be in that group? You need to be out of seminary and in your first three to four years of pastoral ministry. What about other kinds of ministries? Does it serve other folks as well? Or is it intended for congregational pastoral chaplaincy? What kinds of ministries? It is intended for congregational ministry. Yeah. Okay, thank you. I don't know, sorry, I put it. Yeah, Chuck Neufeld has... Oh no, Jewel has sent it, but... I accidentally sent it to Chuck. There we go, now it's going to everyone. Okay. Everyone has it. All right, Chuck says, I've been... Chuck Neufeld says, I've been moved by what I've experienced as your deep joy. The roots of that joy seem deep. Wondering if you could comment on how you find and maintain joy in your life. Thank you, Chuck, for a great question. Yeah, thank you. Well, this... Yeah, I think that I was given so much joy from my parents and my family, and I just, I don't know. But also, there are just wonderful people in my life that I love to connect with. And when I told you about nurturing that relationship with God is crucially important to me. And I don't know. Chuck, thanks for asking. That's beautiful. I get to be around people a lot who are spiritually wise. And yeah, I've had a lot of people in my life as mentors and family members and co-workers and friends. And they're not all men and I. They're not all involved in my current context here at work, but just in a lot of different... They include those people, but it goes beyond that, I think. So that depth of wisdom keeps reminding me that, although we struggle in this world, God is present and active. Please keep sending your questions for Jewel or your comments in the chat. Jewel, I'll ask another one. And I'm wondering if you could say a little bit more about what is behind the modules that you talked about developing earlier. Could you explain the conversations that were happening last summer with church leaders across Canada and the US and what AMBS learned from those conversations and how that is impacting the development of these modules? Is that a fair question to ask? Yeah, sure. So we had the opportunity to apply for a Lilly grant and we did not get the grant, but the grant focused on pathways to leadership. Pathways for tomorrow is called. And in the process of developing our grant proposal, we decided to go to first leaders, primarily conference leaders and regional church ministers from Canada and then also several representatives of underrepresented groups and asked for kind of what is needed in pastoral ministry to support pastoral ministry right now to really help pastors face into the future and be able to lead in the church today and tomorrow. And what we kept hearing over and over was that pastors need more skills in these leadership areas that these are really places where people, it's kind of like the rubber hits the road and it's hard to implement some of these things. And so after a process of listening, which we had Paula Keelow very involved in and also Betty Priest's consulting firm in Canada, they did the listening with these leaders and then reported back to us what they were hearing while that was definitely not the only thing they heard, it was one thing that kept emerging and it was just very commonly spoken as a need. And so we decided to propose these modules as a way to begin to address some of those needs. And we had a consultation with a number of these leaders and tested with them our idea of leadership modules and got resounding support to move ahead. And it's possible that in some way these modules will also be useful in the D-MEN program as pieces of the competencies that folks are working at. And so with a focus on leadership in the D-MEN and then the need for these practical leadership skills, I see that these are going to emerge as something that we're better equipped to resource people on in going forward from here. And I might have missed something. I heard you talk about Canadian leaders. Was this a consultation across the US as well? It was Canadian and US leaders, I'm sorry, yeah. Denominational ministers and conference leaders from the US and regional church leaders from Canada. So this was quite a wide ranging consultation. And I know many people here are feeling grateful for the things that we learned from that. So look forward to that. Okay, we are still waiting for some more questions from our alums. So please ask those. Jill, I'll ask you something a little more personal again but what's something you like to do in your free time if you have any? What are the things you enjoy doing? Well, I love reading novels. I love coffee with friends. I love walks with friends. I've been in the mountains quite a bit lately because our son's in Denver and we visited him a number of times. And so trying out my hiking skills is a good thing. I think that for me though, there's nothing that beats good conversation with folks I love. So always trying to find more ways to make that happen. I don't know, I learned a little bit during the pandemic about my introverted side too. So who knew that I had that but I found myself appreciating the time at home and the time to just kind of go deeper in some of the topic areas I was interested in and that kind of thing. So I don't know. I feel like my personal hobbies are really kind of underdeveloped but they work for me. So what can I say? A reading, getting together with friends, visiting, that sounds great. So, and I'm curious, do a lot of your conversations, excuse me, and do a lot of your conversations at home head towards theology, especially now that you have a spouse who is a seminary student. Yes, all the time. One of the crazy things that we have discovered is that he gravitates toward classes that I never took and I went through seminary and took a lot of classes that he's not signing up for. The types of things that we're each interested in have just been, this is different. And so that's been fascinating to see how that kind of plays out. Like, I don't know, people probably don't know this. I did the Master of Arts in Theological Studies. So I did like Creek and Hebrew and all the biblical studies I could get my hands on and then I took preaching and pastoral care and some of those kinds of things as more of a, just a little bit, you know, not much of that. Where he's coming in and it's all about human development and Christian formation, pastoral care, spirituality stuff. Right now he's doing an independent study on the Holy Spirit. And so with Jamie Pitts, we just are balancing each other out in a funny way. And actually Fred has put a bell on our dinner table and it's a little office bell. And he wants it there so that if either of us have an experience during the day of feeling the spirit with us in some way, we ring the bell and tell the other one about it. And so we've been doing that a lot, not every day, but every now and then happened a couple of times last night. So it's like, dang, and then thank you God for this moment. And so it has been incredibly interesting to have a spouse who's been sort of discovering seminary life and spirituality kinds of things in more recent years in a deeper way. That's an awesome practice. This is a question from Jennifer Davis-Sensnick. Can you describe the process for bringing an AMBS professor to a congregation, the Invite AMBS? How much does it cost? Is it one or several sessions? What are some of the themes that congregations have asked for? Okay, so we have this new thing that we call Invite AMBS. And what happens is that basically you can tailor the visit to your needs. So it might be as brief as a sermon on a Sunday morning in Zoom, or it might be having somebody come to your community for three days and do kind of meetings for a large group of people or a consultation for the leadership. Really, it's extremely flexible. And I am looking at the page right now just so that I can tell you some of the themes that people have asked for. Intercultural competence and undoing racism is a big one. Here we go. We have women in the Bible, trauma-informed Bible study, improvisational leadership, healthy boundaries, becoming a community of healing and hope, Christian nationalism and political idolatry, reading the Bible from an Anabaptist perspective, Anabaptist history and theology. Trauma-informed care, pastoral care. It's just the list is fairly long. And the reality is that nonviolent communication is another one, confessional Bible study, feminist and womanist theologies. The reality with this program is that if you have a particular subject that you wanna see addressed or a particular person you wanna hear from, you can contact, invite AMBS and just tell them kind of what you're looking for. And then Steve Norton, who is the person who's coordinating that program here is able to talk you through kind of, okay, for this type of a situation, this would be our recommended fee. We do ask for Honoraria for these folks and if they're traveling for travel reimbursement. And he will give you recommendations always with the statement that we don't require that you pay that amount. This is a recommendation if you're able, but if it doesn't work out for you to do that, we wanna meet you where you're at so that we can make it possible for this to work out because we have professors and other employees who really wanna be there with you and wanna speak to the kinds of questions you have. So Jennifer, I don't know if you have any more questions about that, but please put them in the chat if you do or in the Q and A. Did I cover everything she was asking, Janine? Yeah, I think so. All right, one last chance for any questions that anyone wants to send in. I'll put the inviteABS link in the chat now also. All right, this question comes from Patrick Obande. What are some of the ways in which you are engaging the Anabaptist-oriented congregations in developing the modules? Thank you, Patrick, for that question. Yeah, so the way that our plan, our proposal for this program is worded is that we're going to form an advisory group that includes a number of people who are currently in active ministry roles. We are not planning to develop these modules solely from within the seminary, but rather to bring in experts in these various areas to help guide us in our planning. So I think that the specifics of how that will look will be determined by the advisory group. They will have a lot of ownership in these leadership modules. Thank you, Jewel, for answering all of these questions and giving us an insight into your work at AMBS. And I wanna thank all of you alumni for your ongoing support of AMBS. Alumni are our most important influencers in the church, both of prospective students and of donors. Thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon. And thanks also to student Janet McGeary, who provided technical support for this webinar. This concludes today's Thursday conversation. Have a wonderful day.


Hi everybody. First of all, the authors of this communication would like to acknowledge the organizers of the session for accepting this contribution. This communication, whose title is the Gearcheological Evidence of a Sanctuary Disacralization during Roman times in Calescoves, in Menorca, wants to explore the ritual activities carried out in the cave sanctuary of Calescoves, which is in the same environment of one of the contributions of this morning. To do that, we started the DEA Roma project, a gearcheological research with the aim of having a high resolution view of the site formation processes and the archaeological record we discovered in this cave. Finally, in this presentation, we will show the results of the project and we will discuss the archaeological implications of our study. The cave sanctuary of Calescoves is located in the southern coast of Menorca, in a bay that contains a great diversity of archaeological sites, like a huge proto-storical necropolis of artificial caves, a ritual well carved in the rock, a defensive coastal settlement, or an anchorage point with signs of occupation from the 4th century BC to the 7th century of our era. From these sites, the cave sanctuary of Cobadels Jurat stands out. It is a natural cavity and tropically modified to confer a temple shape with three telas. At a certain point, the roof of the cave collapses, sealing the archaeological deposits. This cave shows occupation from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD. There are 30 epigraphs in the entrance of the cave and all of them share the same formula. All of them say, here we come the 21st April in the Calendas Mayas. This day is a special day in the Roman calendar because it is the date in which Rome was founded by Romulus and the goddess Rome was born. In this sense, this cave and descriptions seems to have a special meaning from the archaeological point of view. That day, the 21st April at the sunrise, it was identified a special phenomenon in which the light illuminates only the descriptions, only the area in which only 30 descriptions that mention the 21st April are located. Cobadels Jurat's rituals must be related with the fisting of the mythical origins of Rome known as Pariglia. That ritual meaning explains the richness of the material culture we identified in the excavation process, like Hellenistic megalithic bowls, Italian black glazeware or a huge amount of barnet-boned remains. These materials were founded in a complex sedimentary sequence of finely stratified, silty layers rich in organic content, as you can see in this picture. To what we know, the rituals of the aroma involved the cremation of leaves and aromatic herbs. In order to purify the livestock and the animals, it has a ritual sense of fertility and prosperity of the Roman state represented in the immortal city of Rome as a goddess. With this background, we established an hypothesis. The ritual behavior of the aroma was the responsible of the genesis of this very complex sequence. So, if we carried out a very complex archaeological study, we should be able to talk about the ritual behavior. So, with that background, we established the De Aroma project focused on the archaeological sediments with a wide range of analytics from the earth sciences. In this presentation, we will show the results of one of the main analyses we have carried out, which is archaeological soil microbiology, which is the study of the sediments through optical microscope. That provides a higher resolution view of the micro-satigraphy and also the site formation processes. So, now, I would like to discuss the results and what were the processes involved on the formation of this sequence. If we start with the bottom of the sequence, there is a sedimentary matrix composed mainly of barnet bones, as you can see in this picture here, weather cut, calenite, big charcoal fragments, herbivorescruments and barnet leaves, which you can see anatomically preserved in section. This fits very well with the ritual behavior of the aroma is the burning of leaves and there are animals in these environments, which are represented with the excrement of herbivorescruments. However, the rest of the sequence is radically different. There are several brown layers, which show a sedimentary matrix mainly composed of herbivorescruments. These are very highly bioturbated deposits with a great content in phytoliths, non-anatomically connected. These deposits are thermally altered, so there was combustion on the genesis of these deposits. There is a progressive transition from black to brown, indicating gradual thermal alternation and there's a high concentration of fecal spherulites, which is displayed in this picture here. Fecal spherulites are calcium carbonate spherulites, very, very tiny, considering that a thousand microns is a millimeter and this is only five microns. And there are nanocrystals radically organized in its structure. These fecal spherulites are generated in the intestinal tract of ruminants, so goat, sheep and cow, and it's a stabbling indicator. So for us, these brown layers represent deposits composed mainly of co-properates of herbivore, ruminants, and plant residues, so forage and beds. Also, inside of one of these layers, there's a stratigraphic intercalation, which is an input of granitic sand, exogenous to the island of Menorca, by the way, to produce a working surface in which we found metal slacks, collected with lead. There are pedofiters related with lead recycling, as lead carbonate and lead oxide. Also, there are some signs of a response sediment with vegetation growth. So for us, this stratigraphic intercalation is associated with an episode of metal recycling, the brown layers are intercalated with very huge white layers that are white spread in the cave. These layers are mainly ashes, because we identify rhombic crystals of calcite. There is a great content in Seleucia's phytoliths, as you can see in this picture here, and there are partially burned organic remains as this blackberry seed. Also, there are burned spherulites. So for us, the genesis of these deposits is the burning of a vegetation floor of a stable. It represents maintenance activities. They burn the stable in order to clean it. Finally, there's a discontinuity in the sequence. Here, you can see an ocean surface, and up to that, there's a layer whose sedimentary composition is very similar to the other brown deposits, indicating stabling activities. There's fresh organic matter, partially unified, and bioturbation. In fact, you can identify anatomical remains of modern soil fauna. So this layer is modern, it's not ancient. And finally, there's a roof collapse, a huge roof collapse of the cave, possibly by an earthquake. So, going back to our starting hypothesis, what we thought at the beginning when we started the project is that the ritual was the responsible of the genesis of the sedimentary deposits. And that would imply sacrifice of animals, commensality, and combustion events. And that was real, because there were the third descriptions talking about that, and there were the archaeological materials that are related with the feast and the cult and the ritual. But the geoarchaeological evidence is radically different. They show the use of the cave as a livestock-establing space. That implies the sacralization of a sanctuary, seasonal occupation, maintenance activities, and waste management practices, and combustion events. So there's a minimal impact of the ritual on the site formation processes of this cave. That makes us question, to what extent did the ritual activities developing the cave sanctuaries leave sedimentary evidence? We need a good knowledge of the sequence to understand the ritual behavior, and this case study shows how material culture, which is the evidence of the ritual behavior, and the stratigraphic sequence may not correspond to each other. They represent very different things in the use of this cave. The sequence we identified in our cave is not a unicorn in the archaeology. There's a kind of settlement that Natalia Ewez knows very well, which is the fumier, and it represents the seasonal occupation and animal penning and stabling maintenance activities in caves, and is widespread in the Mediterranean and even in other areas as the Nisoba in Siberia. So that was the conclusion of this study. Thank you very much.