The Church Initiative Story - Samuel Hodges | Faithly Stories

00:01 - Speaker 1 One of the things that makes the grief share experience unique and divorce care experience for somebody who's not a part of a church is that it's bringing that person to the church for 13 weeks in a row. We found that when people are able to come to a church repeatedly for 13 weeks, they get connected to the culture. They're invited to church by other people in the group and people just kind of they become parts of these churches in the groups where they attend a grace-shared divorce care meeting. 00:30 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys, through their ministry work and everyday life Brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders. Learn more at faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired on the Faithly Stories podcast. 00:58 - Speaker 3 Sam Hodges. Welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:01 - Speaker 1 Hey, well, thank you for having me, Alicia. 01:04 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really quite a privilege and a pleasure to have this conversation with you. I don't know a single pastor that would tell me that they don't need resources around grief or around divorce. So this is a really important conversation. And I might add, I think like maybe a best kept secret in the church world that like we don't want it to be a secret anymore. So this is an important conversation. 01:28 - Speaker 1 Yeah Well, I appreciate you having us on to talk about what we're doing. God's been really good to us over the years and we're excited about the lives that are being changed in churches through our grief, share and divorce care resources. So again, thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and your audience. 01:43 - Speaker 3 Thank you, Sam. Why don't we start from the beginning of the journey for Church Initiative? I'd love to hear about how it was started. What was the spark that formed it? 02:01 - Speaker 1 Yeah, really, that's a story about a ministry that started in a living room that ended up becoming a global ministry, and our founder, his name, is Steve Grissom. He went through a divorce, and it was a painful divorce, a divorce that he didn't want, and Steve was a faithful Christ follower, and so he looked to the Lord to help him through this divorce and through that he read a lot of books and just processed a lot of information to help him to get to a better place. And so once he, you know, experienced a measure of healing, he really wanted to turn around and help other people who were going through divorce. And so by that time he had remarried, and so he and his wife, his new wife, Cheryl. They started a support group that met in their home to help people who are also going through divorce. And this thing, just it exploded and I had people, just you know, filling their house. They had gotten to issues, had issues with neighbors about parking you know, where are all these people parking here, you know? And but there was some. 03:01 Also, even though the ministry was very effective and fruitful, one of the things that happened is Steve was actually starting to feel the pressure of doing these groups week in and week out. It was a lot. I mean, he's full time as an executive for a satellite company and he's got to prepare these lessons and he he's very humble. He didn't feel he was even adequate to teach these lessons and so he felt like people could benefit from something more. So he started looking for something out there on the market that you know, prepackaged turnkey, that could help other churches offer divorce recovery ministry, and he couldn't find anything. And so after a while Steve really sensed that the Lord was telling him you know, you need to do this. So Steve, you know, and his wife, they prayed and talked about it and Steve quit his job back in 1993. 03:57 And he decided to create Divorce Care and see, the interesting thing about Steve is that Steve was trained as a journalist. So before he worked as an executive for this satellite company, he worked in news. He'd also been a DJ and he was a news. He was a reporter at heart, he was a good listener and he knew how to tell good stories, and so what he did is he went back and started interviewing a lot of the people who wrote books that helped him, and he also interviewed other people who had gone through grief and divorce and other pastors and other counselors. But he had this unique skill set that allowed him to bring all that together in a video-based curriculum and it really was different from other things that are out there, because a lot of times when you get a video, a Christian video even today, it's a man at a podium teaching, right. 05:05 But what Steve was able to do was weave together these powerful stories and insights from Christian counselors, people who've been through divorce, you know, and it was just, it was just, it was amazing, had an amazing impact on participants. And so, in addition to that, there was a workbook that he developed and he basically created a resource that he could then make available to churches to help them, help people who are going through divorce. And then, after that, steve got great feedback on divorce care. But he also got this question consistently Do you have anything that will help people who are going through grief? And he got that question enough times that the ministry set out and created Grief Share. And it did that and I believe it was 1998. And same format, same design, same style. So since then, you know, the ministry's been around a little over 30 years and we've developed four different additions of Grief Share and Divorce Care over that time frame and you know we use those to help churches minister to people who are going through grief and divorce. 06:07 - Speaker 3 Wow. So a 30-year history Church Initiative has resourced a lot of churches. Before we started recording, I think you said it was over 30,000 churches over that period of time, but still there's clearly opportunity for these resources to find their way to more churches who need them. So tell us about the resources. They've evolved a lot, I'm sure, over 30 years. What do the resources look like today that you offer to churches and what's unique about them? 06:43 - Speaker 1 Yeah, the resources really haven't changed much in terms of their design. You have the videos, you have the workbook and then there's the group discussion component and groups last about 13, last 13 weeks. Some churches, when they offer it, they might go 14 or 15 if they have a kickoff meeting or some kind of celebration on the back end, but there's 13 weeks of core content for both grief and divorce care. And, as I mentioned, you know, these groups are places where people can just find hope and clarity after they've gone through divorce or if they've gone through grief. And I think it's really helpful also for churches who want to be able to reach their communities with grief support or divorce recovery support. But what makes these programs really unique is all the other support that we offer just to be able to carry these groups out. So we like to say we don't see ourselves simply, as you know, publishing materials, but we see ourselves as ministry partners or partners in ministry. And so, in addition to the materials, we are providing free coaching to churches, and so we have about eight coaches who work for the ministry that serve all the different churches that we have, and you purchase a kit, you're also assigned a coach and that coach is there for you to call anytime during the week and ask questions about how to promote the group, how to troubleshoot or how to train people to lead your group or how to build a team. That person is there for you. 08:23 We've got online resources to help leaders train for grief share and divorce care. There are over 30 modules for each just video based content, and that allow individuals to train individually or groups can come together and train. So there's just a lot of support materials that we offer. The other thing we offer is we help you promote your group and so we provide, you know, press releases. You know letters you can send out to the community social media content that you can use to promote your group. And then our own marketing team is also promoting people. I mean encouraging people to find groups, and we have this neat thing that's on our website. We call it the Grease Share and Divorce Care Finder Group, and so people go in. They just type in their zip code and they can find groups meeting near them. They can also find online groups. So it's really that support that we offer that differentiates us from other ministries because, again, we're not just selling products, we're part ministry, and so that's what makes the program unique. 09:33 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's really interesting. What's also interesting to me is, when I think about offering divorce care or grief care, I think about a resource that you're offering to your congregation, right Like to your church. But what I heard in what you just talked about, what makes church initiative unique, is that it can be part of your outreach to the community. Is that something that like? Do you encounter that a lot Like? Are churches using your resources in that way? 10:04 - Speaker 1 Yeah, they are, and I think that's something that initially surprised us about how these materials worked in churches, but it also comes as a surprise to the churches themselves. 10:18 - Speaker 3 Wow. 10:19 - Speaker 1 And so when we started, when Steve started the ministry, the idea was again to create something to help people in churches who were dealing with grief and divorce. Well, divorce right. But what ended up happening is that our leaders saw, and we saw over time, that in many cases, over 50% of the people who participate in a group are from outside the church. 10:44 - Speaker 3 Wow. 10:45 - Speaker 1 And they're often unchurched, not just people from other churches, and sometimes that happens. You know, somebody doesn't want to go to a divorce care group at their church. They want to go to one down the street. You understand that, but a lot of times there are nonbelievers in these groups, people that don't have church homes, or people who are Christians but they've been away from the church for a long time, and so what we found is that grief share and divorce care are incredible outreach tools. And again, you know you talk about grief share and divorce care being a quiet secret. I think that's. Another secret about our ministry is that it's often started by people who have a heart for care ministry, but it's a powerful outreach ministry, and that's one thing we're trying to figure out is okay. Well, how do we help people who are more thinking about evangelism and outreach understand the power of these ministries that is in their toolkit to bring people to the church? So we're trying to figure those things out. 11:45 - Speaker 3 Right, wow, super interesting and, I think, something that every church is thinking about right, like what can they offer to their communities? How can they reach the unchurched? 11:56 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and the thing I'll add to that I think one of the things that makes the grief share experience unique for and divorce care experience for somebody who's not a part of a church is that it's bringing that person to the church for 13 weeks in a row. Wow, many times that people go through the group two times. Now, a lot of church events you know it's a one night event or it's a Sunday morning event, you know Easter, christmas or a picnic or something and those are very effective. But we found that when people are able to come to a church repeatedly for 13 weeks, they get connected to the culture. They're invited to church by other people in the group and people just kind of they become parts of these churches in the groups where they attend a Greek shared divorce care meeting, in the groups where they attend a grief-shared divorce care meeting. 12:43 - Speaker 3 Yeah, wow, that is really, really interesting. So to me, you know, this all seems like a no-brainer for a church that you know needs these kind of resources and is thinking about, like outreach solutions and ideas. What might keep a church from tapping into your resources. What kind of pushback do you hear from churches who maybe say, no, this is not for us. 13:09 - Speaker 1 A lot of times it's just not having a leader who's available to take it on. Sometimes churches are struggling Many churches are struggling these days, with fewer volunteers, and so churches have to decide. You know, what do we want to focus on? Is it going to be our small group ministry? Is it going to be our marriage ministry? Is it going to be our Bible study ministry? And so oftentimes churches want to offer these types of ministries, they just can't identify a person who's going to take responsibility for it. 13:43 So that's one thing that prevents it for it. So that's one thing that prevents it. The other thing is that sometimes pastors look at it understandably, as just another thing that they have to do. Right, I used to be a pastor and I have experienced that. You know you're giving your all and then you hear a podcast about something that you're not doing and it's like okay, there's something else I've got to do. 14:06 And that's really why we've designed our materials the way we have. They're turnkey, designed to be led by lay people. All the support, because we want to make it as easy as possible for a busy pastor to get this thing running at their church. And so what we tell pastors is you know, if you can just find one person, you know we'll help that person build a team. We'll help that person promote, we'll help that person train so that that lay person can launch a sustainable, Christ-honoring, grief-shared divorce care ministry at your church. So those are the main. That's the really the. I don't want to even call it an objection. Those are the main. That's the really the. I don't want to even call it an objection. No-transcript. So sometimes we have to help churches understand that we're not encouraging divorce, we're trying to help people who've been harmed by it. 15:22 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that's important to understand. So, Sam, you mentioned that you used to be a pastor, so I'd love to actually ask you about your own personal journey. Church Initiative has been around for 30 years. You've been at Church Initiative, I think, for about 20 years, right, Sam? What brought you to Church Initiative? How did you find them and how did your journey start with them? 15:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it was the Lord 100%. I went to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is in Wake Forest, north Carolina. It's a Southern Baptist seminary and I was planning on planting a church immediately after graduation with a friend of mine who went to Dallas Theological Seminary. He and I went to Howard University together. We were involved with Campus Crusade at Howard great friends and we were set to go the Maryland-Delaware Baptist State Convention at Greenlit our church plant. So we were ready to go and the Lord just really spoke to me and told me not to go, which was a surprise to me and it was also a surprise to my friend Aaron, and so I knew I wasn't supposed to go. It wasn't clear what I should do, but I just was obedient to the Lord. I told him I wasn't going to be able to come because the Lord didn't want me to do it. And not too long after that, my pastor at the time, or the outreach pastor of the church I was attending, introduced me to the founder of Church Initiative, steve Grissom, and it turned out that Steve was looking to hire someone who had theological training but also had a background in communications, and so my undergraduate degree was in television production, communications, and going all the way back to seventh grade. I'd been involved in television production in middle school, in high school Again, that was my major. In college, when I was in seminary, I worked at a television station as a video editor and as a camera operator and I thought, you know, going through seminary, that the Lord was trying to get. I was trying to get out of that so I could just do ministry. Right, you know, I want to go work in the church and just do ministry, but it seems the Lord was preparing me for something else, was preparing me for something else. 17:46 Came to Church Initiative in the early around 2000 or so and worked in content creation for a while. And then my friend in Maryland who planted the church, he said hey, the church is off the ground. I've got about 150 people here. I want you to come work full time as a discipleship pastor. And I said okay. And Steve, our founder? He said don't go, you're not a pastor. And I said well, if it doesn't work out, can I come back? And he said yes, and it took a few years and it indeed did not work out. He was. I called him up and he said you know, we've been praying for you to come back, so it's just 100% God's story. Once I got back, steve was interested in grooming me to succeed him as president of the ministry, and in 2022, I became president of the ministry and in 2022, january 2022, I became president of Church Initiative. 18:51 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's a great story. The way that you described who they were looking for and you were exactly that person. It was like this role was a tailor-made suit that the Lord designed for you and I think part of your journey like sort of like taking a left turn, trying out something new, but then coming back like I think we can I think that resonates with a lot of people who you know maybe make a choice to do something else, but wow, how beautiful that you could come back to this tailor-made suit for you. So you're now the president of the organization. Looking back on the last couple of decades, what would you say are some of the defining moments that make church initiative what it is today? 19:39 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, most recently, the biggest thing that is defining us has really been our response to COVID. You know, I don't think we're unique, but because I know Bible Study Fellowship had to do this. We had to make a pivot so that people could attend groups while everyone was, you know, unable to gather for in-person church meetings, and so we began offering online groups, and that helped us get through that crisis. But what it's also done is positioned us now to reach the world internationally with our groups. Wow, right now, there are churches all over the world that are using our materials churches in Africa, churches in Australia, the UK. You know so, but it's often cost prohibitive for churches to do it, so it's rare. 20:40 But now that we figured out how to do online groups, we're in the process of making our materials available digitally as well. So here, in a couple of weeks, our materials are going to be available digitally to nearly 80 additional countries. Wow, we're really excited about that, and that's something else that we just you know we didn't see that coming and we, in some ways, we talked about it. You know we would love to have online groups, but COVID forced us to do it. And then again, there's a next step into making it available internationally, so that's something that we're really, really excited about. And the other thing that has been pivotal is we just released a new version of Greece Share that is in Spanish, and so we just released that this spring, and we're really excited about Spanish-speaking churches using that, and we'll also be able to make that available internationally digitally as well. So really excited about some of the things that God's doing here, allowing us to reach more people with Christ-centered hope and care. 21:43 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's really incredible. And so something that strikes me, you know, going back to the comment you made about what makes you different, you know the support you offer to churches. You're not just publishing materials, you're coming alongside them to implement these resources. So you and your team, like you're really like getting into the work of supporting, grieving and hurting people. How do you, how does your team, how do you stay grounded and healthy to do this work? 22:16 - Speaker 1 Yeah, as a team. One of the ways we do it is we pray together as a staff every Monday morning and then our leadership team prays together every Thursday morning. So prayer is vital to the health of the ministry. You know, it's funny. We were talking the other day about how many prayer requests we have, and one of the things that we discussed was the possibility of shortening the prayer list to allow people to have time to pray for everything, and I was like no, we need to expand the amount of time we're praying because there are so many things that we need to bring before the Lord. Right Prayer is foundational. 22:53 So there's that, personally. We also, during our morning prayer time, we have our staff members rotate through sharing a short devotional which is really supposed to come out of their own personal walk with the Lord, and so that's encouraging because you get to hear people share what they're learning, whether that's from a sermon series or their personal Bible study or their devotional time, and so that just kind of reinforces the importance of staying connected. You know we also require that staff members be active members of a local church. So you know myself I'm involved in Bible study at my church. You know accountability groups with friends those are the kind of things that really keep me grounded. My personal prayer life with my wife, those are things that keep me grounded, and we encourage staff to do those things as well. 23:49 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's really important for an organization that does the kind of work that you do. You know we've been using a lot of like organizational language, like resources and reach, and we've been talking a lot like that. But, like, unless it's all rooted in prayer, I think a ministry organization like yours, I think it's just so important and just so great to hear that you are all rooted in prayer. It's got to be rooted in prayer and it's got to be personal, right, like you're touching so many people's lives and you know, when you're running a large ministry like yours that's trying to have reach and trying to have impact, you got to keep it personal. So you remember, like, the impact you're having and so can you share with us maybe one or two of those stories where you've really personally, your resources, your help, your support have really touched people's lives and changed them. 24:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah, this is a personal, personal story because it's about a lady named Carla and my wife and I. We used to attend a church in Apex, north Carolina, with Carla and her husband, scott, and we were good friends. Our kids were friends. Scott and I really bonded over the fact that we were both Redskins fans and they're the commanders now, but we were really good friends. We talked about that all the time. Scott, like I did, we both volunteered in the Sunday school department at church. Like I did, we both volunteered in the Sunday school department at church. 25:19 And one Sunday after church Scott was complaining that he didn't feel well and he was trying to drink a bunch of Gatorade to just kind of get himself back to 100% and whatever, feel better, and he eventually said he wanted to go to the hospital. He said, why don't you take? You told your wife to take him down there and the church is two miles from the hospital in Apex, and so she whisked him down there and he died in the parking lot and it just shocked the church, right. My wife was at an event with Carla and her children when the pastors came and let her know what had happened. And Carla the church supported her just did an amazing job of caring for her. But a while after that, you know, she knew about Grease Share through her relationship with me, and so she went to a Grease Share group that didn't meet at our church and I think she went through it a couple of times and it was so helpful to her. And then, after that, when we were doing another version of Grisha we're creating another version of Grisha and she did an interview for it and her story was featured there and it was powerful the things that she was learning and how God was working in her life. Fast forward a few more years. We started a grief share group at our church and she co-led the group with me. It was amazing to be able to work with her and have her ministering to other people after what she had been through. 27:00 Fast forward a couple of years later, after she went through that, she wanted to become a counselor to help people, and so she went to Westminster Theological Seminary and took courses to be a counselor and in the course of that she realized, you know, that wasn't something that she wanted to. She didn't want to be a counselor, but she wanted to use those skills to help women in her church, and so that's what she's doing, and I think the thing that really why that's powerful to me is, on the one hand, it shows just how effective our materials are, and it was helpful to me to be able to help someone that I care so much about. But then the other thing is that she's flourishing now. She's remarried, her kids are doing well and she has helped guide them, you know, through their grief, and I'm encouraged because I know that she is going to be able to help not just friends but her family, her children and her children's children understand how to deal well with suffering and loss, and so that is the story that stands out the most to me. 28:10 I'm just so grateful for Carla and everything that she's doing to give back. I mean, she's a poster child for what we call here Church Initiative Receiving. We want people to move from receiving comfort to giving comfort. That is what we want to see. 28:25 - Speaker 3 But yeah, well, thank you for sharing that personal story. That is a beautiful vision for the people of the church to go from receiving to giving comfort. I mean, I think there's nothing more New Testament than that. And something else that I'll say is also you know, one of my favorite quotes is from Pastor Rick Warren. He says that your greatest pain will often become your greatest ministry. We see that with the Church Initiative Founders story that you shared with us his hurt coming out of divorce and needing care and how it spawned this beautiful 30-year ministry that, in a lot of ways, is just getting started. And we see that in Carla's story. Wow, thank you for sharing all of that. So you know these principles that Christians are learning and nonbelievers who are learning right coming through the program. These principles they're learning through your resources around grief and divorce. They're principles that I think can apply to other areas of hurt and pain. Are there new areas that you're exploring beyond grief and divorce that you can talk about? 29:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah, we are looking at creating resources to help caregivers. There are about 44 million caregivers in the US and many of them are stressed out, they're emotionally drained, they are struggling financially. In some respects, many of them are dealing with conflict with other family members. A lot of why, questions Many were. In many respects, many of them are suffering right Because of all the risk, the burden and the responsibility that's on them to care for their loved ones, and so we really feel like, um, that's an area of ministry that God is calling us to draw attention to and to come alongside people who are hurting. 30:26 And we know, you know, in the church, we know we are to help and care for our loved ones. That's the responsibility of the family and it's also the church. But it's not easy to do. It's not easy to do. So we want to come alongside people and help them, support them, provide them encouragement, give them a vision so that they can see how what they are doing really is aligned with God's purposes and how they can be a benefit to the person that they're caring for, beyond helping them with their physical needs, but also helping them with their spiritual needs as well. So we're working on that right now just trying to figure out what's the best way to design resources that help people who are caregiving. One of the challenges is that people who are caregiving have a limited amount of time to come to a group, and so it's making us rethink what's the best way to offer, you know, church-based resources that are going to help these help caregivers in a way that makes sense to them, that they would, you know, take advantage of them. 31:28 - Speaker 3 Wow, so interesting. So that is, on the come, something to look out for from Church Initiative. Maybe we can close with a couple of questions here. We have a lot of pastors, a lot of ministry leaders who are listening. If they're starting to think about hey, this is something I got to look into, this is something I have to research, but they're kind of they're feeling uncertain, you know, and stretched to your point earlier about like what can stop a church from getting tapping into your resources. If you could speak directly to those pastors and ministry leaders, what would you say to them? 32:03 - Speaker 1 I think first thing I would say is I get it, it makes sense. I mentioned earlier, you know you just have this. You're always hearing what you're not doing, and so I don't want to be a part of that chorus, right, but we are here to help. If it's something that you want in your church, we'll do everything we can to take the responsibility off your plate to help you get started. 32:32 Divorce Care is that the videos feature teaching by experts, names that you're very familiar with, like an H Norman Wright or a Paul Tripp or a Gloria Schaefer just names people are familiar with. And so if you can find someone who has a heart for ministry and they're willing to facilitate a group discussion, they don't have to be a pastor, they don't have to be trained as a counselor. If they just got a heart for hurting people, we can help them get the ministry started and we can work with them so that the ministry is self-sustaining, and we've designed it in such a way that it redevelops leadership. And so, again, you often see there's people coming out of these groups who want to turn around and serve themselves. One of the statistics I'm proudest of is that 25% approximately 25% of all new ministries, new grief share and divorce care ministries are started by former grief share and divorce care participants. 33:39 Wow I love that, because it's not a growth strategy, or you know it's not a multi-agent strategy. It reflects God's heart for healing. Yeah, right he's the father of all compassion. He's the God of all comfort, and he comforts us so that we can comfort others. Amen. That's what we want to see happening others. That's what we want to see happening and we track it because we want to make sure that our materials are achieving that goal right. 34:07 So all that to say if you can find a person, we'll do everything we can to get the thing running and we'll create with you a sustainable grief or divorce recovery ministry in your church. 34:23 - Speaker 3 Wow, who can say no to that? It's the deal of a lifetime. Well, so I think I know the answer to this question. But, Sam, how can we and how can our listeners be praying for you and for a church initiative in this season? 34:36 - Speaker 1 You know, I would say pray for our leaders, and I'm not talking about the leaders who work for Church Initiative. I'm talking about the leaders who are leading grief, share and divorce care groups. I was talking to one of our coaches and she had been in the process of calling ministries and just checking in How's it going. You know how are you doing, what can we help you with in how's it going? You know how are you doing, what can we help you with. And she mentioned that a number of the leaders that she talked to were having to step away or were because of health issues and other challenges. And so a lot of our leaders, they're on the front lines of ministry but they're also under attack or dealing with health issues and we want our ministries to keep going because they're so powerful, they're so effective. So we just want God to really strengthen and equip and build up our leader base. 35:27 The other thing I would say is to pray for our participants. There's so many of them who are nonbelievers. Pray that they come to know Christ. We present the gospel over the 13 weeks that people are in the course, so pray that many people will come to know Christ. We present the gospel over the 13 weeks that people are in the course. So pray that many people will come to know Christ and also that people will heal just from the resources that we've created, and I guess, most importantly, that they would make wise decisions. 35:53 One of the things that stands out to us is that people don't suffer perfectly because we're fallen right. People don't suffer perfectly because we're falling right, and so when you're dealing with grief or dealing with divorce, a lot of times anything that feels good seems right and that's not a good place to be, and we've seen a lot of people make bad choices. Where they end up, as Paul Tripp says, they trouble their own troubles, and so what we want to do is really come alongside them with the stories that we tell in the materials, with the insights that they hear from other people in the group. We want them to make wise choices so they don't jump into another marriage too quickly or sell a house too quick or start numbing their pain with drugs or alcohol. So just pray for wisdom for our participants, that they will be patient with themselves as they're walking along their journey of healing. 36:49 - Speaker 3 Wow, what a beautiful ministry. Thank you for sharing with us the heart of the ministry, the journey, your vision. It's really been a privilege to have you on the podcast, Sam. We're going to include your website and all of that in the show notes, but could you just shout it out really quickly for someone listening who wants to tap into what you're offering. 37:11 - Speaker 1 Yeah, if you're interested in attending a group or hosting a group, you can visit griefshareorg griefshareorg and on the divorce care side it's divorcecareorg. That's where you can find a group or figure out how to start one. 37:28 - Speaker 3 Thank you again, Sam. It really has been such a privilege, and I hope that we will have a chance to talk again as your vision for you know, for serving caretakers come to fruition. I haven't heard anyone talk about that before, but it is obviously so needed, so I'm praying for you and really wishing you a fruitful ministry. 37:50 - Speaker 1 Thank you so much, Alicia. 37:52 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly digital platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.