What does it take to become a missional church in today's changing landscape? Bishop Scott Johnson and Deacon Timothy Siburg of the Nebraska Synod ELCA are helping 217 congregations discover the answer—and it starts with listening rather than fixing. In this episode, they share how churches across Nebraska are shifting from asking "How do we get people back?" to "What is God already doing in our community?" Through their Vitality Initiative and Mission Field Nebraska, they're creating permission-giving cultures where congregations experiment boldly, learn from unexpected partners, and discover that faithfulness means joining what God is doing in the present.

Scott and Timothy offer practical wisdom for any church leader navigating change, whether in rural or urban contexts. You'll learn how to move from church-centered to God-centered questions, why giving permission is more powerful than providing programs, and how cross-cultural partnerships can transform traditional congregations into vibrant missional churches. They don't sugarcoat the challenges ahead—drawing on Romans 8's image of labor pains, they acknowledge the hard work required. But they also remind us that we're not alone in this work, and that the primary leader of the church is God, not us. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to innovate while managing traditional ministry demands, this conversation offers hope and a clearer path forward.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile

And I'm Alicia Granholm. And today we are very excited to welcome Bishop Scott Johnson and Deacon Timothy Seberg from the Nebraska Synod of the ELCA. They've been on an intentional journey of faithful innovation over the past several years. Instead of trying to fix declining attendance with quick solutions or expecting every congregation to follow the same playbook, they're helping churches across Nebraska listen deeply to their communities.

and experiment with new forms of ministry that connect with people's lives today. From traditional rural corrugations, discovering fresh ways to serve their neighbors, to entirely new expressions of church emerging in unexpected places. Their Synod is demonstrating what it looks like when a regional church system moves from fixing institutional problems to leaning into discerning where God is already at work. They're showing us that faithfully following God's leading,

doesn't have to mean abandoning denominational heritage. It could actually mean letting.

could actually mean leaning into that heritage and letting it come alive in ways that speak to the world anew today. Welcome Scott and Timothy.

Thank you, it's good to be here.

Yes, thank you.

So Scott, give us a bit of an orientation to the Nebraska Synod. How many congregations do you have and what are some of the realities on the ground? And what are you noticing and what have you been noticing at the grassroots level that convinced you the church needed to experiment with new approaches?

Thanks Dwight. The Nebraska Senate is the state of Nebraska. We might have the easiest description geographically in the entire ELCA Constitution. That's 217 congregations across the entire state, roughly 78,000 members across the state. And the state of Nebraska is a very rural, a very agricultural state with a population that

have congregations doing well and thriving in communities from 500 up to the Omaha Metroplex is a little bit over a million now. we kind of cover the waterfront in that respect. and in terms of noticing.

In terms of a grassroots level paying attention, I'm a native Nebraskan. I grew up in one of those rural congregations. I'm a farmer's kid, so I've known this synod my whole life. What I've seen over the years is a need for the church to understand that its history is important, but the...

needs of the church need to meet the world that is and the world that will be.

And we have struggled to meet that. We've sometimes really struggled in the sense of what has it meant to be Lutheran Christians in this context versus what could it mean today and in the days to come. like a lot of folks, I think a lot of that has to do with honoring the ethnic heritage that many of us bring to this, but not being captive to it.

Timothy, your title includes innovation right alongside mission and stewardship. How do you help pastors see that innovation isn't about abandonment as much as is about being intentional stewards of the gospel?

Thank you, Alicia. A good question. And part of it, if I'm being honest, I think is I've kind of grown into this. My role on the Senate staff here has changed. I don't know how many times at this point in nine and a half years. so originally it was about stewardship. It's broadened to be the director at E &J, but also to have innovation as part of that portfolio too. And so part of it is built on trust and relationship. But I think it's really, it's helping us be better stewards of the gospel by

being faithful, being open to questions, honest, vulnerable, authentic. And that openness to conversation in those ways opens the door to wondering, to imagining, the possibilities of experimentation, creating a culture. And we've noticed this particularly in this synod's context in the last couple of years, permission giving. That seems to be the piece coming out of the pandemic and otherwise helping the whole body of believers to realize

You have gifts for this. This is part of your vocation. You can do this. You don't need to wait to be told you can or cannot do that. No, this is about living out our Baptist promises together and leading into that. I pair this with, at least in this context, the innovation conversation seems to always end up having a conversation to help resonate in congregations and contexts like that about, to Dwight's points,

church-centered versus God-centered questions. We go there a lot in that distinction, in our conversations here. And so I think that's kind of where we start with thinking about innovation. But also, I like to just be clear with when I'm asked that related questions with congregations, this doesn't have to be the most thought out experiment. You don't have to all the answers. We're testing a hypothesis. We're going to try something. We're going to learn something. And in our tradition, being that this will be

live, the week of Reformation, it's the forming and reforming of our faith and it's how we live that out. And the Spirit will lead us where the Spirit will lead us and we're hoping to be faithful as we're doing that. So I think that's the starting place of, and when there's questions about is it faithful to be innovative, is that something that's true to this, I say, I think so. If we're always forming and reforming, that's kind of what it means to be the people of Christ today. So thanks.

So I'm curious, what are you discovering as you're working with different congregations about the readiness factors for congregations to be willing to do that experimentation and to take that journey, right? Like, what are you noticing across the system as to what are the ingredients of that in a particular place? What do they tend to be?

Great question. Bishop, I don't know if you wanted to chime in here first or you'd like me to, okay. I think I would start with this. admission that things have changed, things aren't the way that they have always been, and a willingness to be vulnerable to admit that. We've seen this in this Senate through the Nebraska Sins Vitality Initiative for congregations, where every Senate, every, and the ELCA seems to have something to do about vitality, but everyone defines it differently.

But in terms of our context, the readiness piece is, do you see some things aren't working? Are you open to asking some questions to going deeper in that? And the readiness piece then, it depends. Not every congregation is ready to get there. Those that have entered into a more intentional two-year process like Vitality Initiative here are open to learning from other congregations and with other congregations. Part of the joy of walking with

those cohorts of congregations we've had in this Senate, we've had some of our largest congregations, more urban and suburban contexts, learning right alongside our smaller, more rural settings and vice versa. And the first learning they have is, we're not alone. One. Two, yeah, our context might be a little different, our size might be little different, but we're asking the same and similar questions. And we can learn from each other in that. And...

There's a there's a god sighting in that and also just a reality of, huh, we don't have to have it all figured out. But we're also not alone on an island here being the only ones going nothing's working the way it should be working or that we're used to it working. So those congregations who, who don't have a sense of readiness in the same way it's planting the seeds. And in a context like this, very agricultural, the seed imagery always plays well.

the planting and harvest. We use that imagery a lot in Nebraska and it seems to work. So Bishop, what would you add to that?

Well, I would say one of the other scriptural

that we're using to inform a lot of the work that we're doing as a Synod staff is the road to Emmaus. And particularly the fact that when when Cleopas and the other disciples start out from Jerusalem, they have one perspective on what has happened. By the time they have received the bread that Jesus has broken and they've recognized him, they're at very different perspective. But the facts haven't changed.

And what we're seeing in a lot of our congregations when we come together, we're doing a series of meetings called On the Road Together. And we invite congregations to come together and talk about what do you see in the church right now?

Where do you find hope? Where are you struggling? What we're seeing is folks will come in with one picture that's quite often frustrated, downhearted, feeling like they're struggling. And the simple work of acknowledging those frustrations, but also seeing they're not the only ones.

and also that they may have a few more gifts and abilities and more possibilities locally than they had considered.

shifts the perspective and we saw this especially in our most recent get together where congregations, the people from the churches left with a very different idea of the possibilities in front of them than they may have come in with. And interestingly enough, one of the pieces we used to talk about that also is the questions from Dwight's book, Leading Faithful Innovation. We ask, know, what's life changing at the heart of your faith? And in the ministry of your church,

and how does Jesus change the circumstances in your communities and in your world? And try and remind people that the God questions are the ones that people are seeking. The church questions are a secondary concern. And it's really more about creating community where people can connect in relationship with one another in ways that...

frankly the church has forgotten, I think, that are part of its calling in the communities in which we're planted.

So can you tell us about Mission Field Nebraska? What is it and what are you learning from? And I understand the whole of Nebraska is probably a mission field, but that refers in your world to a specific initiative.

Yeah, Mission Field Nebraska refers to five ministries that we fund at the synodical level that are, it's a mix of agencies and synodically authorized worshiping communities and one congregation that really are.

you

What it

really comes down to is these are ministries that one congregation could not support on their own, but a network of 217 congregations through MissionShare can support together. So we have the Lakota Lutheran Center and Chapel in Scotts Bluff, Followers of Christ Prison Ministry in Lincoln, San Andres Lutheran Congregation in South Omaha, Nile Sudanese Chapel in Omaha, and we also have a

a spiritual direction training program called Seeking the Spirit Within. Those five are the core of Mission Field Nebraska. And it's the church making connections in places that congregations just simply wouldn't be able to do in the same way. some of them have been around...

possibly since before the ELCA. We're not entirely sure, but all of them are ministries that we support together because of the way that they connect the church in places that the traditional Lutheran congregations just really haven't done. But we also then know that we can learn from those congregations as well. Deacon Timothy, what more would you say about those ministries?

Yeah, I would agree with a build off of that. It's part of the being churched better together aspect of these ministries are vital. They're ministries of the whole church, but by themselves, they may not be sustainable financially in the same way. But that also provides opportunities of accompaniment to learn with and learn, listen to and listen from and listen together to grow deeper. it's, it's part in my position. It's fun to just watch how relationships form.

across the Synod among its congregations and the disciples here who are learning with different cultural lenses, different cultural eyes, perspectives that you may not quite get in the same way if you never leave the village you grew up in or the farm acreage you're on or things like that. So it helps with the perspective piece. It helps to see and learn and sense God in some new ways too.

your mission field initiatives is working with the largest Sudanese. Yeah.

sorry, can we stop for a little bit? Timothy,

your mic is emitting a really high hiss. whatever you did, that stopped it. Yeah, well, it was emitting a really high pitch. But yeah, it just disappeared once you moved that piece of paper. all right.

Okay.

Weird. I moved a piece of paper. That's, that's odd. Okay.

So it wasn't just

me, was hearing it and I'm like, am I?

Yeah, me too. No, was, yeah.

Sorry about that nuts. That's a new one

for me to have a piece of paper do that. Sorry about that

Yeah.

We never know. Some things just, you but it's

Do you need me to

go? How much further back do need me to go then, do you think?

No, you're fine. Just one Alicia's question. I just wanted to stop you where it was comfortable.

Okay, thanks to Drakka.

I was just like, it kind of sounds like crickets, but I know it's on the computer,

Yeah,

hear it really good in my headphones. But it stopped. Yeah, it just stopped. yeah, does that work? Well, if it's a really high frequency, fun fact, high frequency is very tough to fix. But I'll try my best.

I'm sorry about that everyone, sorry.

Okay.

You can fix it in post, right?

Exactly, yes.

Yeah.

Situatic and work wonders. Okay, so one of your mission field initiatives is working with the largest Sudanese population in the nation through multiple worshiping communities. What have you all learned about the difference between translating existing ministry versus creating entirely new expressions of church?

You or me, Timothy?

You got an answer, go ahead, you start. Go ahead.

It's been really incredible from this office to see how we accompany this community in ways that leave behind some of the colonialism that has plagued the church's relationship and mission for so many years.

You know, we've not always hit the right notes on this. Yeah, the Sudanese population in Omaha is very large and continues, is growing. Navigating, you know, what...

many might think would be some pretty simple distinctions between say, differing tribes and how they worship together versus, you know, an American understanding of the church has been an interesting equation that we, that's one that we haven't always hit right. But finding the best way to communicate and to encourage growth, they're also,

navigating the immigrant experience as well. We're hearing things from this community that I am certain three and four generations ago were the very same conversations that immigrants from Germany and Sweden and Denmark and Norway were having with their own populations in terms of, know, what does assimilation in this culture look like? What are we trying to hold on to? What can we leave behind? You know, it's in some ways it's almost like

watching our history reenact itself, but also trying to figure out what are some of maybe the pitfalls that we can help them avoid that we experienced without taking away the agency of the community itself to self-determine its path and its future.

And I would add to that if that's okay. There's also the experience of refugee resettlement, which has a long history in this context, which is a large reason of why there is the Sudanese population in Nebraska there is, given the dynamics and our social realities of the current day that we're living in. There's tension in that recognition too, but that also that hits at openness to God doing a new thing.

because I can't name another congregation in this synod and perhaps the whole of the ELCA where I have been in worship where there were 10 baptisms in one service and that has happened at Niall Lutheran Chapel before. And so seeing the spirit up to doing some things. Now there's the cultural translation, right, of some ways of being church are different in other cultures. Think of stewardship, for example. In other cultures perhaps it's more top-down.

in terms of the structure of the larger church will provide the resources for the congregation, whereas in the ELCA at least it's more polity of the polity of congregational, so more bottom-up grassroots that way. And so that there's always a little bit of a learning curve in walking with our Sudanese communities that way. But in terms of learning from and learning with the depth of faith, the challenges of a population who can speak to the experience of both having

recent history of wandering through refugee resettlement and totally different worlds and landing here, but also the generational challenges of having another generation of Sudanese Americans who have grown up here who don't know that story, aren't part of that, may or may not know the language. So living into that reality too, which to Bishop's point, that speaks to much of our experience in this country, in the melting pot history of this country, and in our

in our own congregations, particularly among Lutherans of we don't do worship in German or Norwegian or Swedish anymore. And what does that mean? so living into those pieces, we get some things right, we get some things wrong, and we learn, we hope we're walking together better all the way, all the time, I mean.

Yeah, I'll give you a bit of a story that maybe kind of highlights the the the

Well, it was just one of the more bizarre moments of serving in this office. Earlier this year, I spent a Sunday morning worshiping with one of our Sudanese communities. it was exactly what Timothy describes, very joyful, very vibrant, the sanctuary's full, there's everyone singing, the hands are waving.

There were responses in the middle of my sermon, which as you may know doesn't tend to happen in a lot of ELCA congregations.

And I walked out at the end of that day and I was there for three and a half, four hours maybe with the service and of course food and everything afterward. Just walked out feeling like this is one of the best things that we are as a Synod is being part of this ministry. And I open up my cell phone and I look and there's a social media storm going on because someone has commented about the

the federal funding that's provided to Lutheran services in America that helps with refugee resettlement. And if you remember, that was kind of the day when there were allegations of money laundering and all of this. it's like...

I just wish I could have taken the person that originated that tweet and brought them to this congregation and said, this is what we do with that federal funding. This is why this matters. And this is where the church and the government can be beneficial partners to one another. know, unfortunately never had that opportunity. But that kind of moment is just one of those.

the crystalline aha moments for me where it's like, this is important work that the church needs to continue doing in whatever means possible.

So Timothy, when you walk into a traditional rural Lutheran congregation and start talking about innovation and experimentation, what's the first question they tend to ask you and how do you respond?

great question. If I've been invited into a rural context, usually there isn't the concern about you're doing what. If I just show up, there might be more of that trepidation. But those questions really are, can we do that? Is it okay? Can we really try something? And it gets to that permission giving question. And to watch the light bulbs,

in people's faces and reactions to see that that sense of, wait, I can do this. I have gifts for this. There's nothing like that. That spark that that that moment of aha, that epiphany moment, if you will. And it's it's fun. It's just so fun to walk with. Now, there are contexts where world context where I walk in and I'm not always welcomed right away because I'm part of the synod or the larger church, you know, things like that.

So I've learned because I'm not a native Nebraskan that I can talk about the weather. As long as I know how planting is going, I can have a conversation with lot of people. More importantly, I can talk about the Huskers. I know how they're doing. But then we get to the next real level of, okay, what is real life? There's always the question of, you're not from here. You don't get real life. Well, I'll be like, okay, I live in a village of 85 people. My wife's a pastor in a rural context.

I grew up in a family of ministry people who served multi-point parishes in North Dakota. Yes, I'm not originally from here, but I'm walking with you because I see the beauty in this. And I have loved where I get to reside and to see my wife grow as a pastor herself and her own ministry. But it took on a new joy in the pandemic in the sense because out in the country we had space.

I know so many people worried about how they can be outside and do their things and get there. There was no concern about that. And that put a new spin on, we have that here. We can learn, we can see. And it also gave time to watch the growing and the growing and harvesting process in a new way. So I take, I share all of that just because that provides the lens for relationship to go, we have a starting point in this in common. What does that look like? I had my

assumptions challenged in a good way early on in my time here. I have been invited out to a rural context to think about stewardship. And it was a agricultural community, not surprising, but I was concerned because statistically all the data points, it's red in every way you might call something red. I mean, we're the big red state here in Nebraska. So that's, that's one thing, but you understand what I'm getting at. I wasn't about to talk about.

how these farmers steward their land and things like that. It was gonna let that bubble up. And it did. And I heard stories from farmers about the realities of climate change, how it's changed their approach to farming and their calendar use and their technology use. And I just let that speak for itself and built that up. So I offer that in the sense of how do we talk about change? It's almost a coaching model. You have this wisdom among you.

How do we bring it out from you? And not to try to play the expert in this, but rather an accompaniment to go, I'm curious about this. Can you tell me more about this? And if we turn that around like that, usually any of those concerns go out the door and we're off to the races to see what God might be leading us to next.

Got your background includes campus ministry at Iowa State. How has that experience influenced your approach to connecting with people across Nebraska in this, you know, increasingly secular age that we find ourselves in?

Yeah, well, and not only Iowa State, but I was deeply formed by my own campus ministry experience at the University of Nebraska as an undergrad.

That's where I actually started sensing the first call to ministry was a combination of campus ministry and Lincoln camping ministry through Carol Joy Holling camp here in Nebraska as well. was on the staff there. And then followed that call into, as you noted, serving as a campus pastor at Iowa State and then again at Midland University here before I was elected bishop. I think the...

The great gift that campus ministry gives to the church is an understanding that like no other community, campus ministries are adjacent to the larger campus community and have to really learn what it means to serve that community without any sense of entitlement or...

We were an institution that deserves to be here just because we deserve to be here. It's a transient community. You're a new church every four years when you're in campus ministry. So you're in a constant state of...

really being true evangelists and not in the sense of I'm gonna go out and just go grab a whole bunch of students to come in so that my bottom line looks good, more really asking those questions of your faithful identity. Who is it that you are and who God is calling you to be?

how does what you're learning line up with the vocation that God has in mind for you? Which is one of the reasons why I think actually Lutheranism is particularly well suited to doing ministry in those settings because we have the language of vocation, we have that language of identity and that being a deep part of calling across the board whether you are, certainly for those that are called into Roscoe,

and ordained ministry, but you know all the way down to those who are called to be veterinarians, biology teachers, English teachers, meteorologists, you know I think of the people that I was involved in campus ministry with as a student in Lincoln and the array of careers that they are part of now, but their faith is still important to them.

Mostly because they were part of a campus ministry that took their questions seriously and was willing to engage with them when they were questioning because not everybody comes to campus ministry. Actually, very few people come to campus ministry with the idea that I grew up Lutheran and by golly, I'm just going to keep being one, you know? That I think is the big learning the whole church could take from campus ministry. We know

the farther along the generations get, the less institutional we are.

The identity that we have as Lutherans, doesn't always survive those generational moves the way that maybe my grandparents and my great-grandparents thought it would. So for my daughters, for me to be a Lutheran pastor is great for me, but they feel no institutional draw just from the institution itself. If they're going to be part of a church, it's going to be a church that lives out the values that they think are important.

And so campus ministry is a place both for those values to be, you know, sorted through, identified, and taken on, and then also affirmed and said, yes, you can be a Lutheran and have this vocation, whatever that vocation may be, you can serve God and the world by following that calling.

So I'm curious, how do you help existing congregations move from asking, how do I get people to come to our church, to how do we join what God is already doing in our community? What does that look like? What have you learned about that?

Well, we recommend that they listen to the Pivot podcast, of course.

Six.

Amen. I'll agree with that,

yes.

you

That's absolutely kind of the crux of the matter, isn't it? There's a...

I don't want to say, I'll go ahead and use the, it is kind of a blinder that people sometimes don't understand is, especially for those folks that the faith has always just been there for them. They've never had that moment of identity crisis or whatever where it's like, of course I'm part of the church, why wouldn't I be? you know.

sometimes you almost have to break that down and help them answer the question for themselves before they can start to think about what it is that others might gain by being part of the church. And so...

That's some of the hard work that we're trying to do. That's actually a really great chance for Timothy to share a bit more about the Vitality Initiative too and how that works, how we're trying to ask those questions well. So I'll hand that off to Timothy. You can do that one.

you

Thank you. Well, and it builds off so much of the work that's represented in this podcast. But it's the, we ponder on those big questions like who are we? As God's people, who are our neighbors? What might God be up to in inviting us to be a part of next? Those kinds of questions. But that pivot in the Vitality Initiative really is to think about who are our neighbors. It's to get past the assumption of, well, our neighbors are this. We already know this.

Well, that's really who are your neighbors that go out and listen, that go out and meet, not with the end of we want more people in the pews, so to speak. It's more like we just want to be walking together in relationship because when you're out there, you're going to hear, when you're talking to people, when you're at the grocery store where you might just hear a story, a snippet, something, and a God sighting will come from that. God's already there. God's doing something. God's up to things.

giving people permission to connect those dots is freeing. But it's also something that we have not always been very good about, at least in my experience in the Lutheran church. So to enable that amount of connecting the Sunday morning pieces of discipleship with the day-to-day pieces of discipleship. So I think that's part of it. I think also it's the ability to ask, where have you seen lives changed recently? Where have you seen a...

moment of a neighbor helping neighbor showing up. Where have you seen vocation out in the world? And what might that mean about what God is calling us to be a part of and God is doing now with us? There's nothing more freeing too than to see a congregation go, yeah, we're part of this. We're part of something big. We're already doing so much. God's doing so much.

We don't have to do X, Y, and Z extra things. We can be more faithful in this. you know what? We've been doing this just because we've been doing this for so long. Perhaps curing the needs of our neighbors, we're being called to do something different now. And it's fun to be a part of that because those answers and those questions all are coming, they all come from the bottom up. They bubble up, if you will. And there isn't the whole...

They told us this, the synod told us this, the outside people in leadership told us this, the bishop told us, no, you discerned this and discovered this as God's people and you're doing something about it. And the fun is the church, we get to walk together as God's people in that. And we learn together through that and some of those things work really well and we learn lots. Some things don't fly at all like we think we're going to do, but we learn even more that way.

love that. I can feel the the life-giving energy of the spirit just as you're sharing, Timothy. Okay, so I'm curious what either of you might say to a pastor or a pastoral leader of any kind who might be listening and feels like their bishop or regional executive, you know, expects them to innovate when traditional ministry demands are overwhelming them already.

I will go back to something actually I heard my predecessor say. He preached at an ordination during my first year as bishop and he reminded the community that their new pastor's responsibility was not to do ministry for them, but to be the one who equips them.

for the work of ministry. Took it straight out of the passage from Ephesians. yeah, there are leadership pieces that the rostered ministers, our clergy hold, but the central responsibility that all of us are called to is helping all of God's disciples here in the Nebraska Synod, the ELCA, and even larger.

Helping them all understand their particular place and their particular opportunity to do the work of ministry where they are in the context where they serve. Just like what Deacon Timothy was talking about with our vitality initiative. This is not a program that we sell to say, do these four things and your membership will rise by 10 to 15%, stewardship will grow, and you can finally put the new stained glass windows in the sanctuary.

what we're talking about. What we're talking about is we really feel like God is calling us into deeper and wider discipleship as an entire synod. And it's hard work. It's not easy. One of the shaping themes of our upcoming Fall Leadership Gathering is the image of labor pains from Romans chapter 8 where we know that the creation is groaning because what the church

has been is no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the day. So if any of us are going to be faithful to the calling that God has placed on us, we have some hard work ahead of us and we really can't hide from that. It's maybe not the most comforting message to give, but it's the one that feels true to this time and this place.

And I would, and so you're also actually helping me prepare some of the remarks that I'll have to give at our fall leadership gathering. So thank you for that. I'll also say it's not as though any one of us does this all on our own. We have one another. We are together in this. And.

I'm working as hard to innovate the different ways that I carry out my office as they are in the different ways that they carry out theirs. This is a time to be bold because we've tried tweaking, we've tried adjusting, we've incremental change to see if that gets us there and it's not. The church needs to be different and how it's going to be different in different

contexts is is largely a matter of paying attention, listening well, and responding to the needs of our neighbors.

Well, thank you both for sharing so much wisdom about faithful innovation as it's playing out in your context. And it does feel like we're in the midst of labor pains as a society, it is a church in some interesting ways. And I think we can lean into the promises that God has, especially at the end of Romans 8, right, that none of that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. So thanks again for

for your wisdom that you've shared with us today.

And thank you to our audience. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on your podcast platform, or share a Pivot with a friend. Until next time, we'll see you next week.