Bishop Karen Oliveto: Grace Under Pressure

Let me welcome you to Mindful Leader. This is Dennis Shaw, and I am the host. I am a retired elder from the Mountain Sky Conference of the United Methodist Church, and our focus on Mindful Leader is to talk about leadership principles, leadership ideas that are applicable for both clergy and laity. Mindful Leader is found on multiple podcast platforms. You can find it normally by typing in the words Mindful Leader Dennis Shaw, and I should pop up there.

We try to have about two broadcasts, two podcasts a month. That's our target. If you have trouble of getting yourself registered as a regular user using your podcast application, don't hesitate to send me a note at Dennis, D-E-N-N-I-S, at the at symbol, Mantuan, M-A-N-T-U-A-N.org. And I'll put that link in the show notes as well. My guest today is the Bishop Karen Oliveto.

She was the Bishop of the Mountain Sky Conference for eight years, from 2016 to 2024, and she retired recently this past 31 August, 1 September, and she is currently enjoying retirement in Nova Scotia. Bishop Olavido had over 40 years of experience at the local church and academic settings, as well as in general church leadership.

After a brief pause, I'll be back with Mindful Leader. Thank you very much. Let me welcome you back to Mindful Leader. Again, this is Dennis Shaw, and I am the host of Mindful Leader. And as I indicated earlier in the show, that my guest today is Bishop Karen Oliveto. And I'm a Karen Oliveto fan. Welcome, Bishop Oliveto. Good to see you. And I can see her. You guys can't see her. Oh, Dennis, it's so good to see you. I've missed you.

And I have missed you. I have been away from the Mount Sky Conference for five years, and I was there at your retirement. You were like, you came. I went, of course I came.

I wanted to be here for this. Bishop Olavito and I've gone over a few things that we could potentially talk about offline, and I sort of think perhaps the way to start this conversation perhaps is her election in 2016, and some of the reasons that, or a reason, some of the reasons she chose to accept a nomination and be a candidate for the Episcopacy. And I've heard you talk on this topic two or three times, Bishop.

Sure. Well, actually, the decision to allow my name to go forward, the seeds of that really started at General Conference 2016, in which the church was really about to explode over human sexuality, more specifically homosexuality.

Right and you know the the bishops put a stop to the debate stop to everything and said we're we're gonna take everything off the table and we're going to put together a task force come up with a way that we can move forward as a denomination and there i was the only woman, i think still at that time serving as the lead pastor of one of our 100 largest churches, and i was i was open i was out of the closet for that i was a pastor in san

francisco you You can't have integrity as a pastor in San Francisco and be closeted if you're LGBTQ. And I thought, wow, maybe this is what God might want of me, to be able to bring my voice and my experience in the church to that table. I spoke with my bishop and said, please, if there's a way, please use me. And I didn't get chosen. And so I began to wonder, because one thing I'm clear on, God is very clear when I am finished doing what God wants of me in a specific place.

God just is, God doesn't always show what the next door is, but says, you know, well done, good and faithful servant. It's time to move on. And so I was clear my time at Clyde, what God had wanted me to do there, I was done. but I didn't know what was there. And so, you know, I was being recruited for several positions, but I was always a number two person, never number one. And I began to wonder, God, are you done with me?

And that's when people started to come to me and say, would you consider allowing your name to come forward in the episode? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. But enough voices came forward. And I started to pray. Robin and I both, my spouse, we both started to pray about it. And friends finally said, look, our annual conference is going to meet on Wednesday. You need to tell us the weekend before. Sunday night, you need to tell us if you hear this call from God.

And Robin and I on Saturday night, you know, talked so long and hard. I finally got to where it was for me. And I said, I'm afraid. hey, I'm afraid for what it might mean for the denomination. I'm afraid for what it might mean for our relationship, the cost for both of those. And Robin, she took a breath and she said, but Karen, perfect love passed out all. And we sat in silence with that. At that point, I knew I was going to tell my friends, my colleagues to allow my name to move forward.

I went to bed that night and in the morning woke up to the Pulse nightclub shooting, which happened in Florida in an LGBT bar where scores of people were murdered in a shooting, many more injured.

And instead of fear what I heard was God saying your voice is needed your witness is needed so that this kind of the hatred that gives rise to these kinds of acts of violence, and once I said yes it was like the Holy Spirit took over it was amazing just you know my my My annual conference endorsed me. And then at the Western jurisdiction, I was always the number one candidate for 17 ballots. And what happened was I was never getting enough votes.

The delegates held a closed session, and I was a delegate. And they said, let's break up into small groups and ask, what would happen to your church, to your conference, to the denomination? If we elected a gay bishop. The hum in the room was palpable. And, you know, here I am a part of that conversation. But suddenly, in every group, it seemed, the question got flipped. And it was, what if the most qualified person to lead the church in this moment

was gay or lesbian, and we didn't elect them? What would that mean for our churches? Our conference is hard enough. And shortly after that, I was elected to be in the moment. Mm-hmm. And then the next day, they announced that you were coming to the Denver area, which included both what we call legacy, meaning the original, the legacy Rocky Mountain Conference and the legacy Yellowstone. Yellowstone was all of Montana and about half of Wyoming.

And although the district superintendent was shared by the Rocky Mountain Conference with the Yellowstone Conference, that was in those days, Jeff Rainwater. And he had all of Wyoming, part of it, Yellowstone, part of it, Rocky Mountain. And the cabinet was one. All the DSs. I didn't know that. Yes. So that the Yellowstone DS and DCM were part of the cabinet. Okay. So it was a mountain sky area. Already? Yeah. Yeah. So it was, but we still had to put the thing together.

And it's, it, that's been hard. I mean, I don't think you mind me saying that that's, that's been a hard coming together. I think we came together in 2018, and we're still wrestling with what all that means. I know Angela Thomas indicated she has talked to some CFOs, treasurers, of conferences that have come together like that. And their comment to her was it's taken some of them.

They merged, they came together in the 2015, 2016, and they're still 10 years later, still wrestling with some of the changes and how that all sorts itself out. Yeah. You know, this was 20 years in the making, Dennis, right? You were part of the conference. This conversation was ongoing. We had a really good consultant work with us. By the name of Wimberling, who just, his analysis, his recommendations were spot on. And we made some mistakes. I made some mistakes.

I had, you know, one of the things he talked about with me was, you know, you might want to think about letting go of all your staff and letting them reapply for new positions so that there's a mindset that we're something. And some of them might not make that leap. And I think having that as a foundation, now I wish I had done it, not because there were people I wanted to get rid of, but to help us make the shift that it's not the same old, same old.

We don't have the same systems. We don't have the same structures. We don't have the same processes. We're something new. And who I am going to be in this system is something new.

So I wish I had done that. you know developing an identity stuff especially when you have a large a larger organizational system than a smaller organizational system my default is always to go to the margins and and and the the group or the people who are feeling like their voices are heard and i know there was a lot of resentment, you know, why I had annual conference, it often in Montana, because we needed to be one another. And, but developing an identity was really difficult for us.

And especially because we had one coming together. You know, we came together in 2018, came together in 2019 for annual conference, and then COVID. And we didn't have in-person meetings. For a long time. For a long time. Yeah. And so I think that really derailed our ability in some ways to build identity as the Mount Sky.

Certainly helping clergy understand that God has increased their territory and they might get sent to places when they join one of the conferences where they didn't think before. Montana might be going, someone from Montana might be going to Wyoming or the Denver area or Colorado Springs. Someone from Denver might be sent to, you know, to the Great Falls or Billings. And clergy had a hard time with that as well.

And so part of it was how do we break down the myth? Because what I was struck by, Dennis, as I went through our conference, was how engaged our churches were, no matter if they were in the Denver metropolitan area or on the highline of Montana or in Utah in a largely LDS Mormon area.

And so I saw that that vibrant ministry was possible, was not only possible, was happening across our four plus states. And helping clergy break down their stereotypes and myths about the other the other state the other churches was also something that has been difficult to do so that people see it as an opportunity not as I was struck by how many clergy would say to me are you punishing me by this I was stunned but never weaponized our appointment system.

No, you've got gifts. And this church has possibilities that between the two you both will flourish. Before the coming together when we would get new people to Utah I used to tease people and I would say, you understand that the bishop only sends the best to Utah. Right. Well, you know, and gosh, the opportunity in Utah as a witness. I was struck that our churches in Utah were kind of a flashpoint or a foil for the LDS. People were hungry who left the LDS for a more progressive,

understanding of Christianity. And boy, our churches were incredible, are incredible in Utah. About 10% of my congregation in Sandy, which is a suburb of Salt Lake, was LDS of some flavor, whether they were born in but never bought in, or all kinds of different variations on that.

But about 10-15 percent it was a sizable chunk size of chunk and then we had them we had and you mentioned you hinted at covid but we had this landmine that was general conference 2019 it was a st louis that's where it was right was st louis it's it's almost like the joseph talking to his brother, where you planned it for evil, but God turned it to good. I mean, it took me a while to see the good out of General Conference 2019. I think at the end, I've gotten to a better place with it.

But for a while, that was a pretty ragged—that led to a lot of tension and acrimony, and gosh, I'm not sure I want to be part of this, and that kind of thing. Did you see that as well? Yeah, I mean, 2019 was horrible. I'll never forget, as the traditionalists were just, you know, one thing after another, passing that totally was the antithesis to where we thought we were going to land. I'll never forget a bishop pacing on the dais behind me, saying,

oh my God, they're dismantling our church. They're dismantling our church. And I was, I mean, I think we were all blown away. This methodism is so grounded in grace and love and suddenly we take we took with general conference 2019 this punitive ugly view of call like how we do accountability with one another and you know i'll never forget you know remember in 2016 you know we had a blow up of because of my election, the first open-room LGBTQIA bishop. Then, you know, and then we had our merger.

2019 happens, and here I am, this controversial figure, but I'm getting calls from especially laity across our conference saying, Bishop, can you believe this church is now anti-gay?

Bishop we want to withhold our apportionments because this church is now anti-gay because even in the short amount of time from 2016 to 2019 we've learned a lot about who god calls into ministry about the diversity that's inherent in the human family and we had shifted from 2016 being in crisis because we have a lesbian bishop and now in 2016 now in 2019 saying oh my god what have they done to our church and i'm like yeah isn't terrible it's been this way for 15 years yeah there

my my recollection of it was it was people that probably didn't even had never said the words general conference right prior to march or april of 2019 that all of a sudden were becoming were coming to me and asking me questions about this thing called general conference and what was going on and i'm not sure exactly how they were learning of all of this but it was obvious to them they were less than happy with the way it was all going down because it wasn't that it wasn't

what the church had taught us that helped us fall in love with the united. Right you know when i when i teach in seminary about the united markets church i say there's three things you need to know that makes us stand out. Grace, grace and more grace. Right. Suddenly that grace was like cut off at the knees.

Yeah, that was, I mean, it's been five years since, five years plus, but I mean, I was, as I was watching it all occur, and I was struck with the anger, the meanness, what I thought was the meanness, what I thought was anger. Although it's interesting that some of the stuff that ended up, some of the legislation that passed was intended to allow more progressive churches to potentially exit.

And then by the time we got through COVID, the ones who wanted to go was the people that designed it for the progressives to leave. But now, instead of the progressives leaving, people that were going to leave was the more, I'm not sure the traditional is right, or conservative. But the group that designed it is the one who actually ended up taking the option. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? It totally does. And I think what happened was WCA and those who were forming the GMC.

And WCA is Wesleyan Covenant Association. Thank you. And the Global Methodist Church, which started to form prior to, well, shortly after, in this time period. I think what happened, Dennis, was they miscalculated. They didn't understand the impact of marriage equality in the world. They didn't understand how people coming out in the church and beyond the church was helping humanize what the church had done a darn good job making an impersonal issue.

Right? We talked about homosexuality. homosexuality we didn't talk about gay and lesbian people as beloved children of god and and we didn't ask you know tell us your faith journey tell us about your walk with jesus. And in fact the united methods church over the years had done more and more to silence that witness right you you couldn't you couldn't talk about homosexuality if you were a general church agency because it was a funding thing.

That is so not who we are. Methodism was formed in a university setting, right? Intellectual inquiry is a part of us. But I think they miscalculated. And so by the time 2019 happened, there were enough people, there were enough grandmothers and parents, brothers and sisters who love their gay, lesbian, queer, family and couldn't abide by them not being moved to the church or answering a call by God. Well, I sometimes flinch a little bit at using military metaphors because there

are legitimate pacifists out there. They find them uncomfortable. But to me, in retrospect, this is an example, I think, of where.

The leadership leading what they did at General Conference 2019 was they won the battle of General Conference 2019 and then lost the war. Because by the time the people who saw what was going on and watched it, I mean, you could watch it in real time if you wanted to. By the time it all got back to the conferences, there was just this visceral reaction across the United States. And I have no idea what it was outside the

United States. but across the United States, that this is not us. This is not who we are. So they won the battle of General Conference 2019. But the outcome led to a less rosy future for that community. And again, that's my take. I think that's very fair. And you've got to wonder where the leadership of that movement And was it really about purity or was it about trying to dismantle, after I'll use that word, that Bishop used, a church that had significant social weakness in the world?

How much of it was that as well? And a lot of money went in to breaking down that church. And I'm not asking you to violate the sanctity of what you talk about at the bishop level with other bishops, but is there some kind of general sense of what you sense from the reaction of the conversations you were having with your fellow bishops about all of this and how this all worked out from a leadership perspective? It'll be interesting when we come together in November. It'll be really our first.

Major meeting we met cursory after general conference but this will be our first major meeting after general conference that most recently happened 2000 or 2024 depending on how you count yeah it'll be interesting i really think this is a time when leadership was necessary and i mean what we saw general this most recent general conference was a consensus in the church which unlike any of us had experienced in our lifetime. Yeah, it was incredible. And it was an intensely spiritual experience.

There was still disagreement. There was still dissension. But there was a respect and an honoring of difference that I had never experienced at General Conference and all the ones I've been to. But this is an opportunity for us to regain our footing as a denomination. We have alignment. We have an alignment we've never seen before.

Let's move forward to boldly, one, figure out how to help our churches in what's quickly becoming the mid-21st century. COVID kicked our churches into the 2000s, but we're not solidly there yet. We haven't thought of where culture is around religious expression, around religious communities and spiritual expression. And we've got to help equip our churches in this moment to be who we say we are as united people.

Yeah, I personally believe that what's happened over the last five years is that it's a chance for us to stop the conversation about who it is that we're not and focus the conversation on who it is that we are and what is it to be United Methodist. And I guess you call yourself a Bethel nerd. I think some of that is, I think, reexamining the legacy and how much of that legacy can apply to our future.

But the emphasis on grace, the emphasis on when we say there was an Episcopalian church in Salt Lake that said, all are welcome, dot, dot, dot, and all means all.

And we've got to learn how to do that yeah and and if we can learn this dennis because what happened during covid was we forgot how to be in community we did i mean everybody i mean everybody i mean church folk i mean non-church folk we forgot and and you know when i read that you know the younger generations now have anxiety going into restaurants because of, community even though it's impersonal the communal nature of a restaurant when i you know when i hear uh you know it started

with the whole bowling alone remember the bowling alone that you know culture was in trouble because suddenly the bowling teams were disappearing and people well that was you know that was 30 years ago but then we have covid which which put us all in front of a screen and no longer knowing how to be together. And this is where as United Methodists, we believe in connection. Connectionalism is that no church stands alone, right?

It's an Acts 2 kind of church. We hold everything in common within the denomination. And each church is a mission outpost. And so we're already counterculture. What do you mean I don't own my church? What do you mean, you know, I can't make decisions on our own? Well, because we're a part of something larger than ourselves. And so there's that counterculturalism. Well, then how can we as the body of Christ show how necessary diversity moves in community in order to be a whole and holy body.

I think if we can show that to the world, we can bring healing to so many broken souls. And I don't know what you're going to talk about in November with the other bishops, but I would posit that there's going to be a lot of different answers to what that is, what that question is. There's going to be a whole lot of answers within a larger framework. I mean, the larger framework is sort of going to be, this is who we are, this is who we aren't.

And I would prefer to stay with who we are. But how you go about that, who you are, is going to be probably almost as many answers as we have individual local churches. And that's the richness of how we do our theology, isn't it? Right. Right. Right? I mean, we allow for that breadth of differences, contextual ministries, so that the whole can be as profound a witness as possible.

Yeah, I'm a considerable advocate. Bishop Elaine, your predecessor, asked me to speak at annual conference in 2014 about, I think it was on numbers, on statistics. Wait, you're doing numbers? Oh, I'm so stunned, Dennis. Yeah, but I got around to the idea of the, within the presentation of those numbers, I sort of became an advocate for a bottom-up regeneration of the denomination and the conference, not from a top-down. Yeah.

And I just, I guess I'm a believer. And frankly, the dilemma you've got with the bottom-up one is it's going to be messy. It's, by definition, it's going to be messy because it's, there's going to be, what was it Henry Kissinger once said? He went to Israel, and at that time, I think Israel was about 5 million people. And he said, oh, yes, it's wonderful to be back in Israel, a country of 5 million people and 10 million opinions.

And I would say to you that we've got the same at the local church. You know, 310-ish churches in the Mount and Sky Conference and probably 620 opinions about what it is we need to do and how. And as long as I think, frankly, that the churches have the freedom to do what they need to do within a certain framework. I mean, there's nobody sacrificing a child on the altar. I mean, I'm not being, I'm trying to be absurd. But at the end of the day, there is a framework of who we are.

But how you go about doing that is is your call and how you and because you know your context better than we know your context exactly and and that's why and that's why to go back to an earlier part of our conversation having a common identity grounded in common values and an orientation to the world is so critical because that means as long as we are operating with those common values and with that orientation, there's a wide latitude of how we move forward. And we both, we do it.

It's easy to say, yes, you're in alignment, go for it.

Or, you know, that takes us to a place that really isn't who we are anymore, you know, at this time. Well, I was going to say, I mean, when I left, I left because of grandchildren. We left Utah because of grandchildren came here to West Virginia. So here I am, 1,700 miles, 1,800 miles from the border, the Mountain Sky Conference, and the vocabulary we use here is recognizable. It's not a different vocabulary. It's the content, how we talk and how we phrase things. It's amazing.

Well, you know, that's where my sociology comes out, right? We, and the lesbian poet, Adrian Rich, you know, the dream of common language. We need a common language in order to do this work. And I think we've done that well in the mountain sky. I think a lot of people, if they've only grown up in a certain location of Methodism, I think they'd be quite surprised as they go out away from their home.

I think they'd be surprised to see how much is common to their own experience back in their context. It's interesting. Now, it's not exactly the same. You're now retired. I think we sort of semi, if I didn't make that point, I'll make it in my preamble. But you're now retired.

What next? I mean, you're not, obviously, I'm not finished. You're not finished. I'm retired. I'm not finished. You're retired. You're not finished. What's next? You know, Dennis, as I said earlier, God always makes it clear when I am finished. A ministry. You know, God was really clear. This is the year to retire, not four years from now.

And I'm really aware that I probably could have had one or two good, good, solid years left, but then I wouldn't be doing the work at the caliber that I expected of myself. So, but I'm not sure what God is asking next. It's funny. I was, you know, on the coast of, Nova Scotia, you know, I look out at a harbor and across the harbor is the Northumberland Strait, across that is Prince Edward Island.

And I was on Prince Edward Island this weekend and all these potato fields, you know, some were, you know, some were being harvested, but others had clearly been fallow so that they can be in coming seasons, provide a rich yield. And I'm really looking at these next few months as a flower. I've poured myself out in ministry throughout these 42 years. Wow. And poured myself out fully and loved every minute of it. And I'm tired.

And if I am going to be able to say yes to a flower, I need this flower. I've said yes to a couple of things. But I'm very selective right now because I know I need to rest. I need to reflect what both these eight years ago, but the last 42 years, there's been a great cost across these 42 years to be a lesbian in a church that has affirmed my ministry but would have kicked me out in a heartbeat if I talked about myself in a certain way.

I love this church. I think this is an exciting time, and I need to figure out what my voice and how to bring my wisdom into it. I don't have clarity. Bishop, listening to you comment there, I mean, my first reaction is I heard that and how some of the tensions that you were under that other people weren't under was that I had Bishop Brown visit me in Stratmore Hills on an event. Bishop Elaine came out for an event in Utah, and then you came out.

And the difference of the three of those was that when you came out, because of threats to your life, we had to get a couple of policemen. And we had them highly visible in the lobby, that kind of thing. It wasn't a secret they were there. We made it visible they were there. And that was the first time I'd ever done something like that. And I was told that that was unfortunately, sadly, part of the experience that you had on a regular basis. Yeah, there were forces, again, who were seeking.

There's a bigger picture and a bigger story here, Dennis. You know, my election was used by people to really harm the United Methodist Church and cause a division. Millions of dollars were pumped in to try to make that happen. There were, you know, they wanted to take me out, and I mean, I don't mean that by. Shoot me, kill me. But the hatred that they unleashed created death threats. But they kept pushing it. They saw Yellowstone as the weak link.

They poured lots of money into Yellowstone to try to disrupt ministry there. And all it did was have these libertarian Montanos say, the heck we're the weakest link. We're going to be the best we can be in ministry. Yeah. And the death threats were credible. But what that police presence did, Dennis, when there were police in churches, people would come up and say, I don't know how I felt about you, but what I know is no one should have to live under this tunnel. Right.

That's not for sure. And so in some ways, it helped us in our ministry together. It brought us closer in some ways. But it took its toll. It took its toll, you know, not knowing would I walk into a church and be met with the kind of welcome most bishops just don't even think twice about? Or would I be met with a hostility that where my life would be threatened? And then I did have to leave one community under the threat of physical violence in our conference.

So it was hard. And what I would say before every stepping foot in every church, I'd sit in the parking lot because I didn't want fear. Remember, perfect love casts out all fear. That was the first place. That's where we began. Right. And I would pray, God, give me an undefended heart. And let me be generous in you. And that's how I walked into this and into people's arms. You hinted at it earlier when you talked about if the best qualified person happened to be a lesbian, what would you say?

I just operate off of the idea that we need to be a meritocracy.

And what a person's gender is, what a person's ethnicity is, what their sexual orientation is, is secondary to their leadership capacity, and how well can they lead. That's a direction that I'd like to see us move. And I think we're closer now.

I once had a gentleman at a bookstore, a black gentleman at a bookstore, and we were talking about civil rights, and he said, you know, we can talk about all the bad things going on, But, you know, civil rights, if civil rights was a trip from New York to Los Angeles, we're probably in Kansas City, but we're not in New York anymore. And I would say the same thing here in the various situations of having a meritocracy for leadership.

We're not finished. We're not where we need to be, but we're not where we were either.

No right i mean ruth bader ginsburg said something similar that i come back to a lot the reason why gay rights have been feel felt like they have been exponential in the acquiring of rights and and civil rights for communities of color have been a slow trend upward is because is because gay and lesbian people are found in every community and pretty much every family and so it's people we know and love and so we stand with and for them but we live in in a largely segregated

by race nation and so we don't know the stories we don't be people we love aren't Persons of color whose experiences we learn about, so we who are white don't have the same commitment to social change. Yeah, the 13-14% of the country that's African American is not evenly distributed across the country. It's highly located in more urban settings, and also, when not urban, it's also in the more southern, southeast. This has been delightful. This has been delightful.

In the military, we use the term lessons learned. And it's important for us to use the term lessons learned because what's the lesson you learn from this combat exercise or this training exercise?

What do you think a primary A or two or three, or I can pick any number, is there some lessons learned from the eight years you were the Episcopal leader for the Mountain Sky Conference and also a member of the General Church's leadership that you'd like to share? Dennis, I think we need a whole other time for that. I mean, again, having this fallow time makes me see the missteps, It helps me see the places where I need to come more forward as a bishop.

And the lessons that, you know, I'd learn and integrate and then have to relearn. And I'd love to talk about that sometime. Well, we can put a bookmark on that and we'll say we'll come back to that in February or March or January or February and do this again. We'd love it. We'd love it. Because there are, and I know it's going to impact probably what's next for me as I reflect on it.

I mean, I'm doing this now. I got this podcast started partially at the sort of the gentle urging of Zach Bechtold. I was talking to him about it, talking to him about what he was doing, what he was doing with bearded theologians. And finally, this may have not been his exact words. He says, but you know, Dennis, you're never going to know everything you need to know. Just get started. Just get started, and you'll learn what you need to learn along the way.

And it's been, so this is sort of my ministry now. This is sort of what I'm doing. But it's growing. It's changing. I mean, if you had asked me 18 months ago what this was going to look like, I would have given you one answer. That's not the answer anymore. It's a very different answer. Well, you've had some great, very rich conversations with folks. Thank you. Thank you for capturing those 50 wisdom you have to offer.

Well, thank you for having said yes. Anything that I didn't ask that I should have asked? You know, Dennis, we could have spent most of our time just in your first three questions. In some ways, we did. There's so much to unpack there. So much. So I think for this, what we did today, I think we covered a lot of things. Okay. All right. Bishop Karen, thank you very much for having said yes to this and taking an hour out of your retirement day.

And I look forward to coming back and talking some more with you again later. And we'll cover some more of that. Some more on the topic of what do we think we learned in the last eight or nine years? So God bless you. Dennis, thank you for having me. And it's such a treat to have this kind of conversation with you and be a part of this ministry you have made. Very grateful for you. Thank you very much.

For everybody that's listening, this again is Dennis Shaw. as Mindful Leader, and you can find this podcast on almost everywhere that podcasts are shared. Thank you very much for having listened, and I look forward to talking to you another day. Music.