ES 78 | Developmetrics

Continuing education is important aspect of discipleship in Community of Christ. The church in Canada has provided a way for much of this education to happen online through Developmentrics, LLC. Today, Carla talks with David Lloyd as he explains the format of the classes, what is offered, and how you can benefit from taking Temple School courses online.

Host: Carla Long
Guest: David Lloyd

Developmetric's Website
For more information, contact David Lloyd at idlloyd23@gmail.com

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Intro and Outro music used with permission:

“For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org

All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey.

NOTE: The series that make up the Project Zion Podcast explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Project Zion Podcast is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ.

Katie Langston : 0:16

You're listening to an Extra Shot episode on the Project Zion Podcast, a shorter episode that lets you get your Project Zion fix in between our full length episodes. It might be shorter timewise but hopefully not in content. So regardless of the temperature at which you prefer your caffeine, sit back and enjoy this extra shot.

Carla Long : 1:00

Hello, and welcome to the Project Zion Podcast. I'm your host, Carla Long, and with me today is a dear friend of mine, someone I've known for, oh gosh, years and years and years. Don't go there. Okay. David Lloyd, he's a good friend of mine, and he is the president?

David Lloyd : 1:20

CEO! Grand Pooh-bah...

Carla Long : 1:24

...of Developmetrics. And first I'm going to ask him to introduce himself, and then I'm going to ask him to tell us what Developmetrics is. So Dave, thank you so much for joining us. Please introduce yourself.

David Lloyd : 1:33

Hi, I'm David Lloyd, and I live in Blue Springs, Missouri and I operate with the help of a number of other people Developmetrics LLC, which is a little company that was developed in order to do leadership, development for the church through funding through the Canadian church, which is a really interesting setup. I live in America and I will For the Canadian church and the Canadian churches providing this for all English speaking countries. And basically we've been an operation for about four years now before that I worked at headquarters, doing the e-learning, programming as well as teaching not only the ministry and priests of classes, but also training mission center presidents as they came in. Before that I was a mission center president before that I was a regional worker for the church. I worked then before that in the congregation full time and I was also a full time youth minister. So I've done many things in life the church and stayed under the radar long enough to not get in trouble. And and now are, well, maybe I get in a little trouble. And now I work for for this little company that's providing priesthood and ministry teachings online.

Carla Long : 2:51

Oh, and I am super grateful for it personally. So we're going to get into that actually. So what kind of things what kind of classes do you offer on Developmetrics and how does it even work? But what does it wasn't like?

David Lloyd : 3:03

Sure. Well at first we just wanted to get the basic core ministry and priesthood classes in so that the deacon, teacher, priest elder courses, and Intro to Ministry and Intro to Scripture. And once we get that up and running and and saw that there was a need to have this taking place in the life of the church, we also beginning adding a few other classes. We've got the the latter day seekers course online. We also do the children's and youth worker core training online. And we developed a pastor's class for new pastors coming in the beginning of the year, if they'd like to see what that's going to be like a little bit and talk with other coming up pastors. And we're, we've also done a we started a Meads online course that we do via zoom in Canada and that went live a year ago and so we do do that twice a year. And next year we're looking at adding some one off courses on a number of single topics that you can do over a weekend like conflict resolution, and and let's see, generational connections and things like that. That might be interesting one topic classes. And we do that on a platform called Moodle, which is a it's it's a, without getting too technical, it's an open source, online platform that you can build on yourself. We use a company called Moodle School, which also helps develop us into a school Yeah, and they have conventions every year called the Moodle Moos. You can go to and and it basically allows us to create these online classes we have to get the content and then edit the content to fit in. To the online platforms style, we try to gather as many videos as we can get together. There's interaction that takes place with a instructor through through little essay answers that you'll give every week as well as form dialogues where you post a question and answer to a question. And then you can comment on other classmates answer so we try to incorporate into it as much community as we can for those students who are taking the class. One of the interesting things we found is that usually, every year we get a comment back that I never knew that the church believed this. And and you realize that when you're taking a class with people from all over Canada, in the US, and sometimes outside of that area, you get perspectives that you never might have had in your home congregation. And sometimes people can teach a class to their own agenda. And these classes are pretty much taught from the contents agenda. And so and so they stay pretty universal as far as as what the church intended to go out. So, so that's kind of a neat prospect we have in in connecting with people up in the church. And also we have people who sometimes come in from outside the church take classes.

Carla Long : 6:22

Oh, how interesting. Like, I just know that I as a pastor have really appreciate it. First of all, I took the pastor's class, which was really helpful to me, the kind of I've been working for community Christ for 15 years, I've been a member my whole life, but I didn't totally realize exactly what a pastor did. So just having someone laid that out for me, and like you said, that community piece getting be able to talk to other people about it, and let it and knowing that they're not at sure either helps me feel a little bit better about where I'm at. So that is really important.

David Lloyd : 6:56

Yeah, yeah. Then that pastors class we even do one little section on how to I'll be going to Shelby and make a list of your priesthood. And, and I find every time people go, you know, I, I pushed it off because I didn't want to know about Shelby and just having that one you know how to was worth the whole course but but other things in it such as you know how to call priesthood members that always has been. It's a tough thing to do. It's a tough thing to feel through and to process through. And hopefully we created a class that helps pastors understand that a little bit better.

Carla Long : 7:33

Yeah, it takes a little bit of the mystery away from it and because there are very practical things that you have to do and or get to do you know, your honored to do so. The that was really helpful for me, it just takes a little bit of the scariness away, and I hope I think that's probably been true for a lot of the different courses to the ministry of the deacon, teacher, priest and elder things like that. As a pastor, having someone else teach those classes has been game changer because otherwise I would be spending hours and hours and hours and hours teaching them not that I wouldn't want to. But at least they get that community aspect and not just my personal opinion on it, like you said,

David Lloyd : 8:11

Right. And like in the priests and elders class, we asked the, the people taking the class to actually do the sacraments, whether they've been ordained or not to practice doing them in a environment that makes sense. And so, I've gotten a lot of phone calls from pastors saying, why are you having people fill up the baptismal font? And we have to explain Well, you know, it, we're going to have them practice and they can you do that? Well, yeah, you can practice doing that. And and especially because if you ever you're everyone knows their first baptism and how terrifying that is. And and you do a lot of this from observation as as as you go through, you know, coming into that position, and then to actually do it's a whole nother issue. So we try to get people into a swimming pool or baptismal font or a river or whatever, and actually practice doing it so that when the day comes, it's not as big a surprise and that you realize if a foot pops out, you don't have to redo the baptism and all those other, you know, little idiosyncrasies we have on the sacraments that talk about what is the nature of the sacrament and what is the purpose of the sacrament, and how we're living that through by this, these little acts that we do. And, and it makes it more meaningful for the the priesthood member if they can spend their time thinking about the sacrament rather than thinking about the act of the sacrament. And, and that usually helps a lot too. And, and also, we're one of the hardest things I have is is with with the elders in talking about laying on the pants for the SEC or doing a confirmation or doing an ordination to talk in in prayer language rather than in first person language. So we're trying to get rid of a lot of the old recordings from Uncle Bob who used to prophesy over people when they were, you know, ordaining them and and get off task a little bit and start focusing them on actually giving an ordination prayer and what that means. And and if you can stop and ask yourself the question why you're doing it that way. It helps makes a lot more sense of the sacrament itself too. So lots of stuff that take place in that class but that we are sharing in

Carla Long : 10:35

Oh, that is so important. Actually. I remember my elders course. Our teacher, Isla Jean Bruner. Hi, Isla June, she actually helped had us hold a baby and practice with the blessing of a baby. You know, that was, that was the thing I remember most. Yeah. So, so important.

David Lloyd : 10:52

And also if you've got a crying baby, that it's okay to let the mother continue holding the baby. You know? These other things that we don't think of until we get to that that moment, and

Carla Long : 11:05

And everyone's like, is this okay?

David Lloyd : 11:08

Yeah, I remember one of my favorite baby blessings I saw a kid was just screaming and that the elder was trying to hold on to this baby. And the elder said, and Lord, as this child raises his voice, man someday raises voice to you. That's all I can remember from that baby blessing. And I have I help elders remember, they're not going to really remember your baby blessing unless it's really bad, because all we care about in the congregation is that little baby up there. No, and that's what it should be. That the the priesthood takes a servant role of standing, but you know, with God and the congregation the efficient and we're the window dressing to to help the blessing that happens among those people take place.

Carla Long : 11:57

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. We get your stories forever but I do have one more. One more story about I was blessing a boy a toddler. He's probably two or three. And he had a lot of energy and it was in California and little Danny could not sit still on my lap. We're gonna sit or like, whatever. So he's just started running around me. And every time he ran around me, I just put my hands on his head, hands on his head. He

David Lloyd : 12:19

(Laughter) "Say a couple sentences" "Here's the thing...Amen!"

Carla Long : 12:24

It was very memorable. People still ask me about that. They're like, do you remember when you pause? Danny? I'm like, I do! So back to Developmetrics...

David Lloyd : 12:41

Oh, man, I mean, I, I had I do ask a question. The priests and elders class name, you know, one time in a sacrament where things went right or sometime when they went wrong, and most people love to talk about the wrong ones. And there are some doozies out there. Let me tell you every time I get a good belly laugh out of people sharing in that class.

Carla Long : 13:00

Is that the only reason you do that class?

David Lloyd : 13:02

That's one of the reasons I do the glass?

Carla Long : 13:04

Absolutely. So, Dave, I'm assuming that tons of people have already gone through develop metrics. Is that right?

David Lloyd : 13:10

Yeah, no, my tote board is back at the Temple and I haven't been back there since March. So I don't know exactly how many we are at right now. We're, we're right around 1000 students that we've had go through develop metrics at this point. Wow. But, um, and that's, that's another thing since March of 2020, we, we decided to open up our platform to mission centers who could not do their priesthood ministry and priesthood classes, because you got to understand once that stops, the calling process stops, because since people can't be ordained until they've taken these classes, if we don't have a means by which they can take the classes then the coordinations don't happen.

Carla Long : 13:55

Right!

David Lloyd : 13:55

And so so, you know, that causes kind of a leadership problem in the life of the church. So we said you know, we're going to we're going to try doing some of these classes in a weekend format. We open it on Friday at midnight, and we close it on Sunday at midnight. And um and that's that's that's like going through a weekend long class pretty much people will have to take you know, it takes about eight hours eight to 10 hours to complete class so they had a work their time and during that weekend, but I think we did eight different mission centers doing classes from March until June. And so we have a number of classes going on at the same time which is really hard to manage, because I've got a ceiling of how many people can be in and in our system at the same time and and still go through the process of grading all the classwork and and approving them. That's the other thing on our end, we also do the the Shelby membership records at the end of each class for the students, so that the mission center in the congregation's don't have to worry about that as soon as they have taken the class and passed it, we go into Shelby and enter in that information so so that makes it yeah, it makes it a little bit easier for everybody

Carla Long : 15:15

So much easier. Gosh, that's what a gift you're giving to the church. What a gift.

David Lloyd : 15:20

Well, what a gift the Canadian church is giving to the rest of the church too. I've got to give them the thanks there for funding this kind of thing. And and not just using it for their own needs, but also for the rest of the church.

Carla Long : 15:38

I'm a quarter Canadian myself. My grandpa was born in Kincardine, Ontario, and so the quarter of me is very, very proud.

David Lloyd : 15:46

That's the part of you we all like. Just a quarter. No, it's been really great to be here. I've gotten to go to a lot of the camps up there and and Provide ministry during the summer didn't get to do that this year, but they did an online reunion and I taught the adult class online, which was a different experience. And and yeah, so, you know, this is the interesting thing that's gone on through this pandemic that we've had is this is really pushed us as a church or recognize there's other ways we need to connect and, and ways that we've been really slow to, to jump into. Our resources being available in other formats than just hardcover books, or books are teaching being done online, our worship services as in congregations, being online and and using the technology that's out there. I think once this pandemic is over, we will be retaining a lot of that in the life of the church and ask the question, how prophetic was it as for us as a church at our last conference to say that it was okay to do the Lord's Supper via online processes, and now we're looking at other ways of, you know I watch the Facebook posts about doing the laying on of hands for the sick. And how do we do that in the time of COVID and and the recognition that the sacramental part of that can be done even without the the name of the of the sacrament itself. I mean, anyone can pray for anyone. And and and that takes on a sacramental nature might not be the sacrament but it takes on a sacramental nature on its own. And as we begin to recognize new ways that we can go into these areas, I think it helps us look at what the nature of the sacrament is to begin with, and and they are these connective times and opportunities where that like I said before, it engages the the person and engages the congregation and engages the greater community that we're all a part of both Christianity and humanity as we, as we come before God. And I think there's a lot more that we can do in regard to understanding of the nature of the sacraments in the life of the church.

Carla Long : 18:14

Absolutely. I completely agree. I feel like it's moving us to use John Doerhour language from church 2.0 to church 3.0. And at least opening up some new avenues at the very least, and saving us some money for I think the in person stuff is super, super important and I never ever want to lose that. But it doesn't always have to be in person is what I think we're learning and there can be some really wonderful spiritual moments happen right on online.

David Lloyd : 18:44

Well, and it is helping reshape what we consider community. And and I and this is a basic part of who we are. And, and I'm really fascinated with how we have expanded community like Toronto Place and, and their their ministry online has, you know, here's a here's a tiny congregation and and yet its effect worldwide right now is is being seen and and how they keep that community feel within the life of being online, I think we can all learn I would love some time to just have the opportunity every Sunday to go and visit all these other congregations that are doing online ministry and get a flavor for what their congregations are like. But we're coming into that time where we're going to be having both both live and and people at home. I'm thinking of my my mother who in the last, you know, couple of years of her life was not able to go to church and had she had the opportunity in her congregation to attend she would have drama and and and so we we need these things we need both.

Carla Long : 20:02

We do I think that when we go back to in person church it's going to be in person and online. I think it's going to have to be it should be it shouldn't we shouldn't give up. Yeah. These people who can't come I completely agree. Yeah. Wow. Back to Developmetrics. Oh yeah. I mean it I mean, you were are already set up for this to like, also prophetic and setting this up and getting this going. And so people can still take classes we can still have ministry to priesthood ordinan's is not the right word?

David Lloyd : 20:32

Yes. Uh huh.

Carla Long : 20:34

That's so I'm really I'm really grateful for the to the Canadian church and to you for doing this all this work to I mean, this is a bright

David Lloyd : 20:44

Well, and and and headquarters started the process. I mean, we were doing this before, you know, developments with development works was in place, you know, the church, had some key leaders and, you know, Wim helped and We had members of the presidency who were instrumental in ensuring that we got this kicked off numbers of the 12. And, and we had some rough starts and we used a number of platforms but we got the basic idea down and then we had budget cuts and then in Canada, you know, picked it back up. So that's a lot of hands have been in this to make it successful.

Carla Long : 21:29

Well, that's really good to hear. And I'm really glad that you're the one running it I think you're doing a fantastic job. Um, so what is the hope for Developmetrics in the future? Are you thinking about expanding? Are you thinking about like, keeping where you're at right now just to try and get as many people through or any thougths?

David Lloyd : 21:46

Boy, you know, every time we talk about expanding, I'm really trying to figure out how we expand more with you know what we have at this point. Right now we have four sessions a year, kind of like in semesters, and they last for eight weeks apiece and we usually have three or four classes going on per session. And that's about from from a person power standpoint, that's about as much as we can do. But we still keep talking about doing more so, yeah, so we'll keep doing more as we can and we didn't know that that COVID was going to come up and yet we we went ahead and and helped out with that and that pushed our limits for a number of months. And And so yeah, we'll we'll keep trying to see what the need is for. We hear a lot of talk out there have a need for some church history and some more in depth work with the scriptures and, and spiritual practices and all these other things. So you know, the the need for education is limitless, our our staff and our and our, our platform are not limitless but we'll we'll make do as as we go forward.

Carla Long : 23:10

Yeah, well, that's, I mean, there's always some limits like I don't know how many people you have working for Developmetrics. I know it's you, it's you and you and Oh yeah, your staff meetings are pretty bad.

David Lloyd : 23:25

No, but but I also have like, you know, the Latter-day Seekers class have has has a couple of volunteers who do that class. So I am very appreciative of that. Once in a while, if I get in a in a pinch, I will ask somebody to teach a class and give them a stipend as a thank you, you know, church type and it's after you're done, you can go to McDonald's and have a good round.

Carla Long : 23:51

That's right.

David Lloyd : 23:52

And, and and so, so yeah, so we do have a number of other people helping in outside. We've got a couple of people right now helping with the content for some of these upcoming classes that we're doing. We're trying, we try to get people to write the content to have had long term connection to the topic. So like Sandee Gamet with conflict resolution, and you know, and try to get some of our best writers to put some new topics together for us. So that so there's a lot of people behind the, the the person behind the camera who are helping make it happen.

Carla Long : 24:34

The guy behind the curtain, so to speak. That's all right. Don't pay attention to him. Well, Dave, thank you so much for telling us about this. I just I wanted to talk about this on Project Zion Podcast just because there are probably some people out there who still don't know what it is and still don't know what it does. And it can be really helpful tool for a lot of leadership.

David Lloyd : 24:53

Right! And one thing I want to put out there if there is a topic of incredible needs Um, that that you would like, that people like to work up and put into a class maybe for one time or for, you know, reoccurring in a year or something like that, um, feel free to contact me and let me know my priorities are made by the Canadian church leadership but we usually have been able to produce those things that have shown up as being a need in the church. And and that's where the the Latter-day Seeker class came in. A lot of and the Latter-day Seeker class was written for Community of Christ Church members, um, not not for new incoming Latter-day Seekers and that's sometimes hard to explain, but we needed that because we needed help with our members to to know how to make these approaches and and know what the needs of Latter-day Seekers were in the life of the church so that we could be more responsive and those kind of classes the kind of things that we're still looking at what do we need? What needs to be out there?

Carla Long : 26:04

Amen. Amen. So that's awesome. So, to two more questions, how do they get ahold of you? And what is your website? So we can look at

David Lloyd : 26:12

The website is developmetrics.org and I'm sure you can see it scrolled across it. No, yeah. If I was recording, you can see it scrolled across the screen developmetrics.org And that will take you to our website where you can see the schedule of the classes. And if you'd like to enroll, there's a USA enrollment page and the Canadian enrollment page. If you can't enroll, there are no classes available to enroll in at that time. But the schedule will be on the main page and if you want to get a hold of me, I'm at idloyd23@gmail.com.

Carla Long : 26:53

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dave, thanks for talking with me and thank you for helping me reminisce a little bit about my Elder course days those

David Lloyd : 27:02

You might need a refresher, Carla,

Carla Long : 27:05

You are not wrong. You are not wrong. I should probably let you go. Thank you again.

David Lloyd : 27:16

We don't do a parenting class either. So we can't help out with any of that.

Unknown Speaker : 27:20

Maybe that is the need right there.

David Lloyd : 27:25

I won't be teaching it. You should see my kids. You know my gifts.

Carla Long : 27:35

One of my favorites. Thank you again,

David Lloyd : 27:37

lovey Carla. Thanks for listening to projects I am podcast, subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever podcast streaming service you use. And while you're there, give us a five star rating. projects I am podcast is sponsored by Latter Day seeker ministries of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are of those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Latter Day seeker ministries or Community of Christ. Music has been graciously provided by Dave Hines

Project Zion Podcast

ES 78 | Developmetrics | David Lloyd

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