About 10

years ago, I got headhunted and I moved to New Zealand.

And I took this career and I took this job and I was really excited about what the opportunity...

I've actually got my dad here today, which is really special.

He lives in Oz, where I'm from.

And...

And we relocated, probably much to his disgust and my mother's disgust as well.

your cries.

And our prayer is that you are encouraged by this powerful Sunday sermon.

We're in week two of a brand new series called Lessons from the Wilderness.

And I'm really pumped about what I get to share this week.

And for those of you who weren't here last week, Pastor Luke opened the series with some great thoughts.

And this series is really about the wilderness moments of life.

But actually, they're actual seasons where we get to ask God what He wants to form in us.

Not to just wallow in the moment that we're in, but actually, God, what do you want to form in us in this season? And in fact, he went on to talk about how God wants to meet us in these seasons if we allow him.

that you want to reveal to me.

So what was that like returning to Dragonlords?

Yeah, so I suppose it was...

So, like, if I can give you a little bit of context, a little bit of history, because I was thinking about where it came from.

So...

In some ways, if you take Alaram's and Excursion's, that sort of US fanzine, the very first of them that just celebrated 50 years actually this year and has just finished.

I was looking through the first, I bought the PDFs of Lee Gold of the first 50 issues.

And about maybe 15, 20 issues in, they started getting the odd contribution from British people for the first time.

And, and on roll, roll,

And our prayer is that you are encouraged by this powerful Sunday sermon.

But hey, we've been started a new series last week.

For those of you that don't know me, my name is Nick.

I'm part of the team here at Life.

I get the privilege of entrusted to lead our community focus here at Life, which is exciting.

And I love to be part of North.

I always tell you guys this, but you are my favorite campus.

Excuse me.

And that's kind of what we've been able to really huddle around and kind of take our diverse experiences and perspectives and, you know, lead through that one shared unique vision.

You know, for me, it's not too dissimilar to Marcus actually running parallel tracks.

Although, you know, I definitely wasn't in the limelight as much, you know, going from MMA side to NFL side.

But a lot of the parallels with transitioning out of sport is the same.

And I'm one of the few that I'm proud to say got to choose when to retire because you know pretty early often in that if you're getting punched in the face, you can't get punched forever.

So you need to have your next plan.

So for me, I actually had started while in sport as well.

So we're just really excited about the space and time that we're in right now.

How does that make you feel, Nick? 'Cause it feels like it's really special times.

Yeah, it does.

It's felt really good.

I mean, um, w- we, we clocked really early on that this technology was gonna be a little bit different.

The AI's been through every wave of technology over the last hundred and twenty years, right? So you can imagine the, the path this business has been on.

If you look back at our heritage, it's fascinating how we used to run this business with a whole bunch of cartographers building maps and all that sort of stuff.

Very different business today.

How does that make you feel, Nick? 'Cause it feels like it's really special times.

Yeah, it does.

It, it's felt really good.

I mean, um, we, we, we clocked really early on that this technology was gonna be a little bit different.

The AI's been through every wave of technology over the last 120 years, right? So you can imagine the, the path this business has been on.

If you look back at our heritage, it's fascinating how we used to run this business with a whole bunch of cartographers building maps and all that sort of stuff.

Very different business today.

Hey, Nick, so, um-What advice do you have for, you know, an executive that is looking to demonstrate ROI out of technology and AI? Where should they start? How should they think about it? Any recommendation?