Facilitated
by: Harry Skandera
(Harry Skandera)
Welcome to City Reach Prayer. For those of you who do
not know who I am, my name is Harry Skandera and I usually
have a partner here with my by the name of Sam Tillery,
but He is not able to be here, so I will be doing this
together with you all here this evening.
For those of you who are not familiar
with City Reach Prayer, I will explain a little bit
about it for you. We have been meeting for about the
last five years. The first Friday of every month we
gather at a local congregation or ministry, somewhere
in Sonoma County, wherever we are invited and we call
the rest of the body of Christ to pray together. We
pretty much stick to the same outline, sometimes we
do prayer walks, sometimes we do a parade, most of the
time we go into a local congregation such as this Nazarene
Church and we pray with the brothers and sisters there.
The rest of the body of Christ that
comes on that particular night, lifts that congregation
up in prayer and it’s goals, ministries, needs
and so forth. We have had some very powerful testimonies
over the five years, praying for different congregations
and with them. It is always a wonderful experience,
because you get to see the diversity in the body of
Christ.
Many congregations, one
Church, that’s really what we’re about.
The first part of our time together is generally spent
praying into something bigger than ourselves, like the
city that we are in, Santa Rosa or Sonoma County. Tonight
we may go a little bigger than that. Of course, we can’t
spend time together as God’s people in this season
without lifting up the people who are suffering right
now in the southern part of the United States. There
are a lot of ways that we can pray and we’re going
to break up into small groups and pray into that, but
first I just want to share a few things.
One of the things that we want to
be aware of is the question, where are we called? Each
one of us has been called to this place. If we aren’t,
then we need to go where we are called, but we are going
to assume that, because we are here, this is where God
has called us to be, this is where God has called us
to walk out the good works that He has laid out for
our lives ahead of time and in that we ascertain that
God has a special purpose in this place for the special
people whose been called here. He is not asking everybody
to be the same thing in every place. Just like we have
personal and individual callings, gifts and talents,
every geographic place in the world has certain characteristics
and in fact, every city has a certain personality.
You can see that if you study it’s
history. You can see that it tends to do certain kinds
of things over the years. We believe that part of that
is that a city and a county has an in-giftment, just
like an individual does, it’s a little bit harder
to see sometimes, but in that there are certain areas
in a city... How many of you are from a city other than
Santa Rosa? Ok, I see Healdsburg, Rohnert Park, Sonoma
and Sebastopol. Well, don’t you know that they
do things a little bit different in Sonoma than they
do in Santa Rosa and if you look at the history of those
two towns, you’ll see that there has been a little
bit different approach the way they’ve handled
things from city growth to their water system, or anything
else. How they have permitted the city to grow and how
they permit those in the city to do things, cities have
a personality.
Part of the personality of Santa Rosa
has been that it is a city of influence. When we were
just a bunch of squatter’s and Sonoma was one
of the larger towns and has become the state of California,
we had the ambition to become the county seat. I’m
not saying that that is good or bad, but we did gained
the county seat against all odds. Petaluma was twice
as big as Sonoma at the time, again this is just a kind
of a bump in the road, and both of those towns were
actually somewhat offended when we fumbled around and
ended up being the County Seat very early in the history
of California. Because that had a lot of ramifications
in those days, but I guess my point is that we always
wanted to be influential.
Again, if you look at our history for
both positive things and negative things, we have been.
What does that mean for us here tonight? It means that
we ought to take a special ownership of our city and
realizing that we are a city of influence, when we approach
the throne of God, we know that He has in-gifted us
in a certain way to have an influence, and how will
we use that influence?
The first, is that we are going to
pray for the people of Louisiana and Mississippi, particularly
the people of New Orleans. Will we judge them? Will
we ask for God’s mercy? Will we ask for His heart,
not just of right now, but for what is to come? I know
that it’s easy for most of us when we look at
the internet, newspaper and the news, for your heart
to go out to those who are suffering and we definitely
want to uphold the people and cry out for mercy, but
another thing that we want to remember is that however
you look at the way things are right now, there is a
massive change that is coming to the gulf coast. Massive!
Not even trying to ascribe a particular meaning for
why it’s happened, I mean you don’t even
have to go there.
The point is, it will never be the
same, there is no way. The question is, will those of
us who have influence be praying that the spirit of
God falls on that place in a fresh way. In a way that
couldn’t have possibly happened without whatever
has happened. Again, don’t get into why this has
happened or what are the possible reasons, just look
at the way things are. This is huge. If you had to describe
a spirit that has been loosed over that place in the
state that it is now in, what would you say?
(Voice from the crowd)
...Chaos and lawlessness...
(Harry Skandera)...Exactly!
Do you think that that spirit is new there?
(Voice from the crowd)...no,
it’s just revealed what it always was.
(Harry Skandera)...I
believe so. I believe that’s what crises does.
I’ve been grieved just as I’ve heard commentary
and the interviews of people. The overwhelming things
that you get is anger, frustration, chaos, confusion
and now the lawlessness, and you think about if that
was happening here, would I act that way? Would Santa
Rosa turn into this kind of a thing? I don’t know,
but I do see that I know that as people of influence
we need to use our influence with the Lord. We need
to cry out to Him for mercy. We need to cry out that
God’s law would be revealed in that place, that
there would be a new order that is released.
How that is going to happen, we do
not know, but we know that it is more possible today
than it was ten days ago. I’d like to challenge
you to pray in groups of 3 - 4 people and you may know
specific individuals that are hurting in this thing,
lift them up and ask that God would show mercy, but
I’d like to also turn your heart to what’s
coming, what can happen, what might be able to be released
in this place tonight, ok.
(Prayer)
(Harry Skandera)
I teach at Santa Rosa Christian School the Christian
World View classes and we were talking about this whole
thing with the students the last couple of days, just
kind of pointing out the massiveness of the problem.
As Americans we have always had an
attitude of faith, a kind of a “can do”
attitude. In the olden days, it was always a faith in
the Lord and it was what the Lord can do. As we have
gotten more powerful, sometimes I fear that we have
gotten into this attitude of, “we can do this”.
The thing that really strikes me about the situation
now is that I’m not so sure. I don’t know
if we could throw enough money at this.
As we’ve said, no matter what
we put in there in terms of aid and so forth, it’s
never going to be the same. In August, 2001, we had
a city wide prayer meeting. We had began to do city
wide prayer meetings in August, because the few years
preceding that, the Pastors Prayer Fellowship had tried
to kind of have a big event that brought all of the
churches together and then we’d have a big tent
out at the Luther Burbank center and we’d worship
together.
I’m sure that some of you remember
those. The interesting thing that happened in the year
2000 after we had this gathering, all of a sudden the
Pastors counsel met after the gathering and we were
five thousand dollars in the hole. There were a lot
of questions being asked, because we’re a prayer
fellowship. We don’t have money to consult for,
so all of a sudden here we were staring at each other
with this dilemma. The counsel meeting that fall was
a serious prayer, because we had five thousand reasons
to pray (ha,ha,ha) and it shifted the way that we thought
about things and the way we looked at what we are supposed
to be about.
It’s funny that once we changed
our mind, the Lord brought the provision, but we knew
that we had learned something and we weren’t going
there. Our purpose was to pray, pray together and encourage
our congregations to pray and to seek the Lord. I say
all of that, because there are a lot of things I know
of at Santa Rosa Christian school, we’re sending
out a letter for all of the families to give to the
Salvation Army, Samaritans Purse and so forth, to help
with the relief just like we did with the Tsunami last
year, but I believe that we have a much greater resource.
It’s not that the money means
nothing, but at certain point I think that the Lord
is trying to demonstrate to us that we’re not
going to have enough money to fix this, so what do we
have? What do we have as a community, as Santa Rosa,
as Sonoma County to give right now, in this moment to
our brothers and sisters in the south? I just want to
say that I know that some of you probably already moved
into that in prayer. We need to ask the Lord to empower
our brothers and sisters. I asked the kids today, we
were talking about what’s happening in the Superdome,
because the chaos there is so bad. It’s been a
place where they are transporting people out, so they
bring buses in, but the big problem has been that people
go so crazy, they cant’ bring enough troopers
to withhold the people as they rush the buses, so the
buses leave, because they are just getting overwhelmed.
They bring choppers in with food, water
and medical supplies, but they can’t land the
choppers, because it’s not safe. They have to
hover 10 feet high and throw it off, because people
are tearing each other apart. The kids are saying, “wow,
the people are acting like animals”. If you hadn’t
had any water for 4 days or maybe put it this way, let’s
say you were strong enough Christians to know that this
isn’t the way to do this. I’m going to watch
everybody and I’m going to stay back and trust
the Lord that either He is going to deliver us or let
the people that are doing that take the food, but what
if you had a little baby or little brother or sister
and they were dying? It wasn’t just you. Then,
would you rush in there and fight for your food?
I said, “you know, it’s
easy for us to sit in here in our air conditioned room
and watch people, so what is it that we can do? 1. Thank
God that we are safe, but let us pray for the faith
of our brothers and sisters, because right now there
is an unparallel opportunity. People are dying and there
are situations where they are not going to be able to
get to everybody, there is no question about that. They
have the possibility of disease breaking out, children
starving, people shooting each other and terrorism.
We are totally vulnerable in that whole
situation. We need to support our brothers and sisters.
We need to cry out to God again, that He will strengthen
them where they are. If we were in that situation, wouldn’t
we want our brothers and sisters praying for us? Wouldn’t
we be wanting people the cry out to God in Heaven and
move in some way beyond our comprehension? Let’s
take the next 5 minutes or so to lift our brothers and
sisters up.
(Steve Cavalli)
We need to pray for leaders Harry, that men and women
will step forward and take leadership, especially in
the Christian community. There are a lot of lay-leaders
and people that have been sitting back that have leadership
skills and they need to step forward and lead.
(Harry Skandera)
You bring out a good point. I think that that is something
that we definitely want to pray for, but you know a
lot of priests are hanging in the barracks, because
it’s just overwhelming.
(Prayer)
(Harry Skandera)
I started to make reference about how the Pastors Prayer
Fellowship got into a jam, it actually helped us correct
our course and one of the things that began to happen
in August were things that we could do to serve the
city and begin to reach into the city and county. One
of the first things that we did that next year, was
we had a giant worship service in the middle of town
and then we invited the four groups and went out to
the four different gates to the city, the North, South,
East and West.
We prayed this passage of scripture
and we wrote portions of it on the stakes that we pounded
into the ground. What we were symbolically doing, was
raising a canopy over the city of Godly worship and
prayer and God's protection, and so after we went out
to those four corners we worshiped in the middle as
if to inflate the canopy, so to speak.
We prayed at each place and recited
the scripture of Isaiah 33:20-22 with a real emphasis
of course on verse 22. Look upon Zion the City of our
appointed feast. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet
home, A tabernacle that will not be taken down; Not
one of it's stakes will ever be removed, Nor will any
of it's cords be broken. But there the majestic Lord
will be for us A place of broad rivers and streams,
In which no galley with oars will sail, Nor majestic
ships pass by (For the Lord is our Judge, The Lord is
our Lawgiver, The Lord is our King; He will save us);.
That was declared over Santa Rosa in 2001.
The next year in August we met again,
but this time we went to the four areas of the County
and kind of expanded the canopy. We went to Petaluma,
Healdsburg, Sebastopol and Sonoma, again it was a symbolic
act, but it was an act that we felt that the Lord was
blessing, one that He was calling us to do and to declare
something over our city and our county. I say all of
that to say that it is interesting in this passage it
states to look across Zion the city of our appointed
feast.
One of the things that I have become
aware of is that as we function in unity, we have began
to set a pattern that in the late summer and spring
we have been given places of influence with the city.
The city government itself has come and asked for help
in certain areas. One of the things we do now in the
spring is a thing called spring clean. You've probably
seen the video and so forth, but it is many congregations
joining together to clean the city. The city has been
so inspired by what the church has done as it has united
that way to just lay down it's life, that they have
come to us now and given us all kinds of different things
that they are asking our help and counsel, including
the gang problem.
They are also very troubled by the
gay pride parade that was happening in our city. They
thought, well if we go out and protest something, it
just draws more attention to something that is very
negative kind of focus. Why don't we speak into what
is really on our heart and what we're concerned about
and that is our children, so for the last few years
we've done a thing called kid fest. We just finished
it this last weekend. It was actually started by Victory
Outreach Church and they invited us to help them last
year. This year the whole united churches participated.
There were over 27 churches and it's estimated that
over 4,000 people came through and 1600 backpacks were
given out to kids to prepare them for school and it
was a fun day at Julliard Park. And I'm saying all of
that to let you know that there are some heavy things
that are going on like the floods, but there are also
some very good things that are happening and we want
to be alert, because in the mix of it all, we're not
going to just get to cruise into heaven.
The Bible says that there is going
to be some troubles; floods, earthquakes and wars, and
yet we're not going to roll up into a ball and wait
for the rapture or whatever, we are here to serve the
Lord and His purposes until He comes. It's a very exciting
time to be alive. It's really a great time to be here
in this congregation and we really appreciate being
welcomed here to this place. I want to ask Pastor Rick
now if he'll come and we want to pray as the united
body of Christ into this congregation.
(Pastor Rick of S.R. Nazarene
)
Let me just share the vision that we
have as a congregation. One of the Bible words that
captures some of the essence of it is," glory".
We know that we are here and made for God's glory. I
have lived in Southern California and have just been
here for the past four years, I was actually here in
this church as a preschooler and now I'm back and am
the pastor of the church. My dad was a music minister
here way back when I was a little kid. The whole time
that I was in Southern California, I always had San
Francisco in my heart. It has always been my favorite
city. I love visiting it and eating the sourdough bread
and the shrimp cocktails and all that collecting sea
shells, then to move down to the L.A. area with all
of the violence and such.
When I first came up here I thought
it was immediately different, it was like culture shock,
coming from the city life in Lancaster in the Yellow
Valley, which is a city of 120,000 people, there were
probably at least 3 churches over 2,000 people and so
they had about 4 - 5 mega churches, and so you come
up here and probably the largest you have in a city
of about 150,000 would be like Redwood Covenant with
1,200 people or something, so there was a big difference.
There was Christian influence in the
city in Lancaster, the Mayor was a Baptist Pastor and
you come up here and it just slips. So, what has been
on my heart, and I know that there is a very low percentage
of people who attend church here in Sonoma County, was
to change the way that people think about it. I really
truly believe that there are a lot of people who are
resisting Him. Because they don't see Him as He is and
because of the misrepresentation or the hurt or the
spiritual blindness that the enemy has been causing,
the people are staying away. There is a verse that really
speaks to me about this and it is 2 Corinthians 4:4
and it says that the God of this age has blinded the
minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light
of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image
of God.
So, there is a real spiritual battle,
there is something cloaking people's spiritual eyes
and they can't see His glory and how good He is. I can
look in my own life and I'm sure that you can too, and
I can tell you what kept me away from the Jesus and
it was the lack of joy in the church, what I saw in
the adults. I thought that if I became a Christian that
there would be no more fun in my life. Actually the
reasoning that I had as a little guy was I would wait
until I was 65 years old and I've had all of my fun,
then I'll turn to Jesus, that way I'll have the best
of both worlds.
So that was the approach that I was
going to take and fortunately I accepted Christ when
I was 13 and I could borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis
and say, "I was surprised by joy". Once I
experienced Jesus for myself , I didn't really know
what was going on, I was just a kid and what do you
know as a kid, but I did know that what I was experiencing
was different than what I anticipated it to be.
I know from my own life and from being
raised in the church that I was blind to the goodness
of God and the love, joy and purpose in life that it
brings. I got a letter this week from a young women
I think, I have never met her before, but she has been
to the church 3 times. I preached last week on why beauty
matters and she wrote to tell me of all of the terribly
bad and difficult things that have happened to her by
Christians.
She said in the letter that she never
thought that she would go back to church again and that
if she hadn't been sitting between two other people
she would have gotten up and left. She also talked about
cutting herself and other things, but just think about
all of the misunderstandings in this young women's mind
about who Jesus is. Because I really believe that He
has been misrepresented in her life, so one of the things
that we are doing in this congregation is and has been
my focus since I've been here, is in making God look
good is to surprise people in this community with active
kindness and love.
We are in our fourth year of doing
this once a month outings where we do things like knock
on people's doors and giving them free light bulbs,
handing out free soda on the freeway off-ramps, and
our big one is coming up and that is where we go to
Sonoma State and knock on dorm doors and pass out free
pizza for lunch.
When people ask, we just tell them
that this is showing God's love for them in a practical
way, no strings attached and if they have any questions
that they could give us a call, but it's real low key,
and what happens over and over is people don't have
any defense for that.
When I first got here, we went around
the neighborhood to pass out Jesus videos and the defenses
were out and I said, "I'm going to try something
different", so I tried this and the defenses dropped.
People were asking, "Why are you doing this"?
They opened up their hearts and minds and you're able
to share with them about God. We've dropped the price
of gasoline the past three years to 40 cents for a couple
hours, and you know people don't understand it. My vision
is that I just want to keep doing that kind of thing
to keep breaking through the resistance in people's
mind about who God and Jesus is. When your praying for
us, your praying into that.
I also go into the business community
once every two or three weeks and introduce myself to
the business owners and offer my counseling services
for free. If they want that and people are very receptive
to that by the way and they are very surprised. Some
of them have said, "You are the first pastor who
has ever done this. We've never seen you guys out here".
So there is receptivity out there and that is what we're
trying to do. We're just trying to put feet to what
we believe and to really make God look good. I just
want to keep hammering away at that, I mean I just want
to keep doing it and doing it and doing it, and so that
is what we are after.
A couple of other things, we are kind
of in transitions in our children's ministry, we could
pray for that. We really believe in the importance of
that, we really want to minister to the kids, so please
pray for us in that. Also, we are doing this 40 days
of community. One of our big weaknesses in this church
is community. We don't do small groups very well. Some
of you guys have got that going on, but we don't. We
are doing this 40 days of community for the express
purpose of seeing community life built in this congregation,
because that is a gap in our body and we really need
to see community happen and our hearts brought together
and serving together.
There have been a lot of good things
that have happened spontaneously that they are not planned
or organized of people just getting together, but we
need to structure that better, so making God look good,
children's ministry and community. Our finances are
good. They weren't so good in August, but they are good
now.
I would actually like to introduce
to you our Youth Pastor Joel, he is the one who led
the music and he has been here for almost three years
come this December and in our Northern district in the
Nazarene realm. He's senior youth pastor and he's been
here three years. Wow! But really God has blessed us
financially and we needed to bring Joel on, because
we were saving all of this money and we needed an outlet,
because we are here to minister and not to store up
money. We also recently were able to get air conditioning,
so we are doing well financially. Are there any more
questions?
(Carol Skandera)
Can you give any more specifics regarding the children's
ministry?
( Pastor Rick)
Well, Chris Cates has been the lead of our children's
ministry for 10 years and she is transitioning with
family life and kids that are out there on their own.
Her husband has been working out of town and they have
been kind-of separated due to schedules for I don't
know how many months or days. She really feels that
she needs to be with him, so another gal is going to
be moving into that position. So if you can remember
Chris as she transitions and Laura as she steps into
the position to be led by the Lord.
(Harry Skandera)
Do we have anybody here who works in children's ministries?
Children or youth. You know, it really strikes me, when
we pray over the community in different congregations
and we talk about in-giftments. It's obvious that your
gift is giving and it's obvious, because 1. you have
an abundance of finances, it's obvious that you give
and it's in your nature. That's the way that you do
your outreach, that's the way you choose to show the
glory of God. It's a real blessing.
That's interesting, because that happened
to be the spiritual gift of Sonoma County as a resource,
so you guys are right down the pipe in that way, a giving
church in a giving county, meant to be a resource. If
we could at this time get all of those here from the
Nazarene church to come to the middle so that we can
pray for you.
(Pastor Rick)
Introduced all of the staff that were at the church
and there is also the staff from the Happy Time Preschool
which actually pays for itself and is also a real outreach
to the families of those who go to the preschool.
(Harry Skandera)
One of the things that we are doing here, is you know
in the past, Santa Rosa had a history of the church
in the city being divided and people being competitive
and very isolated and just not good, and what we do
when we gather around our brothers and sisters is that
we are showing and demonstrating before the Lord that
we don't want those barriers. We are happy that you
are specially in-gifted and we know that we desperately
need what you have.
We want to bless you as the rest of
the body, your congregation that God will abundantly
bless you. I want to ask on other thing, in your tradition,
are you comfortable with people laying hands on you?
(Yes) Alright, good, well then I would like the rest
of us, before we get anything specific, to go quiet
for just a moment and ask the Lord to give us a blessing
for this congregation. I want you to reach out and touch
our brothers and sisters and bless them in the name
of Jesus. However the Lord puts it in your heart, whether
it is in a general way or a specific way, don't wait
or take turns, just begin to bless.
(Prayer Time)
(Harry Skandera)
Lord, we pray that you would birth that which you have
given to this church, into the rest of this county.
Lord, it is in their heart to bring glory to you. Lord,
let the seed that is in this place be spread, let it
be released another way into the rest of the body. Lord,
let it be released into the city. May the day come when
people sing in our streets, Lord that they break out
for joy. We pray that that would be birthed within this
congregation, Lord even as they have a heart for the
young people, for the coming generation. We pray Lord
that you would creatively bond the rising generation,
that there would be a desire to fellowship between old
and young and there would be more home groups released
where people want to be in each others home, because
you show up in such special ways that people don't want
to miss it, we ask for it in Jesus name.
I believe that you have something
for the rest of the body. I would like to invite any
of the rest of us who would like to receive whatever
this congregation would like to pray for us, to just
kneel down here in the middle and just have them pray
for us. Would you do that? Rick, I'm going to give you
the mic. It is a prayer not just for us, but for the
rest of the body.
(Pastor Rick)
10 % of our congregation are recovering addicts as we
have reached out through the mission and other street
homeless ministries. I believe that this why God continues
to bless us as we reach out to the lowly. So, let us
continue to partner together to reach out to the least,
the lonely and those most in need.
(Prayer Time)
(Harry Skandera)
We have something here that is become tradition at City
Reach Prayer and it is that we would like you to sign
this clip board and let us know your name, what church
you represent and your e-mail if you would like to know
where future City Reach Prayer meetings will be held.
We are trying to continue to strengthen
the network of prayer through our county. We know that
each congregation has it's own particular prayer needs
and so, you have your own prayer meetings where you
pray. But what we're trying to do is to get a representative
from each congregation (maybe more than one) that we
can e-mail to you certain things that we can all pray
for together.
Again, why God allowed Al Gore to invent
the internet, was (ha, ha, ha) so that Christians could
pray the same prayer at the same moment all over the
world. That has never been possible before. We're running
a little behind here in Sonoma County on this whole
thing, but there are things that we are going to want
to pray all together in one voice. The crescendo of
prayer in our nation is building and believe it or not,
it is building in the state of California, and it is
building in Sonoma County. I know that a number of you
came over for prayer during the week leading up to the
World Day of Prayer. Next year, there will be another
week of Global prayer and it's going to continue to
build like that.
What we are attempting to do in the
county is to draw us together. We prayed in the middle
of the summer. The whole state was praying for Sonoma
County for one week on the 17th of July. Many of you
from this congregation came over to meet with us, we
were meeting over at Santa Rosa Christian Church.
Each quarter it is our desire to a
week (5 days) for two hours in the evening where people
come out and pray for a specific purpose. We haven't
set that time yet for the Fall, but you'll be invited.
We know that the Lord is quickening in your heart, His
heart for this place. We know that, because we're asking
Him to and we also recognize that that is part of what
is happening. We also know that God is turning the hearts
of unbelievers in our county to Him.
We're going to be able to read in the
newspaper, one of these days, the contradiction to the
proclamation they made in the city counsel several years
ago, "Santa Rosa, the city that would not pray",
that hit a lot of us really deeply and it was a very
convicting headline. We pray for the day where this
is a city where God's banner of righteousness is over
our city and that this is a place and a people who pray.
So, that's where we are headed and the glory of God
is rising.
For the location of the next City Reach
Prayer, see www.unitedprayer.org I know that it is going
to be a special time, because Tom White is going to
be speaking. He has done a lot of work with the pastors
in the county and he serves in equipping saints all
over the world, particularly in city reach. So he's
going to be here and I believe that he is going to be
particularly addressing the business community. He's
going to talk with the intercessors in the county on
Saturday night. It is kind of a rallying time with Pastors
Prayer Summit at Mt. Gilead as well. We want to remember
Sam Tillery in prayer as he is in Italy.
(Joel closes in a worship song)
More about the Nazarene Church in Sonoma County
Special Thanks to Christelle Eddy
who transcribed this document.
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