From 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 Days: Understanding New Guest Metrics
May 01, 2024
Today, we’re continuing our series on how your church can expand from 1,000 to 2,000 members in just 1,000 days. We’re focusing on the practical steps and metrics essential for managing such significant growth without overburdening your team or losing touch with the community’s needs. This discussion builds on our ongoing series, where we explore strategic engagement of new guests to achieve a sustainable and impactful growth rate—a growth rate that outpaces the community’s growth, ensuring that our church not only maintains its presence but also amplifies its influence. Join us as we unpack the crucial metrics that can help us double our congregation size while fostering a welcoming and vibrant church environment.
Sustainable Growth Rate: We unpack the “Goldilocks” growth rate that is neither too fast to exhaust the church team nor too slow to impact the community. The ideal growth rate should outpace the community’s growth, ensuring the church gains influence and doesn’t lose ground.
Attrition and Growth Metrics: Churches typically face a 15% annual attrition rate, including departures for various reasons—ranging from natural attrition to discontent with church dynamics. A growth of at least 15% annually is necessary to maintain current congregation sizes. However, to achieve a doubling in size, Rich advises targeting specific metrics:
3% Average Documented New Guests Weekly: Aim to attract new guests equivalent to 3% of the church’s size each week.
26% Retention of New Guests: Of the new guests that visit, retaining 26% is crucial to achieving the desired growth.
Focus on New Guest Metrics
Average Documented First-time Guests: It’s vital to have documented evidence of first-time guests, which includes obtaining contact information (email, phone number, and ideally a mailing address). This allows for effective follow-up and integration into the church community.
Weekly Consistency: The focus should be on consistent weekly engagement rather than sporadic bursts, ensuring that every weekend offers opportunities for newcomers to visit and feel welcomed.
Best Practices for Guest Information Collection
Ethical Bribe: Using incentives like mugs, water bottles, or t-shirts as a welcoming gift can encourage guests to provide their contact information.
Dedicated “New Here” Area: Churches should have clearly designated areas for new guests, staffed by personable and engaging team members, to make newcomers feel acknowledged and valued.
Ongoing Engagement: It’s important to maintain an ongoing strategy for guest engagement, with regular prompts during services and events to remind and encourage participation.
Future Steps: The discussion on retaining 26% of newcomers will continue in future episodes, outlining specific strategies and follow-up actions to help solidify the initial contact and integrate new individuals into the church community.
This episode of the Unseminary Podcast lays down a practical blueprint for church growth, focusing on the crucial first steps of attracting and documenting new guests. With a systematic approach to guest engagement and information collection, churches can set the stage for substantial and sustainable growth, moving towards doubling their congregation in a realistic timeframe. The insights discussed provide actionable strategies that can be implemented to help churches make a significant impact in their communities.
40 Day All-In Campaigns for Your Church: Unleashing Discipleship & Growth with Zach Zehnder
Apr 25, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Zach Zehnder, the co-founder of Red Letter Living. Zach is a pioneer in creating 40-day challenges that have transformed discipleship and church growth in over 1000 churches. He’s also the teaching pastor at King of Kings in Omaha, Nebraska.
You know that disciple-making is important, but do you feel stuck on how to make it happen at your church? Wondering how to align your whole church, from kindergarten to adult, so everyone is focused on the same teaching and growing together? Tune in as Zach shares how a 40-day challenge can jumpstart your church’s growth and discipleship.
Discipleship-centered challenges. // The 40-day challenges offered by Red Letter Living are not just about absorbing information; they are about taking action and experiencing life change. Included are message series, daily readings, and small group materials. There are also resources for kids and students. The beauty of this approach is its ability to align the entire church around a common idea, focusing on Jesus at the center. Whether you use one of Red Letter Living’s 40-day challenges or not, Zach recommends that you rollout an all-in church series once or twice a year.
A huge impact on churches. // Over 1000 churches have participated in Red Letter Living’s 40-day challenges and the results speak for themselves. Most notably, it has helped to grow church small groups by about 40% during the 40-day challenge. A church could spend about 700 hours creating just first drafts of all the resources Red Letter Living already provides. Taking advantage of this turnkey solution removes a huge burden so church staff can focus on other aspects of ministry. And in times when division can easily creep into our congregations, these challenges also serve as a unifying force, centering us on Jesus and his teachings.
The best way to follow Him. // The premise of the Red Letter Challenge is that the best way to follow Jesus is to simply do what he said and did. Rather than reinventing discipleship, this and other challenges by Red Letter Living focus on the words, life, and habits of Jesus. The Red Letter Challenge revolves around five key targets found in Jesus’ words: being, forgiving, serving, giving, and going. The first five days of the challenge introduces those five targets, and then a full week is spent on each of the targets, equaling 40 days. Each week participants engage in daily challenges and devotions that bring Jesus’ words to life.
More challenges to offer. // In addition to the Red Letter Challenge, Red Letter Living offers other 40-day challenges that zero in on a particular topic Jesus talks about. For example, the Being Challenge focuses on practicing the five keystone habits of Jesus. The Forgiving Challenge is about receiving God’s freedom for yourself and then giving it away to others. The Serving Challenge looks at five aspects of how Jesus served us and then how to implement them.
Special offer and more resources. // Any pastors and church leaders who would like a free copy of a Red Letter Living book can request one here. You can choose which book you’d like to sample and Red Letter Living will cover shipping costs within the United States. If you’re outside the US, a free digital copy is available. There are other supplies for the challenges that are offered for free on Red Letter Living’s website, including sermon manuscripts, videos, kids church curriculum, small group guides and videos, and more. Plus check out Red Letter Challenge in Spanish too.
You can find out more about the Red Letter Challenge and the other 40-day challenges available at www.redletterchallenge.com. Plus, join us Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 12:00pm ET/9:00am PT for a webinar with Zach to talk about discipleship processes churches should be thinking about.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, listen – this is not a normal podcast. Today you are going to want to listen in, lean in. This is gonna be packed full. You’re gonna try to pack as much value into the next thirty minutes of your life as possible and I really do believe what we’re talking about today could not only grow your church but help your people take steps closer to Jesus. We’ve got my friend Zach Zehnder with us. He has he and his wife Allison founded Red Letter Living. They’re really on a mission of challenging all people to become greater followers of Jesus. They offer turnkey churchwide 40-day challenges that are simple to understand, challenging in concept, highly practical and always squarely aimed at Jesus. Zach has written and co-authored 10 books that have helped people literally hundreds of thousands of people ah, become greater followers of Jesus. And he currently serves as a teaching pastor at one of my favorite churches in the country, King of Kings in Omaha, Nebraska. Zach, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Zach Zehnder — Thanks, Rich! And yeah man, super pumped to be back with you. Thank you for all that you do. You know, you you said we’re gonna pack as much value into 30 minutes as we can. You are a value packer, my friend, so I appreciate I appreciate all that you do. I’m ah I’m a longtime listener and and great supporter and friend of yours and um, and really just super super honored to be with you today, my friend.
Rich Birch — Yeah, good. Okay listeners I want to tip off tip you off here. You’re going to want to listen right till the end of today’s episode. Because Zach just before we got on told me something crazy that he’s going to do but it’s going to be at the end so you’re going to want to stay until the end. Ah, because yeah, yeah, he’s doing something pretty amazing for you. So you’re going to want to be here um all the way to the end. But I wanted to get Zach on because he’s really, he’s an expert in these 40 day challenges that we’ve seen many churches do. And I love these because really I like to say they’re like the peanut butter and chocolate of church growth and discipleship. They they are great from a church growth point of view because they focus us they are you know they’re something that we can kind of rally our whole church around. They’re easy to invite friends to. But then they’re also like this amazing discipleship opportunity because you’re getting people into groups. You’re focusing them in a short period of time on like a great common idea and it all points towards Jesus. And Zach really is the expert on this. He is the guy who who you want to talk to about this today. And so I’m just going to say it right upfront folks my bias is I want to convince you to do one of these this fall. That’s that’s where we’re headed here. I want to spend the next thirty minutes of your life trying to convince you that you should do it at your church. But Zach, let’s let’s unpack that. When you say 40 day challenge, what do you mean by that? Kind of unpack that – what does that look like?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, thanks, Rich. So for us a 40 day challenge would be for forty days what would it look like for each of us to be challenged in our faith to grow as disciples of Jesus. So our 40 day experiences, um, they’re not just any type of experience. They are discipleship-centered experiences as well. And so for us we love working with churches. We worked with over a thousand churches up to date now through these 40 day experiences. And several of them done multiple with us.
Zach Zehnder — But but really it’s an opportunity to for everybody to come in and be doing the same thing um for 40 days. And so on a weekend message series, the message series is all all there about the topic. You’ve got daily readings through the books for individuals. You’ve got small group materials for those that want to jump into a small group. And then we even have kids and students stuff to go alongside of it. So it really is kind of an all-in – we want everybody in.
Zach Zehnder — You know as pastor, you can’t all the time every single week of the year get everybody in on the same thing. But growing churches um, ah usually can pull that off once, maybe even twice a year. And so that’s our plea to churches is whether you use our material materials or not, once or twice a year you should be doing an all-in church series because it does exactly what you just said. I like the chocolate and peanut butter analogy – I might use that. It gets all the church growth stuff but it also adds the discipleship metrics that were really um, important for each of our churches too.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love this. So just to be completely honest friends, like at Liquid Church—church I was at in in New Jersey—this is a part of their strategy. Twice a year they do one of these – in the fall in the spring or in the winter um, and you know and kind of the Lent timeframe. And and I’ve seen this you know, front row I’ve seen the stats. It drives more people into small groups. It increases our overall attendance. We see you know all kinds of great stuff come back from families as they’re kind of all talking about stuff. So this is not, you know, it’s like the hair club for men guy. I’m like not only do you know do I love it, but I’ve also seen it for myself. So, you know this is a great thing. Talk to me more about why why the alignment is so important for us. Why you know going across both our adult teaching, kids, kind of the you know small groups, having all of those kind of, you know, hammering in the same direction. Why does that why is that so important with these series?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, I think it’s super important whenever you are wanting to really reinforce like what some of your values are, what what’s important to your church. Again I don’t I don’t think every single week you have to although I think it’s really great when when we’re aligned with our whole church.
Zach Zehnder — And so there are certain things, and to me discipleship is one of those, where we want to really make sure we’re speaking the same language um from from newborn all the way up until ah 100+ years old. Um and that’s really I think the the problem with so many churches in our day today is ah when it comes to discipleship is we don’t know what we’re even shooting at. We know that we need making great disciples. Um, but but what where churches really struggle is identifying what targets they ought to be shooting at.
Zach Zehnder — And so that’s what our materials hopefully hopefully provide is common language that everyone in the church can be using throughout the forty days that we hope then of course would be language that carries on um into into the future. And so that’s really the power of alignment is we’re all sort of saying the same thing for forty days.
Zach Zehnder — And, Rich, I know you’re unSeminary but I’m I’m thinking back to my seminary days of you know there were certain classes—I’ll be real with you—where I didn’t always do the homework and didn’t do the reading.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Zach Zehnder — Shocker, right, I know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Zach Zehnder — How how dare I. But then there were some professors that really did pull the best out of me and I actually wanted to do the homework because I knew the discussions were gonna be really great. And I’ll tell you every time I went into a class where I’d done the reading, my energy level and my focus was so much better.
Zach Zehnder — The energy is just palpable when everybody’s doing the same things, hearing the same things. They’re doing the readings. In ours, we actually make them a challenge. So there’s actually things to do each day outside of just the reading because a disciple is a hearer and a doer. And so there’s just this real palpable, tangible excitement and energy when everybody’s doing the same thing for forty days um that you can capture that we believe and we’ve seen um, doesn’t just impact the forty days but can carry on into the future as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. That’s that’s amazing. I love that. Talk to me a little bit about what you know maybe think of a church who has gone who’s done one of these. Talk to me on the results side. So I get a sense I get ah you know hopefully people have a sense of the kind of thing we’re talking about. It’s a lot of work. You got to pull things together. You gotta, which we’ll get to, but it’s like you know how can you help, but but we’ll get to that in a minute. But let’s talk about the results side first. Maybe a church describe, you know, how what do they what do they do, what kind of impact do they see, how has that helped them as they’ve done maybe one or multiple of these over the years?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, it’s great. So so first off, there’s lots of individual wins as well. So if a person is really going through this, they’re going to see fruit in their own life.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — But but you asked about the church. So let’s talk about the church. What what happens in a church when they do an all-in series, at least one of ours. What we’ve seen and what we what we love talking about is more than anything else they’re going to learn great discipleship stuff, but they’re going to you’re going to grow your small groups. We’ve we’ve done this enough we actually have a free downloadable that I’d be happy to send um called Our 5 Step Simple Super Simple, Easily Doable Guide to Grow Your Small Groups. Ah, we’ve seen small groups grow by an average of 40% in just forty days.
Rich Birch — That’s crazy.
Zach Zehnder — Now Rich, what I what I want to be careful here because what I I want to pitch this in the way that’s most appropriate. And so like what I look at this as as a pastor is if you’re like out at the ocean and you’re riding the waves…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …um, what what a 40 day challenge or what an all-in series will do is it’ll give you a really a nice wave. It’ll be a big boost. You’ll see 40% increase. Now what happens after the wave is the current will come. And so the current will come and it will draw back and that’s normal and to be expected. And we can talk about things and it’s important to make sure that as the current draws back, we don’t lose all the momentum.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, but what these once-a-year or twice-a-year things do is they *boom* they bring another wave, they bring another wave, they bring another wave. And we’re hoping that as they do this year after year after year that of course that wave is bigger every year.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And so we can be a catalyst to either jumpstart small groups from nothing to something really great, or we can grow your small groups by 40% in just forty days. Um expect some current but it’ll be better than it was. And then when you come back six months or a year later with another one. So that’s a huge piece is the small small group piece.
Zach Zehnder — On the church side as well, Rich, we I am a pastor. I’ve led a church myself and now I get to serve in team ministry as a Teaching Pastor. Ah I know the grind of what what it takes for Ministry day in and day out. And so ah we say a church can create their own stuff. Any church can do that. We’ve estimated it takes about 700 hours to create first drafts of all the resources we provide.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Zach Zehnder — And so you have ah you you probably have in each of ours 3000+ hours of work…
Rich Birch — Wow. Right.
Zach Zehnder — …that have gone into each one of these. And so there’s just so much. And so we love creating every resource from scratch so that everyone on your church team doesn’t need to create anything from scratch. Now they can add to it. They can take our graphics and insert their logo. Um they can look at my sermons and nitpick what they want and take what they want but nobody’s starting from scratch. And so from a church burnout side of things, staff burnout um, these things are are wonderful.
Zach Zehnder — And then the last thing—there’s so many more I can tell you about—but the the other tangible one that I think is going to be even more evident this year in 2024, um is our challenges really focus on the words, life, and habits of Jesus. And and trying to get people to do his words and practices, habits. And we have found that an all-in series that includes kids and students and has stuff to do during the week, it really brings great unity.
Zach Zehnder — And and so I’m thinking fall of 2024 there’s going to be a thing happening here in the U.S. of A.
Rich Birch — What what possibly could be that that will potentially strain the unity…
Zach Zehnder — Right.
Rich Birch — …of our churches…
Zach Zehnder — It happens. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …in say you know early November?
Zach Zehnder — It happens every 4 years and we’ve seen this…
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.
Zach Zehnder — …cast characters before and how divisive it was…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Zach Zehnder — …just four years ago. So here’s what I’m saying, it’s going to be a divisive time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — So one of the best things you can do for your church is to bring unity in a divisive time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And I’ve just found there’s nothing more unifying in a Christian church than centering in on Jesus – what did he say, what did he do – let’s focus on his words. Let’s do what he said. That’s a premise that’s really hard to argue against and brings just a ton of unity as more and more jumping in. So those are a few things um that we’ve seen from from churches that implement these.
Rich Birch — First of all, ah that I love that you’re hitting on that. Because this is a conversation that I’ve had with multiple leaders as we’ve gone into this year. I know we were kind of joking about you know the election and all that and what’s going to happen there. But but this is a real issue. People are worried about this. Like I I was at a church a month ago and they were having their all staff meeting. And I pop my head in and they were at the all staff meeting talking about the boundaries around posting about political things. And they were you know and they the boundary was don’t do it um on social media. And um, you know and they it was all in the context of, friends, we don’t want to do anything that would you know that would drive disunity in our churches. And so I could see I think that for that reason alone if you’ve never done one of these, doing an all-in series this fall could be a great thing. Like if you started maybe after Labor Day, somewhere in there, it wouldn’t look like you’re trying to just avoid, you know. But it would line up and it would be like, hey we’re in this this same timeframe, really trying to push towards unity. I love that.
Rich Birch — Can we take a step back? You talked about groups – coach me on this. We might have been doing this incorrectly. When we’ve launched these in the past we’ve talked used language like, hey join us for the, you know, the Red Letter Jesus series, or the whatever we’re calling it. And and we’re saying this a very special series. It’s only forty days long and it’s so X number of weeks. And we would love to we want everyone to sample a group. And we’ve deliberately said hey why don’t you try a group. We tell people you don’t have to be in it. You only have to do it for the weeks of this series. Is that a good idea or is that like bad practice and we should think about something different when it comes to small groups?
Zach Zehnder — No I think it’s great, Rich. I think and I think that’s the key to jumping and and bolstering small groups to being a catalyst, or to go from X number to Y number – whatever that is…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …is offering a season that has an an easy entrance and an easy exit. Now we hope and we believe that as people are jumping into our small groups and through the small groups that you’re providing, especially if they’re ones that like you are really focusing on and everybody’s in this. Like it’s got to be a material you believe you believe in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And so if it’s a material you believe in and that’s actually doing something in somebody’s life, we of course believe that um a number of those people, significant number of those people are going to want to continue in groups afterward. And so it’s it’s good to think about what to do following one of these. But but we also need strategic times—again I say at least once, maybe twice a year—we need strategic times where we’re helping ourselves by offering something that is really polished, well done, produced, got proven results um to get those numbers up.
Zach Zehnder — And then of course as you’re going through this and even in the early process, training those leaders on on identifying potential future leaders, and what does it look like to then proceed after you know, a 40 day series. What does that what does that look like? And we we love, like one of our partners is Right Now Media, all of our stuff’s on Right Now Media so if yout churches, I know many of them are. We love Right Now Media and you know the library of small group studies they have, and so there’s so many great ones on there that people can jump into after one of these all-in series. And maybe even find some of those on Right Now Media as well. Um, so I think that’s a totally ah absolutely great strategy. Keep keep at it and again, if the material you’re providing is is moving people in the right direction in their lives, they’re going to want to stay in groups.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, here’s I think maybe a key distinction with our materials than than most others that I think is really important and why they want to keep in it. Is the the word “challenge” at the end of ours is intentional. Um, it’s it’s we want you to not just read and get the information from this particular study. We want you to do something with it.
Rich Birch — Right right.
Zach Zehnder — And so life change for me, Rich, happens um with information at times. But it also happens with experience.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And with me me being challenged.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And I’ll tell you, the times in my life where I’ve grown the most are the times when either life has come at me and it’s been a challenge, or when I’ve challenged myself. And that’s when the Spirit of God moves and does something. And so that’s where I think if you can if you can match um, a small group series that has ah a cause where people are doing something with it, I think you’re going to find the retention in the future seasons to be higher than just an information only series, which I’m all for those – we need those.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Zach Zehnder — But that’s what I’m saying that there’s a difference there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. That’s that’s so great. Well, let’s talk about specifically your challenges. So um, if people want more kind of information on this, they can dive in at redletterterchallenge.com, but kind of talk us through so the thing that I’ve I’ve been impressed with what you do is the quality of of your work, the actual like printed materials, everything you provide. It’s like ah you know it’s like a whole menu of different resources that you provide for each of these. But kind of talk us through maybe the core offerings. What are the challenges? How do they fit together, that sort of thing.
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, so yeah, our initial our initial 40 day challenge is called Red Letter Challenge – obviously the red letters of Jesus. And it’s a 40 Day Challenge where our premises is this: the best way to follow Jesus is to follow Jesus. We don’t need to reinvent discipleship.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Let’s get back to see, to do what he said. He he already told us that in the final words in the sermon of the mount, blessed are you who are hearing these words and putting them into practice. And so it’s a 40 day challenge to help people put his words into practice.
Zach Zehnder — The human element I think, Rich, is I looked at all the red letters of Jesus with specific emphasis on the commands, the imperatives, um, especially in the Greek language – not that I know Greek but I I know enough to find where the imperatives are. And and and in that I located what I believe are the 5 targets that came out of his mouth the most often.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Zach Zehnder — And so it’s organized around those 5 targets which for us are being um, being in a real relationship, growing in a relationship of God being, forgiving, serving, giving and going. And so we spend the first five days just introducing each one of those 5 targets. And then we spend a week on each of those 5 targets, and obviously that equals a perfect forty days.
Zach Zehnder — And and so the Red Letter Challenge what it’ll do is it’ll take a command of Jesus and then it will um have a little devotion on that, something to read as well um, from the word of God. And then it will give them a challenge to practically do that day.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — So a couple quick examples. So like in the “being” week, you know, uh Jesus once said, abide in my word. And so the challenge that day is hey let’s everybody spend 30 minutes reading God’s word and reflecting on that. Um in the serving week, that you know Jesus once said, um, let us love our neighbors as ourselves. And so the challenge that day is to physically, literally do something to love your neighbor.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — Do something. And then of course share what you did. And and so as we do these things, and obviously there’s way more than just that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — …as we do what Jesus said, um, what happens is your church grows, your community’s always better when you put the words of Jesus into practice, and the one that surprised me the most—because we did this at our church and that I planted in Florida several times before it even became a book—the one that surprised me the most, Rich, was people who had been longtime Christians talked about how fulfilling and rewarding it was, even though it was outside of their comfort zone to actually do the words of Jesus. But because they knew we were in a challenge and they knew other people in the church were doing it, they were more inclined to do it and it took them out of their comfort zone.
Zach Zehnder — And so um, that’s what started it was Red Letter Challenge. And um from there you know churches had great ah experiences with it and many pastors were um asking my wife and I to consider writing more discipleship centered stuff. And so we really prayed and pondered that. Um and and and we stepped into that and actually left being the full-time lead pastor of that church in Florida to be a part time teaching pastor at a church I love, that I grew up here in Omaha. Um, so that I can spend time so that we can spend time creating these resources.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And and so we have more challenges than just that. We we encourage a church to start with Red Letter Challenge.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — That’s kind of our our pinnacle one.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — But since then we’ve got ah ah 40 day challenges and we’re we’re in the process of writing one on each of those 5 targets.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — And so we have Being Challenge which is all about practicing the 5 keystone habits of Jesus. We have Forgiving Challenge which is all about receiving God’s freedom for yourself. And then of course giving it away to others. And then we have Serving Challenge which is looking at how Jesus served us and implementing the 5 aspects. And and then we’ve got a few more years of writing to finish Giving Challenge and Going Challenge. So…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — …anyway, it’s a chance for them if they had a good experience in Red Letter Challenge to go deeper in one of the 5 targets, or maybe even all 5 if they would consider going, you know, every year, annually perhaps um through this just to reinforce the importance of discipleship.
Rich Birch — Love it. And so help me understand at like a church level. So if I’m let’s say so let’s say I’m listening in. I’m like, okay, I’m a church of a thousand people. I’m like,Hey I’d be interested in in talking a little bit more about this. So the idea would be we would have books that we make available for people at our church. They pick them up, but we also have kids materials. How how does that part of it all work, like how. um, yeah, how to talk us through what that kind of the practical like takeaway side of it is.
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, great question. So what we always say is to really have an effective 40-day like all you all you really need from a ah purchasing standpoint is the books. We have books that we we have a regular books and then we have kids books…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …that are designed for K through 5. Um, the the the normal books I write in a simple enough way to understand um that student ministry, middle school and up actually do really well with them, including older adults as well.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, so um, get the books on site for your church. Get them ah there a few weeks early. We we recommend about a four week lead in time with promotion and distribution.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Zach Zehnder — And and we have we can coach we can coach churches on how to do this well um, that get in. But then outside of the books, there are a few other things you can purchase but you don’t have to. And then everything else is free.
Rich Birch — Right, It’s crazy.
Zach Zehnder — So if a church wants to purchase wrist bands or shirts or something too, you know, because atmosphere and vibe is important. Awesome. We’ve got that ready to go. But you don’t need those things. And then everything else is free. So Rich, I’m talking we have sermon manuscripts for the pastor. Both manuscripts that are fully written out as well as videos if they’d rather watch it by video. We’ve got um Sunday school or kids church curriculum that is free. The kids’ books are a cost, but the kids’ curriculum for Sunday school or kids church is free that’s going to reinforce what you know we’re learning um in big church. We’ve got small group guides and videos that are free on our website. They’re also on Right Now Media, as I mentioned earlier for those that have Right Now Media.
Zach Zehnder — We’ve got a graphics package that has graphics for you every day of the challenge um, as well as things that lead into the challenge to help with promotion, distribution. And again we’ve done this over 1000 times. And so we typically listened early on like what more can we provide? And we have provided all of that. It is very rare that someone says, hey do you have this? And the answer for us is no. It’s like of course we do.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yes.
Zach Zehnder — Um and so again, our hope, I have a pastoral heart to want to help a not just a lead pastor but an entire church staff. So for forty days, think, you don’t have to think from scratch. Which means you can get ahead on your other sermon planning. Or you can plan um more deeper um conversations with your staff for those forty days. Or you can plan to see more people in the hospital those forty…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Whatever it might be because you’ve got this ready to go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So friends, like just to recap here. So a thousand churches have done this. The question is why hasn’t your church? That really is what we’re trying to get you to think about today. I really do think um, you know, like friends like Zach’s not paying me to say this. He’s not like he’s a friend. I would I love his resources. I’ve seen churches, churches that I’ve coached have used them. It’s been super helpful. And I want it to help you as well. It’s here we are the end of April, we’re still in time for this fall. I know, friends, that you there’s a bunch of you that don’t have your fall planned out yet. I know you I know that’s true and you’re thinking about what are you going to do in October, November, September, October, November, somewhere in there. This would be you know great for you. I love all the resources you provide to try to make it so easy for a church. I also notice that you provide your core book in Spanish as well, which is fantastic. Am I seeing that correctly?
Zach Zehnder — That’s correct. Yeah, we have the original Red Letter Challenge also available in Spanish.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — So for those that have the the dual speaking or ah Hispanic Ministry…
Rich Birch — Yep. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — …Yeah, we wanted to come alongside and provide that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And you’re you’re definitely right about the fall. Earlier you said, Rich, um that fall any falls a great time. This fall is a really great time because of what we talked about earlier. But that Sunday after labor day is really ah a awesome time to launch, and again that’ll get you kind of through mid -October…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …and and and so that’s a really strategic time.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Zach Zehnder — Of course it’s totally good if a church launches, you know, in October as well. But yeah September…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Zach Zehnder — …that’s Sunday after Labor Day is a great one.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I also thought this could be an interesting you know launch kind of backing up against Thanksgiving. So like going from this into the Christmas season could be a really cool, so a little bit later in the fall could be another time. Okay, so again, I I had told you, friends, that the Zach’s got this crazy thing he wants to give people. You’ve listened here. You know, you’re 26, 27 minutes in. Ah so what is it that that you’re going to give people – this is crazy. I can’t believe this.
Zach Zehnder — Hey Rich, we’re happy to give free copies of our books away…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Zach Zehnder — …to ah to pastors and church leaders…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — …and well we’ll cover the shipping too. That’s of course to anyone in the United States.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — To Canada we can send a digital sample…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …and and work out it deal with shipping only if if that’s of interest. Um, but we want to get this book in your hand. We’re we’re confident in it. Um, we’ve got the proven results of over 1000 churches.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And so we want you to thumb through it and see it for yourself. There was like, you mentioned earlier, heavy investment on the the graphic look feel design. Um, it’s ah it’s a unique book size. It’s a lay flat bind… like it’s just a really like awesome…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Zach Zehnder — …thing to hold and to look through that your people get excited about too. And so we’re happy to do that. And so I imagine link, Rich, the link will be kind of in the show notes for folks.
Rich Birch — Yep, we’ll link to it there.
Zach Zehnder — I can send you that link and…
Rich Birch — Yep for sure.
Zach Zehnder — …we’ll send them directly to it, and they can choose a challenge of their choice. If they want to see a kid’s book too, just put it in the notes. But we want to be as generous as possible as getting this material to you. Um, as we said it’s it’s late April now. Um, this fall’s a great chance and so that way you have time to look through it a little bit with your leadership team and and see. And we’ve we’ve got plenty of time to get ready for fall. Our materials get to you super quick as well.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And so we’d be happy to resource any church that would want to link in with us. But yeah, free book for any pastor leader out there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. I was just thinking while we were talking here what about like if if I’m say a network, you know, I’m I’ve got a network of churches that I meet with with you know that are folks that I either lead. I’m in a denomination – that sort of thing. Would you send me a book that I could take a look at? Ah, what would that look like?
Zach Zehnder — Totally. Yeah, we’d love to do that. We’ve worked with a couple denominations and then a couple of districts as well, inside of a denomination.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And and so yeah, we’d love to send that. I would say if that’s you, um and anybody can email hello@redletterchallenge.com – let’s talk about that. We’ve done some things before where, you know, obviously the the more churches that can get in on one…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …um, we can do even greater rates than you can find on our website…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — …when we do it in bulk um through discount or through denominations in districts. And so ah, it can really save and it can be something that a denomination or district can help even fund, and get into their their district or denomination for a really powerful forty days that that we know is going to not just change each church but could change a whole denomination or district in forty days. It was pretty cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I could see where like, yeah, let’s say yeah maybe I had maybe we had three or four churches in our in our kind of direct close, you know, network you could get them all shipped to one place. Get cheaper price for everybody. You know, we’re all going to be together in the summertime anyways. We’ll put the boxes in the back of your car, go home, that kind of thing. I think that could be ah, you know, super amazing. We friends, so again, the link’s in the show notes we’ll make it super obvious there. Click that link, pick up that that free copy.
Rich Birch — Now’s the time though, friends. Don’t don’t wait. Don’t like don’t put this off till like next month. Pick up that copy now. It’ll arrive in a bit and then you can make that decision here in May and get that slotted in for this fall. I think that would be that would be amazing. Actually, we also have another thing that we want to say to folks that are listening in. Next week on May 1st, Wednesday May 1st we’re at 12 noon Eastern, or 9am for our friends on the Pacific coast, we’re actually going to host a webinar with Zach which will be amazing. Kind of dual purpose of this – one if you if you want to talk directly to Zach, you got questions you could come to that. We’ll make sure we get those questions. We can talk specifically about if you want to you know more questions on you know 40-day all-in church challenges. But then we also this is really one piece of an overall kind of discipleship process that churches should be thinking about. Help us help me understand a little bit about what we’re gonna be talking about on that that webinar.
Zach Zehnder — Yeah. Rich, we’ve seen our materials work super well and and give 40-day experiences that are unparalleled. And and early on a church would say, now what? And I’m like I don’t know, man. I’m a lead pastor. You you do, you do you and I’ll do me.
Rich Birch — You go figure it out.
Zach Zehnder — But but over the over the last um 7 years especially, but really decade, I’ve been blessed to be able um to sit in this discipleship space more than most, and really look at Jesus as the answer. And not just create materials for forty days, but my heart, like where I find the most fulfillment and joy is when I can help a pastor.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, I’m a 4 generation pastor myself and I love resourcing and helping pastors. And so, Rich, I’ve taken everything that I’ve kind of learned in the discipleship space over the last seven to ten years, and I’m I’m really now wanting to help church leaders and pastors develop a full-on disciple-making strategy at their church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — So think going beyond the forty days, but long term what does it look like to do disciple making in our nation right now? And I’m just convinced that it is the answer um to the perennial problem we’re having in the western church that we know how to create believers but we don’t know how to create followers.
Zach Zehnder — And and so I’ve spent years in this and tailor-made some content specific to pastors and church leaders for how to help them get going. And I’ll say one last thing about that and then I can’t wait to talk with you more. In 2022 Lifeway Research did a study, and on the greatest needs of pastors, the one that they knew they needed to invest needed to invest in and were willing to invest in, at the very top of the list 63%—above technology, communication, internet, all those things—63% said disciple-making which tells me pastors and church leaders know it’s important but they don’t know how to do it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — And and I get the grind of daily taking care of your people. And to to know that disciple making is important and to not think that you’re crushing it can lead you to feel guilty and with a lot of shame. And so I want to come alongside as an ally and say I’ve got a decade into this. I can I can help you get started. We can help you get started. And that way you can do what God’s called you to do, but hopefully with the start we can give, we can really start making disciples, not just for forty days…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — …but for 40 years and and beyond.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — So anyway I can’t wait to get into it and talk about more of the disciple-making high level church stuff for pastors and leaders.
Rich Birch — So good. This is going to be good. So that’s next week, that’s May 1st. You know click the link in there, you’ll you’ll see you’ll see all that. Sign-up, we’d love to see you. I love that soundbite. Hey we you know we’re going to have a conversation on that day that’s going to help you. It’s going to help frame this whole idea around, you know, not just creating believers but ultimately followers. How do we how do we become the kind of church that that is behind us is a wake of discipled people who are following Jesus ah, you know for years to come? That’s the kind of change we need to see in our churches. So really looking forward to that conversation. This is going to be fantastic.
Rich Birch — Zach, this has been a great conversation today. Thank you so much for ah for being on. Any kind of last words as we before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, for me, you know, this whole thing started with ah sometimes pastors, church leaders can be guilty of this as well. Sometimes that we you know, we can put off that following Jesus is a burden and ah we have a cross to bear. And I don’t want to minimize the fact that ministry has its challenges and its burdens. Um, but following Jesus is the opportunity of our lifetimes and none of us deserve it. And not only have we been saved but we’ve been called to follow. And my heart just reaches out um to pastors and church leaders specifically um because for far too long like we’ve struggled in this area of discipleship specifically. And God’s been too good in all of our stories to settle for this mediocre, halfhearted, unintentional shadow at best representation. Um, and we have answers and we have answers in the name of Jesus.
Zach Zehnder — And and so um, yeah, I’m just really grateful for pastors that care about discipleship and are intentionally trying and and want to help in as many ways as possible. Because this really is the opportunity of a lifetime that none of us deserve and I’m grateful. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, it’s so good. Well Zach, I appreciate you being here where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with you, learn more about what you’re up to, that sort of thing. Where do we want to send them?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, they can go to our main website redletterterchallenge.com and again I’ll give you the link, Rich, that you can put in, you can hyperlink it on the show notes for where to find the free book. They can also Google “free book for pastors Red Letter” and it’ll it’ll pop up at the top there too.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Zach Zehnder — But, yeah, redletterterchallenge.com is the best place and if you want to email me or my team hello@redletterterchallenge.com. We we’re there and would love to ah would love to help.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Zach – appreciate you being here today.
Zach Zehnder — Appreciate you, Rich! Thanks, man.
5 Counterintuitive Truths About Hiring for Church Leadership
Apr 24, 2024
You’ve often heard me stress the importance of culture, revenue, and vision in our churches, and our approach to hiring is at the heart of shaping our culture. Let’s explore five counterintuitive truths about hiring that I’ve uncovered through my experiences and coaching other church teams.
1. Judge by the Past, Not by Potential In our line of work, we are naturally inclined towards seeing the potential in people. However, when it comes to hiring, I’ve learned that it’s crucial to focus on what candidates have actually accomplished rather than what they might achieve. This approach reduces the risk of being disappointed by unmet expectations. In interviews, it’s vital to map out a candidate’s past behaviors and achievements to the needs of the role they’re applying for. Ask yourself, “If they replicate their past performance here, would it be a success?” This shift in perspective can lead to more reliable hiring decisions.
2. Enthusiasm is Overrated It’s easy to be charmed by a candidate’s zeal to join our team. However, enthusiasm does not always equate to effectiveness. We must dig deeper and evaluate the substantive skills and real impact a candidate brings. A high energy level can be a great asset, but it’s the combination of passion and proven ability that truly makes a difference. During interviews, look beyond a candidate’s excitement and assess their ability to contribute meaningfully to our goals.
3. Momentum vs. Metamorphosis Deciding between hiring internally and externally can dramatically affect the trajectory of our church’s development. Internal hires often help maintain momentum, sustaining the ongoing operations and preserving the culture. Conversely, external hires can be pivotal when you’re aiming to transform or significantly improve an area. Each hiring decision should be strategic: choose internal candidates to keep the wheels turning smoothly, or bring in fresh external perspectives to catalyze fundamental changes.
4. Hiring Can Hinder Growth It sounds paradoxical, but adding more staff doesn’t always accelerate growth. In fact, it can do the opposite by diminishing volunteer involvement and adding to our operational costs. Remember, every team member should ideally contribute to scaling up our efforts by equipping and empowering volunteers, not just by executing tasks. Reflect on this when considering new hires: Will this person enable more volunteers to engage, or will they fill a role that could be a growth opportunity for a volunteer?
5. Adaptability Over Skill In the dynamic environment of church leadership, the ability to adapt is invaluable. When hiring, prioritize candidates who demonstrate flexibility and a proven track record of adapting to new challenges. The future will likely ask them to handle roles that don’t even exist yet. During the hiring process, explore scenarios with candidates where they’ve had to adjust to significant changes or take on new responsibilities.
These insights into the hiring process are designed to foster stronger, more adaptable teams that align closely with our mission and values. As leaders, we must be intentional and thoughtful in our hiring practices to truly enhance our church’s capacity to thrive and grow.
As we continue to navigate the complexities of church management and leadership, let’s keep these counterintuitive truths in mind to refine our approach and achieve better outcomes. Thanks for tuning in, and here’s to building teams that make a lasting impact!
Volunteering as Mission: Cultivating a Culture of Engagement with Mary Ann Sibley
Apr 18, 2024
Thanks for joining in the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mary Ann Sibley, church leader cheerleader and volunteer ministry ninja who works to make you look like the hero as you improve your volunteer culture.
Does it ever feel like there’s a lack of ownership when people serve at your church? How do you create an experience where your volunteers are excited to be there and make the mission happen? Listen in as Mary Ann offers practical help for shifting your volunteer culture to one of excitement, connection and discipleship.
Hold things loosely. // During the volunteer recruitment process, never be desperate for volunteers. It’s better to have four who are on-fire for the work you’re doing than twenty who are just showing up to check the volunteer boxes. Let people know they aren’t required to volunteer and it’s okay if this isn’t where they should be right now. Continually cast vision and hold things loosely, trusting that God will bring the increase.
Find the purpose. // Volunteering is a ministry, not only to the people coming to church, but also to the “one anothers” involved in serving. Part of vision-casting is helping volunteers realize that they are there for a bigger purpose. Discipleship comes into play when volunteers recognize that they aren’t only helping to fulfill what God wants to do at the church, but also allowing Him to work in their lives.
Debrief and listen. // Bookend serving with a huddle at the beginning and a debrief at the end. A five-minute debrief keeps leaders and volunteers connected. Ask the volunteers two questions during debrief: what was a win that day, and how can you as the leader make the serving experience better. Teach your volunteers what a win looks like – even small wins create a sense of community and family. Debriefing gives volunteers a voice and helps them understand that they are more than just a cog in the wheel.
Changes and wins. // By sharing wins and receiving feedback, we are valuing what our volunteers are doing. Don’t just listen to the feedback for improvement, write it down and act on it. Mary Ann suggests creating something as simple as a Google sheet that all of your leaders have access to. Then you can review the document to see what could be changed and where there is positive feedback in your church.
AVERI the volunteer. // One of the barriers to serving could be your current volunteers. Mary Ann has a fictional volunteer she created named AVERI, which is an acronym for volunteers who might be Aloof, the Veteran, the Erratic, the Rebellious, or the Indifferent person. The Aloof person is cold and uninterested. The Veteran volunteer who is involved in everything may be an obstacle to others joining in and may be the most resistant to change. You never know when the Erratic one will show up for services or events. The Rebellious one will argue with you on everything. And the Indifferent one is nice but boring and disconnected.
Find the AVERIs. // Take time on a Sunday and figure out who the AVERIs are among your volunteers that day. They may be still volunteering because they don’t want to be seen as unfaithful or feel that they need to stay in this position. Provide clear off-ramps to serving and let your volunteers know they can take a break or do something different anytime they need to; they are not required to stay on when they don’t feel this calling anymore.
Encourage the VICCs. // The other fictional volunteer Mary Ann created is VICC—a volunteer who is Valued, Included, Challenged, and Connected. Someone with these qualities is engaged with the ministry and other volunteers, having fun, excited to serve, owning the mission and seeing God work.
Volunteers are the mission. // Mary Ann wraps up by underscoring that volunteers are not just supporting the mission—they are the mission. Identify where there are barriers to serving and how you can better serve your volunteers. Intentional leadership and forming genuine relationships with volunteers will lead to discipleship opportunities.
Head over to maryannsibley.com to pick Mary Ann’s brain on a free consultation call and learn more about how she can help your church.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is one of those topics that I’m pretty convinced that 99.996 percent of the churches that are listing in are worrying about this. They’re thinking about it. They’re wrestling with it. They’re trying to figure out what to do about it. This is an incredibly applicable topic to you and for the .004 percent of churches that aren’t, you need to be. So lean in, friends. We’ve got our friend Mary Ann Sibley with us today. She has a really compelling background. She came out of corporate America, worked as a commercial banker, then as a CFO for a global tech company and then God really got a hold of her life and pulled her in, originally to serve as in children’s ministry. But then ultimately saw that blossom into this incredible opportunity to work really in volunteer engagement, volunteer ministry in general. She was a part of seeing a group of 30 volunteers grow to over a thousand. I saw that and I leaned forward I said, man, we got to talk to Mary Ann. She’s a cheerleader for church leaders. I know that you’re going to be encouraged by this conversation. Mary Ann, thank you for being here today. Thanks for being here.
Mary Ann Sibley — Thank you, thank you, Rich. It’s an honor. Thank you.
Rich Birch — This is gonna be this gonna be great. Kind of fill in the picture there a little bit. Tell us a bit about your background. Kind of fill in the details there for us.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, okay, well thank you again for having me on. And just telling ah again what God has done in my life is ridiculous. Even we hearing again from 30 to hundred.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — I just it’s crazy. He’s insane. I did not grow up in church. I grew up Buddhist. And my background being in business, you know, everything looked great on the outside. And the other thing I think is important when church leaders hear this, I had never been invited to church ever.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting. How did you get connected then? How… Yeah what did that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — …for 40 years. I know. Well um I got I was divorced, a single mom at that time. And I moved into a neighborhood with a family that came and was living right behind me to start a church.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And because I’m from the South, I never heard of such a thing. And so I thought it was a cult. And so I didn’t want my boys playing with their boys.
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Mary Ann Sibley — And they kept asking these questions at dinner, and I kept getting angry and defensive. And it took two years of me saying no.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — When um I always say I didn’t know God, but I knew Becky. She was the mom.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — And Becky was so patient and she kept saying, you should come. Um, and I was like never in my life. And so as I like to say, Rich, is I was certain because of, you know, growing up in the south and seeing how church people behaved around me. I was convinced that I wasn’t going to like you church people.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I was sure you weren’t going to like me either.
Rich Birch — Yeah, wow. Right. Interesting.
Mary Ann Sibley — So let’s just not meet. So you know that was never going to happen. And but after two years God did what only he could do. And we went to go visit. My primary reason for my very first time in visiting this church was to make sure it wasn’t a cult.
Rich Birch — Mmm checking it out.
Mary Ann Sibley — Because I really thought it was something weird.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley —Yeah I’m like what is it, but this is their meeting in a school, and then they you know this is all new to me. And this was way back long time ago.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — So like over twenty years ago. And um, of course it wasn’t and it wasn’t long before you know I kept thinking I should probably come here. But I remember I had to talk to the pastor and ask permission because I was Buddhist.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Interesting.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I thought I said and you know and I’m a college grad.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — I was an international banker. Like you know, I knew stuff. I was smart.
Rich Birch — Yes, you’re a full-on adult.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, but when it came to church, and that was intimidating and I knew nothing.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um and I remember just saying you know I think I want to come back, but I don’t know if I’m allowed. I’m a Buddhist.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And you know of course Yes, yes, come.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um so wasn’t long before then then I met Jesus, and then my two boys so and everything exploded.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Well, that’s a great that’s a great reminder encouragement for us, you know to continue to try to drive the invite cultures of our church, because you you just never know right? like and you know God’s obviously ended up using you in in huge ways and so. You know, really cool to see that story. You never know, you know, the people that you engage with and um and I love the persistence there too. Like I’ve heard that so many times and in my own life. There’s been people who you know it’s It’s a long-term conversation. We’re not this isn’t a one-time thing. It’s like we’re trying to build relationships over an extended period of time. So great reminder.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, oh my gosh, Rich, I mean that’s the key righ there – the relationships.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um because Jeff and Becky, um, they just included me with their family things even though I was saying no, it was like like a natural thing. Oh hey, you know, even if I didn’t have my boys, hey we’re just cooking out. You want you come on over? Or um, something was wrong with my house. Her husband um was a carpenter. Imagine that. And she would say, I’ll send Jeff over – he can fix it.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh wow. So great.
Mary Ann Sibley — And you know things like that. So that relationship building is really was the really key you know?
Rich Birch — Hugely.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, that’s amazing you use the word “include” because I’ve in coaching I’ve talked about invest, invite, and then include. That you know lots of people talk about invest and invite. But then I’ve I’ve talked about that that third “i” which is include, which is, hey friends, we’ve got to we have to train our people, so the people that are part of our churches, to include people in their lives in their lives.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like doing exactly what you’re saying. Hey come over for dinner. Why don’t we hang out? Like and it’s not people are not targets. They’re not like hey you’re you know it’s like some sort of project. It’s like no just extend your social circle beyond people at the church.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yes.
Rich Birch — And yeah, that’s great. And God does amazing things.
Mary Ann Sibley — I love I love that you said that, Rich. Because that inclusion part, we’re smart enough, we outside the church to know that you may have an ulterior motive.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — So it’s going to take longer sometimes, so don’t be discouraged.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so for me, my guard was up even though Becky was being nice to me and until one day I decided I need to ask her point blank what is this church thing all about? Um but I had pre-decided that if she started down this road of like preaching to me…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — …I was going to kick her out of my house. Like I had already thought if she says this, this, and this, they’re out.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um and because I didn’t want to be another notch in her.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — thing uh trophy. Like oh I got Mary Ann. And she didn’t she just answered a two sentences, and stopped talking, and moved on to something else.
Rich Birch — Right, good for her.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I thought, oh she can stay. Yeah, so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and she had the faith to be like it’s not it’s not all up to me. I don’t I don’t need you to say some magic words to try to wrestle Mary Ann to the ground right now, you know that kind of stuff.
Rich Birch — Well let’s pivot forward in your story. I love hearing that. Thanks for sharing that. So this like 30 to 1000 – that’s impressive, Mary Ann. That got my attention. Tell me that story. What what is going on there?
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, ah so not growing up in church, I I chalk it up to not having a lot of church baggage. Or I also people would say well that’s on how we do things. I don’t know how you did things.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, love it. Love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — Right? So people were saying well we always, and I’m like why? and it didn’t make sense. So I think on the one hand it was I was one to try different things. And if it didn’t work then let’s try something else. So I was doing things that people shake their heads and go I don’t understand.
Mary Ann Sibley — The other part of it I think, I don’t think I know that God um was so gracious in allowing me to be in the desert for forty years before I met him, is that I have a keen like I was not only depressed those last few years, one suicide attempt like it was a bad bad place.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so when I consider what he has done for me and he brought me out of it, was and I started serving like first as children’s ministry because I didn’t know anything about church, and I thought well I’m a mom I can hold a baby. Like…
Rich Birch — Yes, I’ve done that before.
Mary Ann Sibley — …that’s kind of where as I don’t know anything about church and um, but through that and and growing and as the years passed, it is to this day so keen in mind that that I’m going to be unapologetic about how we serve God. And I’m gonna always know why we are serving him.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I continually was just intentional about saying y’all are not even praying before you’re serving. Who are you? Like I don’t understand what’s happening around here. And you know everyone’s running around [inaudible] Mary Ann we’re at church. We’re fine. Well we’re gonna go in service and we’ll pray. And I’m going I I think that’s backwards.
Rich Birch — Right, fascinating.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so and so I think it was a combination and deciding early on of Lord I may be the only one standing here in this room. I listened to your podcast about huddles which is I’m a huge fan of. And twenty five years ago nobody was talking about it, but I knew we had to do something like that. And I said if I’m the only one standing in this room, I’m going to stand in this room.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mary Ann Sibley — Because I cannot slap a name badge on after the week I just had. And think I can do anything that will glorify you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like I need to take a breath right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I need to take a minute and invite people to join me. And a lot of them were like didn’t. But God’s like, you need to decide if you’re gonna do this because you’re gonna come with a lot of opposition. And so I think um, that determination I know that day I knew where I was standing and God honored it. Like a lot of this was just God. Like I had some strategies.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I had some ideas, you know I had a lot of fun.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I was you know the ninja cheerleader…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — …but God took all that and then he did the increase.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I mean his word actually is true. Imagine that.
Rich Birch — Yes, amazing. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It actually works out.
Rich Birch — Why let’s talk a little bit about that. So you know so many people seem to be, when they serve in our churches there’s there um, there’s like ah can be a lack of ownership, right? It can be it can feel like you’re saying. Like I I just show up. I just you know I punch a card. And man that’s they’re really missing out. And and man, I feel bad that we’re even creating those kind of experiences in our churches. We want it to be a kind of a fulfilling incredible experience. How do we how do we do that? How do we or what have you learned to try to create an experience where people actually own it, where they actually are excited to be there and and want to make the mission happen.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah. First of all, never be desperate for volunteers. Never. I always say desperation never looks good on anything except for Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like in dating. It’s not good.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Yes, yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like, you get the wrong people in the wrong season. And so I had to just decide first of all I’m not going to be desperate. And I would rather have four on-fire volunteers and see what God does with that than 20 that are checking the boxes.
Rich Birch — So good. Yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like and I would get permission for people. They would come to my orientations and I would say, you’re welcome to walk out of here. No strings attached. Won’t hurt my feelings. If if you’re here to check a box, this is not the right time for you. And that’s okay. You know someday it will be. But this is this is who I’m inviting. So right from the beginning, it was vision, vision, vision…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — …and holding loosely, not being desperate so that the ones that it would click with all of a sudden would be telling me, like if it was greeting. They said you know I have to be honest with you, Mary Ann, when you said I had to come to some orientation just to greet I thought you were crazy. Like…
Rich Birch — I could stand in a door be nice to people. Why do I need to come to your thing?
Mary Ann Sibley — Exactly. Yeah, when I when I meet with pastors, I said has anyone in this room ever said, it’s just greeting, how hard can it get right? How hard can it be?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, lots of people. Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um I’m like no no, no. It’s not about that. Because that’s not what it’s about. It is a ministry. It’s twofold. Yes, it’s a ministry to the people coming in, but it also is a ministry to the one anothers that are greeting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Mary Ann Sibley — And that’s where discipleship comes in and that’s where the volunteers start learning, Oh oh I’m here for a bigger purpose. Not only, yes to fulfill what God may be doing, but also in my life. Like because I believe in bookending huddle. Yes, we do all the talking. And then we debriefed every single time.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mary Ann Sibley — And that gave volunteers a voice. So now they knew, oh I’m not just a cog in a wheel. They actually want to hear from me. They want to hear my ideas. They want to hear things that I think aren’t working well and they’re inviting me into it. So now I’m going to pay attention, right?
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mary Ann Sibley — Now I’m going to be more engaged. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s talk about debriefs. That’s that’s ah I don’t know a lot of… I know churches that do huddles, but there always seems to be this velocity at the end of a serving experience towards like people just want to get home. They want to leave. And but but it does feel like a missed opportunity. Like hey, let’s grab those people together even if it’s for a moment to be like, thank you for being here.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about debriefs. What’s that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — Oh my goodness. Um debriefs, I’m telling you is a game changer. Like if it’s even easier—people would disagree with me, but that’s fine—it’s easier than huddles. Um, and yes I said here’s here’s the thing about debriefs at the end of church. Um I want volunteers, after they’ve served, to um, the question I always want to say is what do you want someone to say at work the next day, or when they get home, or even at lunch?
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Mary Ann Sibley — So do you want them to say, oh yeah I was at church yesterday and that’s it. Or oh yeah I greeted. Or I held a baby. Or or do you want them to tell stories, right? And do you want them to know, and you have to get it in the moment. And so in the beginning when we they didn’t believe us, no one trusted us, or like hmmm I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’ll really hear what I have to say, a, and, b, I don’t think it’s really going to be just 5 minutes because nothing in church takes 5 minutes, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so we had be really diligent and intentional to say not kidding at two questions. What was a win today, and how could make it better? That’s debrief.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — What was a win, and then we had to teach people what a win was.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like the obvious wins. But there could be some of the most beautiful small wins and that creates community and family. And then we’d always say how could we have made it better? Or I would tell my leaders. How could I have served you better today? And they would tell me, right?
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Mary Ann Sibley — And then the leaders would go to their teammates and say the same thing. How could I have served you better today? What could we have done differently?
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. I love, you know, I love a high kind of feedback culture I think is super important. In fact, recently I was we we did this thing and it was like an event, and we we did like a post event survey. We sent it out to people. And then at a at a subsequent fall on a subsequent call, we had like a you know an online call, I actually just opened up the feedback and showed people, you know, hey here’s what you said about it, and so here’s what we learned. Like this didn’t go well. Here was the thing; look at the graph. This thing shows you did not like this.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah, we got improved that for next time. and then it was like there was one thing that was off the charts. Everyone loved that. And to me that didn’t seem like a big deal. And I so I said hey next time the one thing that was not very good. We got to get better at that. And I appreciate your feedback on that and I had a guy loop back to me and he said, I don’t know that I’ve ever had anyone actually tell me after we’ve done feedback the difference you know that you’re gonna you’re gonna make.
Rich Birch — So when you’re taking that kind of feedback when you’re saying hey what can we improve on next week, um what’s the kind of thing that people were giving you, and then how did you actually follow up on that? How do you keep because but will get cynical, right? If you if you just ask, hey how what are we gonna change? What are we gonna change and if they don’t if you they don’t actually improve anything.
Mary Ann Sibley — Okay, so um your podcast is about very practical things. So this is as practical as you can get – you make a Google sheet…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — …and you and you let all the leaders have access to it.
Rich Birch — Right.
And I had a high level leaders, not me – this is about again replace ourselves, disciple, let go, let people go. Um, we don’t let enough people go in the church. We’re afraid we’re the only ones that can do it. That’s another talk? Anywho um. So um, so the directors would sit there and ask those questions, and as they were take they I gave a laptop and they would just type the answers. So then I would have them on Monday morning. So if there was something crazy happening I as a staff person did get blindsided by the pastor going, did you hear what happened? I’m like yep, already did. And I know who who’s on it. And all the good stuff.
Mary Ann Sibley — But it also had a thing that would say, who’s to follow up? And if it was me I’d say, got it, got it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — …sent it to facilities. If it when a greeter tells you door number five doesn’t stop squeaking. I’m walking out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — You know, something as simple as that, right?
Rich Birch — Ah yes, yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, and so or how did we handle a 911 call?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like we had someone that completely fell out and just as church was letting out, and so they had that report in there. And other and then the wins were the big thing though. Like the wins and what people did, I would have other leaders say, I know this is really going to be weird, but I hope it rains on our watch because we are going to crush it. Like we are going to have all the wins. Like I want we want to be on that report, and say it was raining cats and dogs and then da-da-da-da happened.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so that was a great way to communicate it just in a Google sheet and had everyone have access to it, and they could just track it every week. What was going on…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s great.
Mary Ann Sibley — …and it was a great tool for me as well.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s very cool. All right, so pivoting in a slightly different direction, tell me about AVERI and VICC. Tell me about these two these two characters in your world.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, oh poor AVERI. Yeah AVERI um, AVERI’s the volunteer I talk about some barriers to serving. And one of the barriers could be your current volunteers. And I know when I go and I see you know go to churches. And what I see on the website, people smiling and doing, and handing things out. I show up and they’re not doing that. And I’m like that’s not…
Rich Birch — Really? I I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mary Ann. That’s funny.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, and the ones that are there…um, AVERI stands for that it’s just ah, an acronym – aloof, um, the veteran, the erratic, the rebellious, and the indifferent person. So real quick, the aloof person, your current volunteer. They’re cold. You know, they’re uninterested. Like why are you here? Why are you even here?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so that could be a barrier, and that doesn’t do anything. Um the vet – a lot people think the veteran is your best one. I said not if they’re doing everything and not allowing anyone else to be a part of what’s happening.
Rich Birch — Not letting, not not giving space, right? Not creating opportunity for other people.
Mary Ann Sibley — Right. And they can be the most resistant to change.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — So now they’re a barrier for trying to create new ideas and and energy. The erratic one, you never know who’s going to come, when they’re going to come. Rebellious – everyone knows the rebellious ones. They want to fight you on everything just because they like a good fight.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, very true.
Mary Ann Sibley — And those are the conversations you have and ask them to serve somewhere else or take a break. And then the indifferent one. It’s different from aloof because the indifferent one, they’re nice, um, but they’re very boring, ho-hum. Like where’s the mission here, right? Where’s the mission?
Rich Birch — Disconnected kind of, yeah, yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — So when you see a group of AVERIs standing around in a church or in anywhere in a ministry, um if I’m looking to come serve or attend your church, that speaks. Like I get that I am highly sensitive to those issues, I get it. It’s what I do. But I can also tell you that um I’m amazed at how often we forget the God-factor when I talk to church people. And because I’ve seen I’ve had so many beautiful stories of what God did when we were able to step up and really, not extravagant, but were able to really provide intentional service that God comes in and does the things that he does. Like people feel seen. And they’re like, I just feel like I want to come back. I really feel very like my family was taken care of, and and that everyone seemed like they genuinely wanted us there.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like I can’t put my finger on it, but that’s what can change, if you have…
Rich Birch — Right. I love that that. Yeah, even just identifying like so how would I as a church leader like those are good handles. I think aloof, veteran, erratic, rebellious, indifferent um, those are I think good kind of, you know, even for me to think about the people… You know we don’t sometimes we don’t see this though even in our own cultures, right? It’s like it’s hard… this is where you know, ah, you know a strategic outsider like yourself can be super helpful because it can just help us like you you see things that we don’t see. But what would be some of the signs that like, hey we’ve got too many AVERIs hanging around – what does that what’s that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, well I think what’s interesting, Rich, when I do talk to church leaders and go through they are immediately nodding. They they can identify them.
Rich Birch — Right. They know people. Yeah well I did as well…
Mary Ann Sibley — They know, they’re going, oh I do have AVERIs. But they are so on the spin of every Sunday’s a Sunday, no one’s taking the time…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — …to do. So they know but it’s like I would say really like you have got to, if you’re sitting there, and I think this is one of the biggest complaints that I hear from church leaders, it’s about volunteers. It’s It’s the least resourced in terms of time attention, whatever. And so really take take the time on a Sunday, not all Sunday, and really go, who are my AVERIs today? And you will, I mean we know them, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And it doesn’t mean we don’t like them. It doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. They’ve maybe they were never given the mission why. Maybe they’ve forgotten. You don’t do it we don’t do a good job reminding them. They’re in the wrong spot. And they did it for a little while and they don’t know how to quit because they don’t want to feel like um I don’t want to be seen as unchristian or unfaithful.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Especially your your veterans, and they will hang on and hang on. But you know when I was working and people were starting to come serve, I would say like, you know, so what brought you to start serving? And they’re like well it sounds like you have a, you know, the system we’d set up small baby steps – very caring, very open-handed – and they said because at my last church It was like a ball and chain. And once I got in I never… And of course not growing up in church I thought what?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley —A ball and chain? That’s awful!
Rich Birch — That’s awful. Exactly.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like that’s terrible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, oh my goodness.
Mary Ann Sibley — And they’re like, well I just couldn’t or didn’t believe that I could, you know. So when we talk in church about onboarding, onboarding, onboarding, I also talk about offboarding, offboarding…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — …being just as intentional and told upfront, in advance so people are now like trusting you, I can come try it, because you really mean it, and I’ve seen you display it, act on it, that there is an off-ramp that is honoring and healthy as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Well yeah, that that yeah I think the off-ramp thing you know on-ramps and… easy off, easy on and easy off-ramps are a critical piece of this puzzle for sure. So then obviously we want to transition from AVERI. I’m assuming that VICC is like that’s like the positive character we’re trying to move towards, you know, VICC or what. Tell us about that.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, VICC well there’s no perfect volunteer, but VICC comes awfully close to it. So VICC the volunteer is valued, included, challenged, and connected.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like if you have someone that feels valued, to your point earlier, I feel included um I’m challenged. And here and talk a lot about that. And I’m really connected, not only to one anothers here, but I’m connected to the mission and what’s happening. Now I can own it. That’s a volunteer that oh boy, they’re having a good time. They’re seeing God work, ministry’s happening across the board.
Rich Birch — Why don’t why don’t we dive in. Can we dive into maybe one of those. Like is there, when I look at those—valued, included, challenged, connected—I feel like the valued one is maybe one that our churches don’t do a great job on. How do we articulate to and ensure that our our volunteers understand how much they’re valued…
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …understand how ah critical they are, you know, to the mission?
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, well first of all the most simple thing to do is we don’t say thank you enough. We don’t say it very specifically. And that costs no money.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um I’ve I’ve talked to several people and they would just jump in and I know that they’re going through a hard, hard season. Like bad things were happening and they jumped in, they go I didn’t even get a thank you. And lot of volunteers don’t do it for that. But God doesn’t have to do a lot in our lives, but he loves us and he’s so generous and he just wants to just pour out, right? And so just sometimes taking the time to on the spot, I talked to a leader last week and she said I think I have a win. I said tell me, and she said um, one of our ushers actually smiled. I said wow.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — I said did you tell him? She said well no. And I’m like it’s not too late…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — …so send him an email and let him know that um… because I’m kind of over the top I get it – we don’t want a lot of Mary Anns out there. But um.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I went up to this one guy and he just had this really sense of humility and you know the fruit of the spirit, just calm and patience. And um I walked into our auditorium and I walked out to him and I said oh my goodness, thank you for just being here. I said I walked in and you immediately made me feel welcome.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Mary Ann Sibley — And he looked at me and went, oh my gosh. He said, Mary Ann, I’m sitting here thinking I don’t measure up because I’m not going to be the cheerleader like you. I was like no, no, no, no, no, we don’t want to be all this. You, you have done an amazing work today. So I think really specific. thank yous and taking time. I think when we can share our wins as part of debrief, we value the work that the volunteers are doing. When we talk about…
Rich Birch — Yep. When I when I saw Mary Ann do this thing, man, that was amazing…
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because that reinforces our mission.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then I the trickle down impact of that is this. And you know isn’t that amazing that kind of thing.
Mary Ann Sibley — And that would have never happened if we didn’t have volunteers here, and volunteers here.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like one person can’t be in fifteen places.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And and when we really make sure, again that the non-desperation part. Um, that we care more for them as a person than filling a role anywhere. And we say that a lot but I practically it’s like what does that really look like, right? And it’s like what I call building real teams instead of just gathering pools of people.
Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — Most churches just have pools of people and they call it a team.
Rich Birch — Yes. Oh man! Wow that is a mic drop moment! Gathering teams rather than pools of people. Oh my goodness, Mary Ann – that’s good. I love that.
Mary Ann Sibley — True story, as my grandson will say, true story.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.
Mary Ann Sibley — But I think the value in the very beginning—and this is this may step on some toes you may have to edit this out—um is um churches are looking for volunteers. They’re like we want you, we need you. We want you. We need you. And when I go on websites to say, okay, what does serving there look like? The first thing that pops up is I have to fill out a form blindly. I have to I have to give you all my information and I don’t even know anything about that ministry. I don’t know what the timeframe is. I don’t know how long you want me to serve.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — I’ve got baggage of ball and chain. So I’m gonna be really hesitant. So you may have some amazing volunteers that would be great, but they have so much baggage and there’s a loss of trust. There’s a lot of that in the church. Like people are trying to re-feel their way around. So when we value someone, we’re gonna really extend and say let me tell you all the things and let you decide.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — Because I trust God’s gonna bring the right people. I’m go to lay it out for you. And then you’re going to make the decision. We’ll have the right people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — So little things like that.
Rich Birch — So good. That’s great. There’s so much we could unpack here. Um, another kind of again pivoting in a similar like in this same neighborhood but slightly different approach, I’ve heard time and again, um, you know, just as I’m interacting with churches and as we’re working on like church growth issues and trying to work on um, you know, how are we getting people connected, that I’m I’m hearing oftentimes you hear teams or groups, or you know teams and groups, like two different kind of things, but I’ve increasingly heard churches talking about really teams as a primary discipleship thing. That it’s like, man, this is a place where people it’s like a faster way to get people connected, and it’s like they’re man, you could see some real life change take place there. But then I’ll I’ll often hear church leaders push back against that and say no like that’s just about us, you know, we have it’s almost like they it’s like they wish they didn’t have volunteers. It’s like because it’s like it’s like if we could do this without volunteers we would. But I know you’ve got a passion for seeing this be a great experience. Help us think through how volunteering or being a part of a team, whatever the best language is there…
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …could be a great discipleship experience for someone who’s connecting to our church.
Mary Ann Sibley — Well, it’s leadership, and it’s having an intentional leadership path. And I was committed to um, requiring and inviting those into leadership at the same level that I would require someone to lead a small group, or lead a bible study. And even though you may be leading, you know, leaders small group leaders for kindergartners or a group of guys in the parking lot. Because my ah my brain is is like why would I want to waste any time when you have people that have raised their hand to serve and they’re going to be with you most of the day, why would you waste it with just things to do, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — Why would you waste that? And so when the heart and the intention is like talking to our leaders to say oh you think you’re going to tell people where to park and train your guys. You’ll train them that’s fine, but that’s not why you’re there.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — You may be the one that will reach them for Christ. You may be the one that they know Jesus but they’re waning or they want to get deeper. You you you. They may not join a small group because that’s too scary, but they’ll come join a team. And through that experience you, I’ve had so many teams start a small group, or invite people in.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um, one of my roadie leaders I call—the parkers, they wanted to name themselves roadies – it was awesome.
Rich Birch — That’s fun.
Mary Ann Sibley — And he’s a big banker. He travels all across the country. And you know he was so good, but he’d say I know you keep saying this, Mary. And I said, you just wait, Ralph – you just wait. And sure enough one day he said one of his guys he was handing him a t-shirt at the end of the day, and the guy said to him this young guy said, you know what, I was going to quit because my wife is so sick and can’t come. But since we were on break earlier, you sat with me and we’re just having coffee. And this kid shared with Ralph how sick his wife was. And Ralph’s like that sounds like what my wife has. It’s not a very common thing. And he goes, Mary Ann, my wife immediately walks by. And I stopped her and said hey Vic, would you mind connecting with his wife? And she’s like yes, let…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — …let’s connect. And so this kid says to Ralph, I was going to quit today. But then I realized this is why I’m here; this is why I’m at this church and this is why I’m on your team. And Ralph looked at me and said you don’t have to convince me anymore. Because I get it. And so and so that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Mary Ann Sibley — …is not wasted, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — This is this is Ralph saying, hey let me pray for you guys even though you don’t want to share your prayer requests, I don’t care. But it’s those little beautiful moments that we do when we’re forming relationships under under the whole umbrella and the and the strength of who God is in our lives in Christ. And then God makes those moments happen. And you know, I’ve just seen enough, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — …that it can seem very um like, oh yeah, sure Mary Ann, you know we’ve gotten so blasé. We’re we’re producing, we’re producing. And yet they’re missing an opportunity to form a discipleship opportunity for those volunteers.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So good. That’s that’s fantastic. Now how do you I know you help churches with this. What does that look like? Like how do you when you engage with a a church. What is that? How does that work? What are you kind of how are you helping them think through these things? What’s that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah, um, it usually best involves with an onsite visit. So kind of earlier what you said, I get to be the eyes and ears. I don’t I can do the secret shoppers, they call it, but I even prefer to just let me talk to your people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah for sure.
Mary Ann Sibley — Let me engage with them. They know I’m there. And I can immediately all through the day. So I meet with everyone before I get there in person. I spend the day on Sunday so I can be the eyes and questions and all that. So once we do that, then we come back and we strategize where’s the biggest need, what’s the the biggest path um area of ministry with volunteers. And it could be as a whole or right now I’m working with one church and she’s they’re saying we want our hospitality, our youth, and our children’s ministry. So I’m meeting with each of those groups about their volunteer culture.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s cool. That’s great. Well this is this has been fantastic. We’ve just scratched the surface. I know there’s so much that we could we could talk about, Mary Ann, but I really appreciate you. Any kind of final words as we as we wrap up today’s episode?
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, yeah I always say that the volunteers are not serving just to further your mission, that the volunteers are the mission they are the mission.
Rich Birch — So true. Yep, yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — And we um when we can stop and look at the people that are doing all the incredible things and realize, wow, what’s their story? What what do we know about them? Then that changes everything.
Rich Birch — So good. Well Mary Ann, I appreciate you being here. I know um your website is just maryannsibley.com. Is are there other places online we want to send people to connect with you and and you know connect with everything that you’re up to?
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, yeah I’m on Instagram just @masibley and um, a little bit on Facebook, my page there. But um, yeah, if you go to my website, you click on there, you’ll get my email just send me an email. I also do free consultation. So if you just want to hit that and say, hey Mary Ann, can we chat for 30, 45 minutes – just want to pick your brain and see what you think, I do that for everyone for free. So would love to hear from you. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Oh wow, that’s amazing. That’s great. Yeah I would I would recommend you take Mary Ann up on that. That would be ah that would be amazing. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here today and excited for you know for everything that’s going on in your world, and for that I’m just it was such an encouraging conversation. So thanks for being here today, Mary Ann.
Mary Ann Sibley — Thank you, Rich.
From 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 Days: Key Metrics for Explosive Church Growth
Apr 17, 2024
Today, we’re diving into the mechanics of rapid church growth, specifically how a church can potentially double in size—from 1,000 to 2,000 members—in just 1,000 days. If you’ve been pondering how to expand your congregation effectively and sustainably, this is the episode for you.
The Balance of Growth
Rapid church growth is exhilarating but maintaining a balance so your team can sustain the momentum is crucial. Imagine welcoming 500 new attendees in a single weekend! Such growth spikes can be overwhelming and highlight the need for a well-oiled operational system to handle new faces without compromising the community spirit.
Understanding Attrition
Every church experiences some level of attrition, typically around 15% annually. This includes members who pass away, move away, or leave due to dissatisfaction. Knowing this number is vital because it sets the baseline for the growth needed just to maintain current numbers, let alone grow.
The Power of Documented First-Time Guests
A pivotal metric for growth is tracking documented first-time guests. Aiming for about 3% (or 30 new guests each week for a church of 1,000) sets a solid foundation for potential growth. This approach keeps the community dynamic and engaging, encouraging regular attendees to invite others and thus, organically grow the congregation.
Focusing on Guest Retention
Once guests visit, the next challenge is retention. Thriving churches tend to keep about 26% of their first-time guests. This means if you’re meeting your target of 30 new guests weekly, you aim to integrate around seven to eight of those into your church community permanently.
Strategic Integration
To handle this influx, churches need to think strategically about integrating these individuals. This might involve launching new small groups or volunteer opportunities, creating enough space and engagement points to turn newcomers into regular members.
Sustainable Growth Over Time
By adhering to these metrics—3% new guests weekly, managing a 15% attrition rate, and retaining 26% of newcomers—a church can aim to grow by 26% annually. This growth rate, compounded over three years, means doubling in size, reaching that 2,000 member milestone within 1,000 days.
Actionable Steps
For church leaders looking to harness these principles, it starts with fostering an inviting culture and ensuring each service is an opportunity for members to bring someone new. Moreover, setting up systems to capture and follow up with first-time guests efficiently can help maintain this growth trajectory.
Growing your church isn’t just about numbers; it’s about creating a welcoming community that continually reaches out and retains new members. If your church is on the brink of expansion and you’re aiming for explosive growth, focusing on these key metrics will provide a clear and structured path to achieve your goals.
For further guidance and personalized coaching to implement these strategies, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our team is eager to support your journey of significantly impacting your community and helping more people connect with your church family.
Episode Transcript
Well, happy Wednesday, everybody. Welcome to the UnSeminary Podcast. Today, we’re talking about from 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 days, key metrics for explosive church growth.
You know, friends, what I want to do is kind of look up under the hood and help you understand what are some of the mechanics, the kind of growth mechanics, metrics, numbers, digits that you should be thinking about when you think about growing your church. You know, there are some kind of key numbers, benchmarks that we come across time and again, and I want to expose those to you, to talk you through those, really as a target for your church to be looking at. Now, I’m talking about today, thinking about a church of 1,000. I’m going to use that as an example, but these numbers scale up and down, but that’s an important metric because, you know, it kind of helps us, it’s a round number, let’s be honest. It’s an easy number to kind of get your head around, but the same numbers work if your church is smaller or larger.
You know, there’s really an interesting balance I found in church growth over the years. Really, we want to grow fast enough to make a difference in our community. You want that excitement of like, man, amazing things are happening, but not so fast that your team can’t keep up. I remember years ago, 20 years ago, we had a single Sunday where we had 500 new people show up at our church. We were about maybe 1,000, just over 1,000 at the time. So it was like a 50% bump in a single weekend. Wowzers, it was, you know, it was crazy.
And, you know, although it’s the kind of thing, like everybody says, they would love something like that to happen. It was a ton of work and, you know, we ended up scrambling to try to follow up. We had to scale up groups quickly. We had to scale teams quickly. And you know, the thing about those 500 people, they came literally on the launch of a series and they did not go away. And, you know, although you might, you know, that could happen to your church and it does happen from time to time. Really, I think we should be aiming for something that’s more sustainable, that’s more on pace over an extended period of time.
I have friends of mine, they joke about how the fact that they’re the slowest growing church in America, you know, which is kind of funny. They’ve been growing basically 10% a year, but really since the 90s. And now this church that started as a few hundred people is now pushing three, 4,000 people because they’ve had consistent growth over an extended period of time. And so the question is, could we find some metrics? Could we find some numbers up under the hood based on actual real world experience that we should be thinking about for our church if we’re looking at growing? And so that’s what I want to unpack for you today.
So the first number I want us to understand is really this attrition number. So every church has some sort of attrition. That means, you know, every year there’s a certain percentage of people who go away for whatever reason. You know, they leave and they don’t come back. Now I’ve seen this time and again. There’s a real sticky persistent benchmark here of 15% that lots of churches across the country, they have a 15% shrinkage rate that, you know, they really can’t do anything about. It’s not that there’s something negative happening at their church. 5% of their church just frankly passes every year. There’s a certain percentage of people in every community that just die. There’s 5% that move away. This would be like they moved to a new town. They moved to a new city, you know, job move, that sort of thing. And then there’s 5% that get upset, frankly, for one reason or another. I remember early on, one of my early mentors in ministry talked about if 10% of the people in your church aren’t threatening to leave because they’re upset about something, you’re probably not doing anything right. And I think there’s some truth to that. You know, there are a percentage of people every year that leave and so that just are not happy with what’s happening. In fact, just this week I was talking to a pastor and he was talking about how last weekend they rolled out a vision talk at their church. He was kind of talking about redefining again. Why do we exist as a church? And he said, you know, he got some hate mail for that, but he was like, hey, that’s good. That’s a good part of life. We want that. That’s a critical piece.
So the first thing is to understand that your church does have an attrition number. Now for today’s calculation, we’re gonna set that at 15%. Now that might be more, it might be less. The important thing for us to understand on the attrition number is we have to grow faster than the attrition number just to kind of tread water. So if you, you know, a church would have to grow by 15% if you’ve got a 15% attrition number just to kind of stay the same. And so we’ve got to get, you know, terminal velocity to kind of get out of the pressure of that.
So how do we do that? So one of the key numbers that I talk about all the time, we talk about in our coaching. We work through whether it’s in, you know, my books, you know, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. We talk about it in our group coaching, the Church Growth Incubator, one-on-one coaching is documented first-time guests. This is a critical number. Recently, we had Paul Alexander. He’s executive pastor at Sun Valley Church, giant church making huge difference. And he talked about the same thing. I asked him what’s a key metric that he looks at across his locations. And he said, documented first-time guests. Now, I like to talk about that as documented first-time guests on a weekly basis. And that number in our calculation today is 3%. So on a church of a thousand people, that means weekend, week out, you should be seeing 30 people. Now, in other contexts, I talk about how a benchmark is 2%. And this is true. Your church, if you’re at 2% a week, that’s kind of like table stakes. You need to, you know, if you’re not there, you need to be investing, doubling down on increasing your invite culture. If you’re not seeing, so in this case, if you’re a church of a thousand people and you’re not seeing 20 a week, weekend, week out, I would say there’s something wrong with your invite culture. We’re not seeing enough guests. Now, what that means is over a year at 3%, you’re gonna see 1,500 first-time guests come to your church. At 2%, which would be the absolute lowest benchmark, the kind of table stakes, it would be a thousand. It would be mirrored. And that’s how our good friend, Tony Morgan talks about it with the Unstuck Group. They talk about, hey, you should have the same number of guests in a year that you have on average in an average weekend attendance at your church. I like talking about this number as average documented first-time guests on a weekly basis because I think it focuses our system better.
So in today’s example, a church of a thousand people, they should say 3%. Again, where this is, we’re aiming towards doubling every thousand days or every three years. So if you see 3% average, that means every week, you’re gonna see 30 first-time guests. And the question is, what can we do to actually integrate or to respond to 30 guests? What can we do to try to get 30 guests connected to our church? If I think 1,500, that would be the annual number. That’s like an overwhelming number. The problem with thinking about it at an annual basis is like, I’m not sure how we follow up with 1,500 people, but can I get my team to think about 30 on a weekly basis? Man, I totally can. We can associate, get our heads around, how can we see 30? The other thing, the other reason why I like talking about it weekly, so 3%, again, that’s the number we’re shooting for here to try to get to this doubling every thousand days. The reason why I like talking about it on a weekly basis as well, rather than annual, is because we should be really forcing, driving invite every week, week in, week out. Every week at your church needs to be the kind of thing that people will wanna invite their friends to. And the problem I see about talking about it at an annual number is we’ll often think like, well, Easter or Christmas or Mother’s Day, we’ll see a bunch of guests come on those days. But oftentimes that doesn’t work out. And so what we need to do is be thinking about it week in, week out.
So the first two numbers, attrition, we’re gonna assume 15% annual attrition. That’s a good benchmark. If you don’t know what your attrition number is, that would be the number I’d pick. We see that, that’s a sticky benchmark we see across the church. The second, again, what we’re aiming towards is to try to double a church and to go from 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 days. And so what that document at first time guest number is 3%.
Now let’s talk about guest retention. So how many of those guests, what percentage of those guests are we going to actually try to retain? Now the benchmarks here, the rule of thumbs we’ve talked about is that stuck and stagnant churches keep one in 10 guests. Growing churches keep two in 10 guests. And really thriving churches, churches that are knocking it out of the park, keep three in 10 guests. So the number I want you to be thinking about when it comes to guest retention in our calculation to go from 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 days is 26%. And the reason why I say 26% is your goal is it’s aggressive, but it’s also doable. When you think about back to that 30 guest issue every week, weekend, week out, we’re going to see 30 first time guests come. Then what that means is we’re hoping to see seven or eight of those guests stick and stay within that first year. We want to see seven or eight, somewhere in that of those guests.
Now this is important for you to think about because I think sometimes as church leaders, it could be discouraging to think, man, we’re only going to keep seven or eight out of the 30. What about all those other people? But this is just the normal church dynamics. We see this time and again, even growing churches, you have way more people come through the front door than actually stick and stay at your church long-term. This is normal. This is a normative process. And so what we need to be thinking about is what can we do to build a system? Now there’s a ton and we’ll talk about this in future weeks. There’s a ton that we can do to try to figure out what can we do to see seven or eight of those people stick of those 30 every week or 26%. Now, if you follow that, assuming you’re a church of 1,000 people, you have 3% documented average weekly guests, you have a 15% attrition rate and you keep 26% of your first-time guests, that means that you’ll grow by 26% a year. Now the interesting thing about 26% is if you can sustain 26% for 1,000 days or three years, your church would double. You’ll go from 1,000 to 2,000 assuming all of that continuing. You’re losing 15% a year. You’re seeing that 3% week in, week out. If you can sustain that every three years or every 1,000 days, you will double as a church. Now, the reason why I love 26% as a target, it’s aggressive. That puts you in the fastest-growing churches in the country. That puts you among the fastest-growing churches in the country for sure. But what that looks like on the baseline of 1,000 is, man, can we integrate every year 250 new people into small groups? That’s like, can we launch 20 new small groups in this coming year? Could you do that? Could you make that happen? Could you integrate somewhere between 100 and 150 new volunteers in this coming year? We’ve gotta create space for them. That maybe is like launching a new location or that’s gotta expand your teams. You gotta launch new spots. If you don’t do these two things, you’re not going to be building the space to get these folks in. So we need to not just think about attendance on the front end. We need to think not just about how do we drive people to sit in our auditoriums, but ultimately it’s about creating space for them to stick and stay. So at 26% on a baseline of 1,000, it’s what can we do to create space for somewhere between around 250 people this year? And then obviously that number grows. After that first year, you’re gonna be about 1,250 and then you’ll be about 1,600. And then that last year, at the end of that last year, you’ll be 2,000 people. So the key metric, if I was sitting across the table from you today and I was saying, hey, if you’re a church of 1,000 and you’re thinking about growing, you’d like to get on this path towards 26%, I would start with the top end of that funnel and that is the average documented first-time guest. This is a number that you can control. By building your invite culture, by consistently pushing your people towards what can they do to invite their friends, you can increase your average documented first-time guests. Now, how do you gather that information? You gather that information by having an exchange. I like to call it the ethical bribe. On Sunday morning, you stand up every single week, week in and week out, and you say, hey, we’re so glad that you’ve come to Sunnyvale Community Church. Let’s say that’s the name of your church. We’re so honored that you’re here at Sunnyvale Church today. In fact, we’ve got a gift for you. If you’re new here at Sunnyvale Community Church, we’d love to give you this gift. Click on this QR code, fill out this card in the seat in front of you, and take it to our dedicated new here kiosk where we’ve got amazing volunteers who are going to give you one of these coffee mugs that says Sunnyvale or for Sunnyvale on it or this T-shirt. And in exchange for your contact information, we’re going to give you this gift today. And that’s the number that we look at and that’s the number that really should be that documented first-time guest. Obviously, also first-time kids are connected in with that as well.
So that’s some numbers there. So documented first-time guests, your target should be 3%. Annual attrition, assuming we see that lots of times, at 15% of church, your guest retention is 26% is what you’re targeting towards. That will drive overall growth of 26%, which will mean that a church of 1,000 will grow to 2,000 in 1,000 days. Friends, if you’re looking for help for this, particularly if you’re the church that we’ve been talking about today, a church of 1,000 people, we’ve got coaching. We want to get in your corner. We have predictable processes that we do with the churches we coach where we’ve seen this happen time and again. And if you want help with that, just reach out. Email me, I’d be happy to talk about that.
Host: Thanks so much, friends. Pumped to be in your corner. Hope that you have a great week and thanks for being on the path to try to grow your church, to make an impact, to see good things happen, to see people connected, to see marriages renewed, to see people take steps closer to Jesus, to see more people get baptized. Thanks so much, friends. We’ll talk to you later. We’ll see you next week on the Unseminary Podcast. We’ve got a great interview tomorrow. You’re not going to want to miss it. We’ve got an incredible interview coming up. You’re going to see that tomorrow here on the interview show. Thanks so much, friends. Take care.
Embracing the Future with Humility: Community Christian’s Leadership Succession with Ted Coniaris
Apr 11, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ted Coniaris, the Lead Pastor Apprentice at Community Christian Church. One of the fastest growing churches in the country, Community Christian is an entrepreneurial church which has been a ministry “teaching hospital” and vanguard for decades.
Whether it’s five years or fifty years, every lead pastor is called to shepherd their churches for a season. At some point they will step down from their role and pass the baton to a successor. How do we transition well and ensure that what we are building lasts beyond ourselves? Tune in as Ted shares about apprenticeship, team culture, and how to set your church culture up for a successful transition.
5 steps to apprenticeship. // Apprenticeship is fundamental to how Community Christian operates as they develop leaders and people to be activated into their mission. Taken from Dave and Jon Ferguson’s book, Exponential, the five steps of apprenticeship have also been core to the pastoral transition process. Current lead pastor, Dave, is in the process of leading Ted through these five steps, which include Step 1: I do, you watch, we talk. Step 2: I do, you help, we talk. Step 3: You do, I help, we talk. Step 4: You do, I watch, we talk. Step 5: Someone else watches you—the next apprentice.
A culture of humility. // The transition process at Community Christian Church is marked by a clear timeline and benchmarks for progress. Ted attributes much of the success of this transition to the humility and leadership of Dave. In addition to setting a humble example, Ted stressed the importance of being deeply committed to Jesus, and prioritizing teamwork. These elements are crucial in fostering a culture of humility within the church, which is essential for any successful leadership transition.
Tend to your soul in the transition. // Pastoral transitions bring with them a sharp learning curve and juggling a lot of different responsibilities. Build a support network of other lead pastors and talk about what you are going through. Continue to develop a culture of humility by sharing how you’re doing with your team. Ask them for grace when needed. Create daily rhythms that will help to nurture your relationship with God and the most important people in your life.
Be open-handed. // There are things that will change in the leadership team and infrastructure as a church transitions to a new lead pastor. Be open to the new vision that God is calling the church to in this new chapter. What changes will best serve where God is leading you? Don’t be afraid to make changes that may benefit your church as the leadership changes.
Plan ahead for transitions. // Think about how your church culture sets up for a transition. If you are building something that you want to last past you, you have to imagine what it will look like when you are gone. Aggressively remove parts of your culture that will reject a transition, and align your culture so transition will be viewed as a good thing.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and I’m really excited to have Ted Coniaris with us today. He is from Community Christian Church. They are a multisite church in Illinois. If you do not know them I don’t know where you’ve been. There, ah if if I’m counting right, 7 physical locations. Although they always seem their launch another, one micro-churches, online space, Community Freedom locations at correctional institutions and treatment centers in the area. Ted is the Lead Pastor Apprentice at Community Christian. He has been ah a campus pastor in one of their locations but is in the midst of a transition. I’m looking forward to today’s conversation because we’re catching a story as it’s happening. So really looking forward to this, Ted. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Ted Coniaris — So glad to be here, Rich. Thank you so much for having me.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you tell us, kind of fill out the picture a little bit about Community. You know that was just kind of the standard boilerplate stuff. Give us kind of the passion, if we were to come this weekend, what would we experience? Fill in the picture there a little bit.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I mean you could really say so much about the legacy of our church over the last 35 years, but the unifying thread that ties it all together, and and really still is going to be pointing us towards our future is our mission, which is helping people find their way back to God. I mean from the very first day that Dave and John Ferguson founded this church that was the unifying passion. It’s still our unifying passion today and as we’re in the midst of this transition, you know, part of my stewardship is stewarding that mission into the future. I mean that’s that’s my heartbeat. That’s Dave’s heartbeat. That’s the heartbeat of our future as well. So that’s that’s the big idea that ties us all together.
Ted Coniaris — But I think you pretty much covered we had got a lot of stuff going on. We’re entrepreneurial kind of church. We love doing whatever we can help people find the way back to God. So that’s starting churches in prisons. Yep, we’re in.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Ted Coniaris — That starting micro-churches all around the world. We’re in. You know, we’ll do whatever it takes. And we kind of joke sometimes like we’re willing to be the first person to like kick through the door, and then we expect people to come in behind us and do it a whole lot better than we’re doing it. But…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …that’s been the model for the thirty-five years. One of the first churches to go multisite.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — I think one of the first churches to leverage a micro expression in the way that we’re doing it. And you know that’s that’s a fun part of being here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, the Community Christian is a vanguard, a teaching hospital kind of church place, that you you’re taking the the hits and making stuff up and then the rest of us are ah you know are benefiting from that. And that continues I would say that continues with this current transition that you find yourself in. Like this is one of those areas where I think a lot of our churches are looking at and trying to figure out, Okay, how do we pass this on to the next generation. So talk to me about kind of your connection kind of up to this point where you were ended up being identified as the Lead Pastor Apprentice with Community Christian. How did that work, kind of kind of where’d you come from, all that kind of stuff.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I mean there’s so many different places to start the story, but just for sake of time, I was at large church in Chicago area. Not so far from our Community locations, maybe 45 minutes away.
Ted Coniaris — And God had really been doing so much through our time there in all kinds of different roles, was like executive pastor teaching pastor kind of role there. And we started having this really uncomfortable nudge from the Holy Spirit that maybe we should plant a church. And of course with great faith we said, No. We don’t want to do that.
Rich Birch — And like a good multiplying leader I said no.
Ted Coniaris — And yes, and I heard from the Lord and said, no thank you.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — But we were at least willing to explore it a little bit.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — You know, we felt that we’re like okay, let’s let’s go to this conference. We had heard about called Exponential. And so actually it was like ten years ago my wife and I went to an Exponential Conference in Orlando. truthfully like the most engaged I could tell you was halfheartedly sort of exploring the idea of planting with this seed…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Ted Coniaris — …that the Lord had planted. And I remember in the first session I leaned over to Melissa because Dave Ferguson and John lead Exponential. If you’re not familiar with what it is. It’s the largest global gathering of church planters. And if you are at all interested in that you should definitely go stop what you’re doing right now and register for Exponential next year in Orlando. it’s an incredible…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — …Spirit-moved experience. And I was like you know hey these guys are in Naperville did you know that? And she’s like oh wow. I’m like yeah, maybe I should reach out talk to them sometime. And little did I know about a year later I’d be sitting at a table with John and Dave connected through a mutual friend who is—you talk about Community being kind of like a teaching hospital, my friend, John Peacock who launched Mission Church also in Illinois he had did he had done his residency at Community. And Community actually had helped launch Mission and sent about a hundred of their people to go help start Mission along with our number one giver to help launch that really well. So that’s kind of our legacy.
Ted Coniaris — He’s like you know you got to talk to Dave and John. So ended up talking with them and as we were exploring church plant we’re looking at the same community in Downers Grove, which suburb of Chicago here. And really came away from that conversation thinking to myself, the only reason I wouldn’t plant with Dave and John as a part of Community is if it had to be about me. And that is a horrible reason to plant a church to make a name for yourself.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Ted Coniaris — And they’re like who I wanted to be when I grow up you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — I’m sitting with these guys. They’re being so gracious and generous with me. And I had read some of their books and stuff and I was like man, I hope when I’m sixty I can be sitting across a table from somebody like this and encouraging them in the way they’re encouraging me.
Ted Coniaris — And so long story short we ended up planting. I’ve planted one of our churches in Downers Grove six years ago. And God really blessed that; amazing things have been happening – they’re still happening there. And then I started overseeing some of our locations, leading network is what we call it. And now I oversee all of our locations and expressions. So our physical locations and then you mentioned our micro churches, our online church, and our churches in prisons, Community Freedom. And then Dave and I started talking about this next step about apprenticing to become the next lead pastor of Community. So that’s the story in a nutshell.
Rich Birch — Um, and yeah, that’s so that’s yeah, that’s amazing. So the, you know, let’s let’s kind of zero in on the part of the story where you know Dave it takes you off for lunch and is like so what’s your future? You know God has a God loves you and I have a wonderful plan for your life. Like what does that look like? How do you know where what was that what was, you know, yeah, how does how does he broach that conversation? What’s going through your head? You know, obviously you’re a humble leader you’re you know you’re you’re not like you’re like of course I’m the guy. But like how does all that work? What’s going on inside you when you know when that conversation’s happening?
Ted Coniaris — Well first of all I’ll say a part of our culture that’s really important is we are like a very relational culture. And so Dave and John are brothers, if you don’t know, Dave and John Ferguson. They have co-founding pastors of our church. Dave is the lead pastor. And I often will tell people that we’ve inherited—they’re kind of like our family of origin, as a church culture. And there’s like a brotherly sort of vibe to our staff and our team and our church – nobody’s too big for their britches. You know like if you start trying to act like some kind of big shot around your brother, you’re gonna get punched, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna get it. Yep yep, you’re gonna get it. Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so yeah, so we don’t nobody’s too big here. And so Dave and I had a great relationship, have had a great relationship. And the way it started was just very natural…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …me where I see myself and frankly replacing Dave or being the next lead pastor was not something I was really considering at the time. All focused on planting Downers Grove and seeing it flourish and reaching the community that we live in and my neighbors and friends and kids’ families’ friends and all that. That’s about all I could think about. But as my ministry role expanded and thinking more globally about the church, I think the first time we had the conversation came on the heels of talking through some significant challenges that we’re facing as a church. And at the end and Davis one of those leaders is always just looking for everybody’s perspective on it. You know, he doesn’t come in front line high with the one answer you know he wants to hear.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And they after that conversation he’s like, you know, if you ever would you ever consider, you know, stepping into to this role? Like, oh well yeah, I would consider it. You know… you know I guess I consider it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, honored to consider it humbling. Yeah yeah, yeah, totally, yeah yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah and then we just kept meeting and talking about it and became more and more of a reality. And ah, then went through some of the formal steps and got to where we are here today.
Rich Birch — Interesting. So then what does what is the process look like kind of where are you at in that process? You know what what have you learned so far? I know we were joking before we recorded I was like I’m I’m really looking forward to this conversation, then 5 years from now we’ll follow up and hear, everything was great. Um, you know here’s the stuff we learned.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But what kind of where are you at now in the process? What is what have you kind of what’s that look like, you know help us help us understand that.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that’s really fundamental to how we operate as a church is apprenticeship. You know, we are always developing leaders, always developing people to be activated into the mission that the Lord has called them to, however, they’re called and equipped to help people find their way back to God. And so our Kid City leaders have apprentices. They’re apprenticing people in the role that they’re in. our small group leaders. Our [inaudible] leaders, our Community Freedom leaders, ourCommunity Cares, our ministries out in the community. We always want all of our leaders to be apprenticing somebody…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …from top to bottom.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so that’s like our operating system.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so that’s the most significant positions and the most, you know, small minor positions you might think of in our community. It’s that relational apprenticeship. And and the way we’ve talked about apprenticeship is that it’s 5 steps to apprenticeship, and you could look this up or read it in the book Exponential that Dave and John wrote. But step 1 is is “I do, you watch, we talk.” Step 2 is “I do, you help, we talk.”
Ted Coniaris — And then it’s “You do, I help, we talk.” And then “You do, I watch, we talk.” And then “You do, someone else watches,” and that’s the next apprentice, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And those are the 5 steps of apprenticeship. And so we thought what better way to go through this transition than to have an apprenticeship process where we are visibly and publicly walking through these 5 steps in front of our church to reinforce this value, say nobody’s nobody’s too big to be apprenticed. You know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Ted Coniaris — We can always look and grow and develop. And so that’s what we’re doing. We’re publicly walking through the 5 steps of apprenticeship in front of our church which has just been awesome.
Rich Birch — Wow. And what’s the you know when you think about timeline. First of all, I love that framework. Obviously that’s… the thing I love, we you know we’ve talked about this in other contexts where you know we we talked to our people about hey everybody should have an apprentice. But then that seems to be not the case when it gets to the actual lead people. It’s like all you people need to get apprentices. But the fact that you’re structuring it that way I think is fantastic. Um, so kind of where are you at in that process? Is there a timeline, or how are you is it what are the benchmarks that you’ll know kind of you’re moving along? What’s how are you talking about that internally?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, absolutely. So we the the finish line is May May 1, 2025. So that’s just over a year away now. And we started about six months ago in the public phase.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And it so we’re we’re in this um I do, you help; you do, I help transition. So in between steps 2 and step 3 right now, where there are parts of what I’m doing now, which is me doing and Dave helping.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — And there are parts of what I’m doing right now that is Dave doing and me helping.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Ted Coniaris — And we’re kind of transitioning more and more where I will be the primary doer and Dave will be a primary helper. So that’s that’s the transition. So Dave is going to be the lead pastor. He is the, like in terms of clarity organizationally, he is the lead pastor until May 2025.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — However, how we operate and how we function is these 5 steps of apprenticeship in terms of our day-to-day reality.
Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. I like that. I love the kind of clarity there around hey there is like ah there’s a tripwire date that we’re pushing towards, but then also we’re following this process that there is a it’s a handoff. I like that there’s like a baton there. That’s you know that’s really good. What, so far, good, bad, missing, confusing? What’s been good? You know what’s been bad? Anything that you’re like oh like hey this next time I do this, next time I transition into becoming a lead pastor, I’ll do that differently? No, but what a, yeah, what’s kind of what’s your evaluation so far? What advice would you give to other leaders maybe who are listening in?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, great question. So much I could say. First of all I hope I never do this again, right. My goal in step is through this process is…
Rich Birch — Yes. [inaudible on the other side, this will be on the other side right?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I I’m deeply committed to being on the other side of this process in the future…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yes.
Ted Coniaris — …and I’m excited about that. But I I do not I’m sort of packing the coffin in this one. Like I don’t I don’t see myself going anywhere else like I want to be committed here.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah,
Ted Coniaris — But you talk about what were the categories used good, hard, or bad, and confusing… missing confusing?
Rich Birch — Yeah, good bad missing confusing. Yeah, just like kind of general of that evaluation. What’s you know, kind of what’s you already thinking so far?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, um, the good I’ll start with that.
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Ted Coniaris — This has felt inside and outside, and when I say inside and outside—like between Dave and I—in the inside, and the outside—like our leadership and our church—incredibly healthy and it really passes the smell test.
Rich Birch — Um, that’s good. That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — Like it just feels right. Like when we talk to people about, oh this is what we’re doing, and this is the amount of time we’re taking. like we decided to take a significant amount of time because we just didn’t feel like this is something that needed or should be hurried. Like let’s do this well, let’s take time.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — Let’s give people time to adjust. And I don’t need that, Dave doesn’t need that, like it’s it’s it’s felt super healthy. And if Dave were here he would say the same thing. There hasn’t been a point for either one of us where it’s been like oooh is this the right thing to do? Is this…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — It’s just like felt natural…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …healthy, really really good. And I would say a lot of that is a credit to Dave’s leadership and his humility. You were just going to ask a question.
Rich Birch — Well I was going to ask that. So um I so I was a part Connexus Church in in Canada. And um, you know Carrie Nieuwhof handed off to Jeff Brody – both great leaders. And but I would say both of them have the humility that you’re talking about. Like there’s that they are and I don’t know how we get at that. How do we cultivate that? With you know, and maybe we can talk about this on the the person coming into the role. How have you kind of been able to keep your ego in check? Keep your you know is it close relationship with Jesus, is that all it comes down to? Or is there anything that you’ve you know that’s been helpful to keep your you know the humility, because I do think if man if we can stay humble through this process I think there’s a much higher likelihood that it’ll actually, you know, take kind of thing. But what’s what’s been helpful for you in this to kind of keep close accounts and stay humble?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah I think there’s so many ways I could answer that. I think one of the ways is Dave setting the tone. Um it paints a picture of somebody who’s been able to accomplish a ton. I mean in our church nationally, globally. I mean by all measures and on all accounts you could look at Dave’s ministry and be like man that guy he’s done so much incredible work.
Rich Birch — Yeah yep.
Ted Coniaris — But he’s just so humble…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and just a regular guy. I mean my wife and I often joke like our goal is to bring normal back to church leadership. Like we’re bringing normal back, baby, like we are normal people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. I love it. I love it. Yes, yes, true very much.
Ted Coniaris — You know what I mean? Like why do we have to pretend like we’re not normal people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Like I’m deeply committed to Jesus, I’m deeply committed to my wife, I’m deeply committed to the ministry of the church, to preaching, to to learning, to growing, to all of those things, to the spiritual disciplines. But but I’m not, you know, anything other than a normal person who’s deeply committed to those things.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — And so I think the example of Dave, and just saying that on the outset, like I never try to be a superhero.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — I never set myself up to be that. I think that is so dangerous. And and another piece of it that I think is really key is—like of course relationship with Jesus like you mentioned—I’m going to talk about some of the other things, is your commitment to team. I think is really key.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — You, I believe cannot be a really good team leader and create a really good team culture if you are not humble.
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah, true.
Ted Coniaris — I think you could be really successful…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …and you might have some teams that do successful things, but I would argue, you know, your team culture is probably not what you think it is…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — …if you’re not a humble person. I love team. I believe that our teams are going to end up with better decisions, better sermons, better everything that I could produce on my own. I genuinely believe that.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — So what place would pride have…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …in that world. Of course pride is something we all struggle with. I’m not my life isn’t absent of pride by any means.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — But if pride were to poke its head out in a meeting…
Rich Birch — Yep, yes.
Ted Coniaris — …we’re so team-centric and we have such incredible people on our staff team here, I think they’d be like all right big guy like why don’t you sit back down, you know?
Ted Coniaris — Like our culture, our culture will correct itself in that way.
Rich Birch — Yeah the culture would reject that. Yeah it would reject that, it would be like that’s not that’s not who we are.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s not who we are.
Ted Coniaris — No.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Like somebody trying to build a brand, things like that in our culture, it’s like yeah that doesn’t fly here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that doesn’t. Yeah that would be as an outsider that has been my experience with both Dave and John. Like I I bumped in while I was talking talking to both of them. We just you know were recording this the week after Exponential and bumped into both of them and Dave I’ve had a fair amount of interaction back and forth with. John I I really haven’t. And like he stops me in the hallway and is like, hey Rich, and like shakes my hand. And I was like, what? Like how do you know me? Like what is you know, what’s that connection? And you know he doesn’t need to go out of his way to like say hi, right? Like you don’t need to do that. Um, but, you know and obviously he’s got those guys got a million other things going on at a thing like that. Man, that’s that’s great.
Rich Birch — What about on the, you know, bad, missing, confusing? We’ll lump that all together, stuff that maybe like, hey early on here’s some stuff we’re working through um, you know, that you know, we’re we’re so taking a bit to adjust to as we’re you know as we’re going through the process?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah. I mean I’ll speak to that one personally.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — Because I think that’s been the hardest part honestly. We’re in a phase right now where I have been wearing a bunch of different hats, as often happens in a church context. I’m sure all of you listening right now, men and women working in the church…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …my hunch is that most of you wear multiple hats. Um, that’s how we operate too, being entrepreneurial as a community.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — We maybe wear more hats than what would be typical…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …in a different culture. And so I got I’m wearing a bunch of hats, and now I’m putting on more hats…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …and I’m not yet where I’m able to take off some of those hats.
Rich Birch —How many hats can I get? Yeah.
I look like one of those Carnival people selling hats, honestly, you know? Like I’ve got all the hats.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes here you go.
Ted Coniaris — And if you want a hat like come into a hat. like I’m gonna be dishing out hats.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — But um, that’s been the hardest part. I I’m in like what I think and hope will be the most um, strenuous time-wise…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …season of the transition in these middle sections of the apprenticeship process, which I anticipated would be the case.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — But I think I underestimated how I would feel in this time. And so for me, that’s the thing that is the hardest that I’m actively working on right now. And actually coming out of Exponential that was kind of a light bulb for me where I was like, okay, I’ve accepted this storyline that I need to do these things right now. What if I don’t? Like what if what if there are parts of what I’m doing that I I actually need to hand off sooner or we need to stop doing sooner than what we had planned. And so that’s that’s like the rough and gritty middle…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — …of the process that I’m feeling right now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Ted Coniaris — Everything is wonderful, but it is not I am not operating at a sustainable pace at the moment.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And that’s something that I’m I’m peeling back and it will take some time, but I’m definitely committed to. And now I’m saying it to you and to whoever’s listening. So you guys feel free to send me an email say, hey Ted, did you actually follow through on that?
Rich Birch — Did you do that? Did you act?
Ted Coniaris — Like give me some accountability.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s great. Yeah, that’s that’s so good. What I yeah I can see that that makes sense. There’s like ah I think the idea of a pinch point here like we’re in a transition going across a bridge and it’s like hey you know things are going to be a little bit overwhelming. You know on the on the kind of personal human side, that is ah that could be a recipe for things to go sideways, right?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because it’s like hey things are busy. What are you doing anything different in this season to kind of stay connected, pace yourself to try to, you know, or is that what you’re identifying like I got to get more of that in my life. What are what are you doing to try to keep/tend to your soul in the midst of that kind of transition?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, great question. I mean I have a pretty robust kind of personal—ah I don’t know what you want to call it—infrastructure around me…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …or scaffolding around me…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …maybe is a better way to put it. And I think in this season of transition I’ve I’ve amped up some of the scaffolding…
Rich Birch — Yep
Ted Coniaris — …that I don’t think will be like permanent…
Rich Birch — Yep
Ted Coniaris — …for me moving forward, but it’s a helpful as I’m I’m building in this really crucial stage.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yep.
Ted Coniaris — So I mean I’ve got a group of other lead pastors that I like who are my dear friends that live in the area here. We’re friends on mission together. We can share anything and everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — That’s really really important. Another part of like creating a culture of humility that actually helps me in this is I will share this with my team. So I’m not hiding this from anybody.If somebody comes and asks me how I’m doing I’ll tell them this.
Ted Coniaris — The people who are reporting to me right now I say, hey I just want to apologize to you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — I feel like I haven’t been present as I need to be in as you need me to be in this season. And I’m wrestling in this in between to try to figure that out. So can you give me some grace in this as we’re moving forward because I might need a little bit more room than than we would we would want than either of us would want in any other circumstance.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — And so just putting it all above board, not trying to appear like I’ve got I’ve got all of it on my back and I have this is all perfect. You know it’s like things are going great like I do feel good. But I know I can’t keep this pace long term.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — So those some things. And then my mornings are really important to me. That’s my space before the kids wake up, you know, my wife and I have a pretty regimented morning. We get up real early. You know, exercise is a part of that. Our quiet time is a part of that. Our connection is a part of that, just for us. We have three young boys 14, 11, and 8.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — If we don’t do it then it’s just not gonna happen.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — So that’s that’s a big part of it.
Rich Birch — So good. You know, um in ah Warren Bird and William Vanderbloemen’s book Next, where they talk about pastoral succession, one of the things, there’s lots of great insights in there, um you know, but one of them that that struck me as like so practical but like ah ah, kind of um, a stumbling point in these successions is oftentimes the the lead pastor who is transitioning out, they don’t have anything to do once they transition out. They don’t have like…
Ted Coniaris — No yeah.
Rich Birch — And and part of what they coach there is like you they need to get a hobby. Like they need to they need to find, you know, they you know… Now, Dave this is not the problem that Dave, you know, has. This like you know I can’t keep…
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …he’s got a lot of hats, right?
Ted Coniaris — Yes. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like he’s got New Thing, Exponential has got a lot of different things going on. How are you guys thinking about the kind of how does the post transition, you know, your connection Community’s connection with New Thing, with Exponential, how does all that fit together?Because you know I think it’s I think there’s lots of opportunity and good there’s good things there. But you know, how how are you navigating the kind of local mission of Community to reach the Chicagoland area versus, you know, the church’s connection as a teaching hospital, frankly for lots of other, you know, other churches?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What’s that look like for you?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah. Wow. So those of you maybe not aware we talked a little bit about Exponential…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — …which is a community with a cause is how we describe it. It’s a collection of conferences, gatherings, equippings for church planters all around the world and Dave is the leader the principal leader of Exponential. There’s Exponential USA, Español, Europe…
Rich Birch — Yeah, Australia
Ted Coniaris — …Asia, you know, it’s all over the world. And then there’s also New Thing which is the church planting arm of Community Christian Church which is now it’s on separate entity and organization as of this last year. Which has last year planted over 8000 churches alone…
Rich Birch — It’s amazing. It’s amazing.
Ted Coniaris — …help catalyze planting 8000 churches in one year. I mean it’s incredible like what God is doing through these things…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …and Dave is also the principal visionary and leader of that. So yeah, he’s got a lot going on. And and in God’s timing here it’s really been a season where those things are what Dave can uniquely bring to the table in the season of his life and leadership as a bridge builder and as somebody who can get different leaders at the kingdom table to work for the kingdom good. Dave is uniquely gifted in that. It’s really like an anointing. There’s no collection of things that he has or does where you say, oh that’s how you do that. It’s more like just who God has made Dave to be and the vision that that he’s set before him.
Ted Coniaris — And so definitely as we go through this transition Dave, I think, is stepping into his season of greatest contribution and most significant kingdom impact. And not not one of lesser kingdom impact. It’s going to look different but I also believe that a part of what I’m stewarding here is as a community to accelerate those things as well. Maybe the best correlation to a model that people may be more familiar with if you’ve been around the church for a while is ah and some churches still do this and it’s a wonderful thing to do but you have like your missionary partners who maybe are in this part of the world. And then every once a while they come back to the church and they speak you know this is what’s happening in Ukraine, and here’s how we’re helping people in the community and what we’re doing. And and we’re financially supporting them. We’re prayerfully supporting them. And we try to send teams and we’re. We see like this is a part of what we’re doing as a church. It’s not just what this missionary is doing. It’s like we have that like in spades, right? It’s like we have this amazing missionary named Dave Ferguson and John Ferguson…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …and by the way these ministries have grown out of this church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — They are us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — And we’re planting churches all over the world and we want to be their number one financial supporter. We want to be their number one people supporter, their number one leadership capital supporter. Like like we are all in for this mission to see more and new people find their way back to God And and we still believe that the best way to do that is to plant new churches. And so Exponential and New Thing are our chief partners in that ministry and we’re deeply involved. I’m personally involved in those things.
Ted Coniaris — And so Dave’s role here at the church pragmatically he’ll step into a founding pastor role. And he’ll still be involved with me relationally. He’ll still be teaching around the church. But it’s almost like ah like a chief missionary…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and kind of like he and Sue, it’s like mom and dad.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — You know it’s like a real healthy relationship…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and a really beautiful thing honestly. And and there’s zero part of me that feels threatened to have Dave around, have him teaching. And there’s zero part of Dave it feels threatened by me – that one makes more sense, you know. But ah ah well…
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Ted Coniaris — But it’s just just works because we love and respect each other.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — And we’re both are cheering for the same things you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — So that’s kind of how we’re seeing it.
Rich Birch — Are are you thinking, so this is like super tactical kind of nitty gritty thing…
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and this might not be sorted out and so you’re like, I don’t know; come back and ask me in a year. But you know, post the Dave transition, is there any discussion publicly around um, you know, restructuring how the leadership team works, or is it going to be is it literally like a one for one. You’re going to plop into what you know, kind of all the functions he used to have, you’re going to plop into that. Or is there what you know is there any kind of spread of some of the stuff he did and again it might be too early for that conversation. I don’t know.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I think we’ll see.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Ted Coniaris — The bigger thing is, you know, what is this new vision that God is calling us to in this next chapter.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — While there are parts that we’re deeply committed to and will not change…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …like really significant parts of who we are like our mission and and our part of culture, there are new things that we’re going to be chasing. And so that structure, part of that will see what best serves as we move down that road towards this new vision.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — But there are some things that were we are already changing. So yeah, we’re restructuring our leadership team which actually starts next Tuesday on March 19.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Ted Coniaris — And so we’ve been working through that with our team. And and I’m sort of the impetus for that change…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and Leanna Weber who’s a key member of our team here, like an executive pastor. She’s gonna be leading that new team. And so we’re we’re starting to implement some of the infrastructure…
Ted Coniaris — …that we’ll need through the season of transition with Dave’s affirmation but with my leadership.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so that becomes I think the the best of both worlds.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …where you can use the influence and the leadership capital of the last thirty five years of faithfulness in Dave, but also the new vision and excitement for what’s yet to come.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And Dave is fully on board with all of it where he’s like, as we talk about it’s like man, let’s just do it all right now!
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ted Coniaris — You know like this this is what I would want to do if I was here.
Rich Birch —Yeah yeah, great.
Ted Coniaris — Like he’s he’s as ah, excited as I am about it. And and that really is a gift.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well Ted, this has been just such a rich conversation. I’ve loved we’ve you know like I say it’s ah hopefully you know we could come back in ah in a bit and kind of hear the next part of the the the journey. But anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Ted Coniaris — Ah, no I think one thing you had mentioned earlier just kind of the who’s listening in here.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And I think there’s probably some lead pastors who are listening in…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …who are maybe considering like what might be next for you. And then there are probably a bunch of other people who are in second and third chairs who might be working with somebody. You know there’s transition talk. Um I’d like to say some to them and I’d like to say something to the younger group.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Ted Coniaris — So like the group that might be thinking, you’re nearing a transition…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …my encouragement to you is start talking to other church leaders right now.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — If you don’t feel like you can talk about it publicly, that’s fine. I totally understand the sensitivity of that conversation. But shoot me an email. Shoot somebody else an email. Like talk about how you can do this with wisdom.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Ted Coniaris — So it’s not just like ah you don’t have to do the model where you just drop out and somebody else drops in.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Like you don’t have to do it that way. In fact, that might be the worst way…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …for your church to transition. And you need to start talking to other people about how that can happen – somebody that you trust, people that you can trust if it’s not within the context of your existing church.
Ted Coniaris — And then what I would say to the younger crowd who are in some of those same seats who aren’t thinking about a transition yet, be thinking about how your culture sets up for a transition.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Ted Coniaris — Because if you are building something you want to last past you, you have to imagine what it will look like when you leave. And so if there are parts of your culture that are going to reject a transition, remove them from your culture, aggressively.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Ted Coniaris — Part of what makes this work so well is that I don’t think Dave was thinking about a transition. But he aligned our culture in such a way where a transition is received as a good thing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …and a healthy thing and actually something people expect, even though we never talked about it and Dave is a younger guy. It’s something that people weren’t they weren’t expecting it. But when we talked about it, when I came up and Dave and I and John talked about it with the church, everybody’s like oh yeah, that makes sense.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — And it makes sense because of our culture, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, so good.
Ted Coniaris — It wasn’t like, oh my gosh! It’s you think it could happen with someone like Dave.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — Our culture is receptive because it’s a multiplying culture. And so…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — …um, I would really really encourage the young leaders to be looking at their culture honestly through that lens…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — …because if it’s if it’s going to receive and grow past you, you know you got to you got to align the culture now because it takes time.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I know you know I’ve talked with a number of folks that are in those placement, you know, different placement companies, and I’ve heard I heard the term recently a crash landing crash landed succession, where there are these like it’s it it and I and it sounds exactly how it sounds, right? They they show up to the, you know, those organizations and it’s like we you know it’s like a board chair or something from a church and it’s like our lead guy just told us he’s leaving in six weeks. He’s been here for 35 years. We have no way to we we don’t know where to start. And I was like that is terrifying, like that that’s tough, man. And so um, what a great word. You know, particularly on that side for leaders to, you know, raise the banner and say like hey let’s talk about it. Let’s let’s let’s engage with it. That’s yeah, that’s really really good.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ted I really appreciate your generosity I appreciate your humility and and you know just jumping on the call and and talking through with us today. Really really appreciate that. If people want to connect with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online, where’s kind of the best place for that?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, you can just check out my email tedconiaris@communitychristian.org you could send me email. That’s the best way to get a hold of me. And then communitychristian.org that’s our website you can check us out there. Connect anyway through there. But yeah feel free to shoot me an email, check out our website, check us out online, whatever you need. And we love to help churches and we love to help churches think about multiplication and planting, and you know multiplying discipleship. So if there’s any way that we can help you with that, not that we have all the answers, but we love talking about it, and helping, and you can join the community of us trying to figure that out.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Ted, appreciate being here today.
Ted Coniaris — Hey, thanks, Rich. Really appreciate it.
Attention Economy: Understanding Its Impact On Your Church’s Mission
Apr 10, 2024
In our rapidly evolving digital landscape, the concept of the attention economy has become increasingly relevant, especially for churches seeking to navigate this new terrain effectively. At its core, the attention economy is about the commodification of human attention, where businesses and organizations vie for our focus amidst an overwhelming sea of information. This shift presents unique challenges and opportunities for churches committed to growth and engagement. We delve into the implications of the attention economy for your church’s mission and outline strategies for thriving within it.
The Shift to the Attention Economy
Historically, economies have evolved from agricultural to industrial and, more recently, to digital. Today, we find ourselves in the attention economy, where the scarce commodity is not goods or services but the attention of humans. This paradigm shift is driven by the fact that in a world saturated with information, capturing and maintaining attention translates to influence and, ultimately, value creation.
Why It Matters for Your Church
For churches, the attention economy underscores a vital reality: the competition for your congregation’s attention extends far beyond the walls of your church. With entities like YouTube and social media platforms shaping the beliefs and behaviors of many, understanding and engaging with this economy is crucial for churches that aim to grow and influence effectively.
Increase Communication Cadence
In an era dominated by the attention economy, the frequency and relevance of your communication play a pivotal role in keeping your church’s message in the forefront of your congregation’s mind. Here’s how to enhance your communication strategy:
Embrace Regular, Targeted Communication: Develop a consistent schedule for reaching out to your congregation. This involves not just the quantity but the quality and relevance of the communications. Each message should serve to connect, inform, or inspire, ensuring that your church remains a constant presence in their lives.
Utilize Bite-Sized Content: Attention spans are shorter than ever, making it essential to convey your message in concise, engaging snippets. Break down complex ideas into smaller, more digestible pieces of content that can be easily consumed and shared. This approach helps to maintain interest and engagement over time.
Think About Deeper Personalization
Personalization is key in making each member of your congregation feel seen, understood, and valued. Here’s how to leverage personalization within your church’s communication efforts:
Leverage Influencers Within Your Community: Identify and engage with individuals who have a natural influence within your congregation. These individuals can help amplify your message through their networks. Personalized outreach to these influencers can lead to more authentic and widespread engagement across your community.
Engage in Two-Way Conversations: Shift from seeing digital platforms as mere broadcasting tools to engaging communities where real conversations happen. Respond to comments, initiate discussions, and encourage your congregation to interact with your content. This level of engagement fosters a deeper sense of community and connection.
Customize Your Messaging: Tailor your communications to address the specific interests, needs, and concerns of different segments within your congregation. This could mean developing specific content for parents, youth, new members, or those interested in missions. Personalized content shows your congregation that you understand and care about their unique journeys of faith.
By focusing on Increasing Communication Cadence and Thinking About Deeper Personalization, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by the attention economy. These strategies not only help to keep your church relevant in the digital age but also deepen the connection with your congregation, driving engagement and growth.
Navigating Forward
The attention economy isn’t just a challenge; it’s an opportunity for churches to rethink engagement and mission in the digital age. By increasing communication cadence, embracing bite-sized content, leveraging personalization, and fostering community engagement, churches can navigate this new economy with purpose and impact.
The journey through the attention economy is complex, but it offers a rich landscape for churches to connect with their congregations and communities in meaningful ways. As we adapt and innovate, the potential to deepen our mission and extend our reach is boundless. Let’s embrace this journey together, leveraging the attention economy to further the Kingdom in this digital age.
Episode Transcript
Well, happy Wednesday, everybody. It’s Rich Birch here from the Unseminary Podcast. Today, we’re talking about the attention economy. What is it and what difference does it make to your church? But before we get there, a little programming announcement.
So, if you’ve been following along, you might have noticed we’ve been doing these experimenting really with these Wednesday episodes. These are solo episodes, less than 20 minutes long. The goal is to provide you some actionable training. These will be the kind of thing that you can apply right away. And we’ll continue on Thursdays with our traditional episodes where we interview church leaders.
If you don’t know, we’re pushing 800 episodes over there. And our goal with our Thursday episodes is we really get you face-to-face with operational leaders in prevailing churches. So, the folks that we interview on Thursday are leading in fast-growing churches, churches that are making a difference. And I wanna get you face-to-face with them to really learn what’s happening in them.
Friends, I’m on a mission. My personal mission is just to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. And so, we wanna continue to provide excellent resources. That’s blog posts, and podcasts, and digital magazines, and emails, emails all the time. And we have all kinds of other resources including courses, and I just tell you, we’re actually doing church-based coaching. All of these things put together really to try to get in your corner and say, hey, how can we help your church grow? And so, we’re gonna move this from being a spreader and say, hey, we’re gonna go for the foreseeable future here on Wednesday with a solo episode. And today we’re on the attention economy.
What is it, and what difference does it make to your church? So, the attention economy, this is the economy we’re finding when we find ourselves where we are today. At one point, our culture was an agricultural culture for probably 1,500, and really what we were trying to do there was extract resources out of the ground. We were trying to convert through the cycles of seasons, make food that we could sell to other people. That shifted in the 16th and 18th century to a mercantile economy where really global trade was a big deal. It was about moving that agriculture around the world, moving spices around the world. Then in the 18th century, man, there was a huge shift to an industrial, through the Industrial Revolution to an industrial economy where that’s where we really had the development of the urban centers that we see all over the world as we really built up industrial development at scale, the power of steam, the power of coal, converting energy ultimately into resources that could be sold and traded around the world. Well, then in the late 20th century, things converted one more time to the digital economy.
You know, this is really the information economy. But then more recently, really what’s happened is we’ve shifted to what has been called the attention economy. And what is the attention economy, you ask? It’s where your and my attention, human attention is treated like a scarce and valuable commodity with businesses really ultimately competing to capture and hold our attention and ultimately turning around and converting that into revenue or ultimately, you know, value and wealth long-term. It really highlights the nature of attention that the idea that, you know, at the end of the day, information and media is at the core, but really what we’re trading, what our economy is based on in so many ways is this idea of holding people’s attention.
If you look at this, there’s this group of stocks called the Magnificent Seven, so Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, the folks behind Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, and Tesla these seven stocks represent the vast majority of growth in the world economy. In fact, actually those seven stocks are worth more than, you know, something like, you know, 50% of the global GDP. These people are worth a ton. Now, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple, and probably Microsoft to some extent. So at least four or five of those Magnificent Seven are based on this idea of holding our attention and holding your people’s attention. We have a valuable resource when people come to our events on the weekend, when they log into our websites, when they subscribe to our social feeds, that has actual value. And the difference of where things were even 10 years ago or 20 years ago is that there are companies that are competing for our people’s attention. You know, you’ve seen this happen.
If you’ve bumped into people in your church where you feel like, man, these people feel like they’ve been discipled more by YouTube than by our church or by the Bible. This is an outcome of the attention economy. YouTube has figured out how to capture the attention of your people to hold it, and then ultimately steer it towards a certain kind of outcome. You know, we’ve seen positive outcomes from this. In fact, just last week, we talked about an Easter 2024 study where we looked at churches that were inviting people to come to Easter. And one of the questions we asked is, how many different ways did you ask your people or did you kind of motivate, train, equip, and motivate your people to invite? And what we saw was those churches that did more than seven different things, seven distinct ways to encourage their people to invite saw a 53% bump over the average in Easter attendance.
Why is this? Well, friends, I would say it’s because of the attention economy. The churches that realize, hey, we’ve got to get in front of our people, stay in front of them, are seeing great results. They’re seeing an outcome in their people. In that case, it was a bump in Easter attendance. You know, we see this show up in lots of different places.
One of the things that often we end up talking about in our coaching is the fact that there are vast, there are way more guests that show up to growing churches that ultimately stick and stay. Did you know this? So sometimes I think we think, well, you know, for every guest, we must see a large percent of those people stay. That’s actually not true. In fact, stuck in stagnant churches will see only one in 10 people of their first-time guests actually stick into their church. Growing churches see two in 10, and thriving churches, the most fast-growing churches in the country see three in 10 guests stick and stay. So for every hundred guests, they’ll only see 30% of those actually stick and stay. But you know what we’ve seen over time, the difference between those churches that see guests stick and stay and those that don’t, is the churches that see guests stick and stay, they communicate a whole lot more than those churches that don’t see guests stick and stay.
In fact, we’ve talked in other contexts that, you know, in that when a guest arrives, fills out that new year card, lets you know, hey, I’ve been a part of that. A best practice is to communicate with them seven times in the first 11 days. And you know how many times I’ve said that to church leaders and they’re like, wow, that’s crazy, that’s too much.
In fact, actually just this week, I was talking to a leader and they said the same thing seven times in 11 days. And then we rattle off a bunch of examples. It’s a handwritten card from people at your new here kiosk. It’s a video that afternoon. In fact, did you know one of the largest churches in the country, if you were to go visit it this weekend, if you were to fill out their new here card, you’re going to get a personalized video greeting from a campus pastor at that church. Literally every week, they send out thousands of these videos, they’ve prioritized this.
Why? Because they know that we live in an attention economy. We’ve got to get in front of people. You know, it’s also like midweek emails. It’s maybe sending them some sort of piece of mail. Maybe it’s even just like baking cookies and driving them and putting them on their doorstep. We’ve got to arrest that attention. People have taken a step towards us. We need to take a step towards them.
Listen, Sundays used to be about the big event. Our discipleship used to be about just getting people to show up on Sundays. It used to be just about enough to get them to come for an hour. But really what we’re seeing is prevailing churches now understand that discipleship is much more of a flow. It’s much more about, hey, how do we keep in front of our people consistently throughout of the week?
So the attention economy, you live in it and I live in it. I know, listen, you probably feel some tension around this. You probably feel like, gosh, I wish we didn’t have to communicate so much. I wish we didn’t have organizations vying for our people’s attention. The reality of it is we do. And so we’ve got to make some changes to the way we operate.
So I’ve got two main takeaways for you today that I want you to think about because of the fact that you and I live in an attention economy. The first is you’ve got to increase your communication cadence. You’ve got to increase your communication cadence. What do I mean by that? You’ve got to communicate more. So if you’re a team leader today, let’s say you’re a staff member. Let’s say your church is a thousand people and you’re in student ministry or you’re in small groups ministry. Stop asking to get in front of the announcements on Sunday. Stop thinking, hey, if I just can get in the announcements or if I can just get our lead pastor to say something from the stage to do some sort of broadcast, what you need to be thinking about is, hey, how can I develop a list of my constituents? So these are the people that are connected to my ministry. How do I develop an email list, a texting list? And then what I should be doing is finding ways to communicate more with those people.
Listen, I can guarantee your lead pastor, your XP or whatever, if you’d say to them, hey, I want to reach out to my people on a regular basis. I don’t need to get out in front on a Sunday every week to talk about what’s coming up. They’re gonna cheer for you. So communicate more. Don’t think about just, if I can just get something in the big announcement on the weekend. No, you’ve got to arrest that from your people and figure out how do you get in front of them.
Think bite-sized. When you think about communication pieces, the reality of it is people live with less attention that we’ve had before. It’s been bite-sized. It’s been atomized. It’s been carved up into small little bits and pieces. We’ve seen this with video. A long video now is considered anything over 90 seconds online, which is crazy to me. People just frankly have less attention than they used to have. So when you’re thinking about increasing your communication cadence, a kind of corollary to that or an impact of that is you’ve got to break things down into small bite-sized chunks. So rather than saying, hey, I can send one brochure home as a student pastor about the upcoming retreat, I’ve got to think about, hey, what are the five different communication pieces I need to send to parents over the next month to keep reminding them about the upcoming retreat, keep keeping in front of them about what their kids can expect, keep talking to them about what is going to happen at the retreat. Think bite-sized so that you can increase your communication cadence.
The second takeaway for you is I would be thinking about deeper personalization. Think about deeper personalization because of the attention economy. The one thing when I think about deeper personalization, think about your church today. And the broader kind of attention economy has figured out that there are influencers out there. There are people in the broader economy who have social influence. And now I know you think about influencer as like the cool guy who sits on the hood of the car and says, hey, you should buy this product or whatever. But really all influencers are are people who are looked at by a certain group of a social group and are saying, hey, I wanna follow what those people do. And you know what? Your church has a series of influencers. Now, those influencers are different than your organizational structure. There are people that have influence in your church that don’t necessarily have any authority. In fact, there may be people that have more influence than the staff or pastors in your church that have authority. And so I would be thinking about who are the influencers? And then how can I reach out to them and get them to help us talk about whatever it is that we wanna talk about as a church? How could we be reaching out to influencers and ultimately asking them to help us spread the message and doing that in a personalized way? If I was trying to spread, say an upcoming event, maybe I would think about who are the five parents among sticking with the youth example, who are the five parents who seem to have a lot of social influence? Hey, why don’t I reach out to them, give them some content, ask them if they would be willing to spread it. Just this week, we saw this happen at our church. There’s a really sad story happening of, there’s a young man in our church with a young dad who’s got kids and he’s struggling with cancer. And on Sunday, a group fired up a Facebook chat and invited a bunch of people and said, hey, we’re gonna gather a prayer event the next day, literally 24 hours later. And the next day, 150 people showed up at these folks’ house. I know that there are, and it was an amazing night, a little bit of worship, a little bit of prayer. It was a lot of fun. The interesting thing that I took away from that, beyond the fact that the local church, when done well, is an unstoppable force for good. Can I get an amen from the people in the back? Outside of that, one of my takeaways from a communication point of view was, man, how many church leaders would be thinking, man, I wish I could get 150 people in a room to pray about anything, but here was a group who informally, it was not because of something that we did as a church, which I think is a fantastic thing, said, hey, we’re gonna take it on ourselves and they’re influencers in our culture. Take note of that, friends. Who are the people who pull that kind of thing together? How could you have deeper personalization by leveraging influencers? Okay, I’ve beat that dead horse. You don’t need to think about that anymore. Another thing when I think about deeper personalization is engagement, think about engagement over broadcast. So this is low-hanging fruit for me. This is something I don’t do well, and I’m saying this publicly because I wanna do it well. In the attention economy, people who thrive, firms who thrive, organizations who thrive, think about engagement over broadcast. Stop thinking about your social media feeds as a broadcast, an industrial broadcast. Like, so what used to happen in the industrial age is stuff was made at plants and sent all over the world. Cars were made in Detroit and sent all over the world. And we think about communications in the same way. Things were broadcast from New York City to all across the country. And you can think about yourself, if you don’t think clearly, you can still think of yourself in the industrial age. We’re not in the industrial age anymore. In the engagement age or in the attention age, engagement is paramount. And so when people comment on your feeds, when they comment on a social media feed, when they send you a message on WhatsApp, when they send you a message on Facebook, what are you doing to respond to those? Those organizations that understand the attention economy are responding to folks online. They’re liking comments, they’re saying amen. They’re working to respond with those. Recently, I did a quick study on this, informal study where I commented to about a dozen churches. And it was fascinating how long it took some churches to respond to those comments. The same is not true with prevailing organizations in the attention economy. If you see organizations that, you know, you go on a MrBeast YouTuber, if you comment on his social feed, watch how fast someone will respond to you. Look at an influencer who’s trying to build their influence. Look how quickly they get back to you. And why is that? That’s deep personalization. There’s something that happens inside of people during the engagement economy when you respond to them online at a personal level. So there it is, friends, the attention economy. What is it and what differences does it make to your church? Two outcomes are increase your communication cadence and think about deeper personalization. Thanks for being a part of Unseminary. Super excited for tomorrow’s interview. You’re gonna wanna pay attention because we’ve got a great interview coming up tomorrow. And we’ll see you next week with more practical training on Wednesday. Take care, friends.
Redemptive Poverty Work: Transforming Urban Communities Through Faith with Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders
Apr 04, 2024
Thank you for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to have Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders from World Impact with us. This organization comes alongside church leaders and offers training and support designed for the urban context.
The American Church has devalued the urban space, either fearing it or viewing it as something to avoid. Church leaders in urban neighborhoods struggle to sustain ministry impact and growth because they don’t have the training needed to build healthy churches in communities of diversity and poverty. Tune in as Dr. Sanders offers resources to help with the critical work of supporting urban church leaders and communities grappling with poverty.
What is urban? // The sociological definition of “urban” involves the three D’s: the diversity of the people, density with more people in smaller spaces, and distance, meaning how we view time and space. Condense all three of those things together and it creates the specific view of the world you live in. The codified evangelical definition of “urban” is black, brown, poor. However, that’s not necessarily what urban is. Whether you understand what urban really is or not, or live in an urban area, it still affects your world and your church.
Cities spread influence. // In the New Testament Paul planted churches in the major cities because he knew the gospel message would trickle into the countryside from these cultural epicenters. Cities influence everything and so we need to pay attention to urban trends there. If we want to know what suburban and rural ministry is going to look like 10 or 15 years from now, we need to look at what the urban pastors are dealing with today. We will have to engage those cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs and build theologies and do practical ministry around them.
Reach out to impoverished neighborhoods. // Poverty isn’t only in urban centers, it’s in suburban and rural contexts too. When churches want to help make the lives of the impoverished better, they need to move into the neighborhood. This is where World Impact steps in to help and equip churches to engage in redemptive poverty work.
Redemptive poverty work. // There are three ways we work in the world. The exploitative way produces work that often does more harm than good, even if it’s well intentioned. The ethical way is focused on the relationship between the person who’s wanting to bring the help and the recipients, and there’s often an exchange of material goods. However, impoverished people have a need that goes beyond material assistance. Just like churched people, they are hungry for relationship and belonging. This is where the concept of redemptive poverty work comes into play—a holistic approach that seeks to address both the spiritual and physical needs of individuals.
Learn what their needs are. // It’s important to know who you’re dealing with in poverty in the United States. The majority of people in poverty are working, with the biggest segment being the single mother with kids. Their jobs simply don’t provide enough to cover their situation. Find out the actual needs of a neighborhood, as well as its assets and potential, with the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University in Chicago. Their website provides resources and tools that will aid in doing an asset mapping of a neighborhood in order to see what the needs and strengths are.
Additional resources. // Dr. Sanders wrote a booklet called Redemptive Poverty Work which gives an overview of healthy poverty work. His other book, Uncommon Church, talks more deeply about issues in urban spaces and community transformation for the common good. Both are available on Amazon.
Take responsibility. // As Christians and church leaders, we have a responsibility to care for the poor. This is not just a social mandate but a theological one. When Jesus talks about the poor always being with us he’s making reference to Deuteronomy 15, which outlines how to care for people in poverty. Caring for the poor is truly a mark of the gospel.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today is no exception. Super excited to have and Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders with us today. He’s with an organization called World Impact. You know, many leaders struggle to sustain ministry impact and growth in urban neighborhoods because they don’t know ah because they don’t have the training that they need. World Impact comes alongside church leaders and offers training, support, designed for the urban context. They empower leaders to build healthy churches in communities of diversity and poverty. When urban church leaders are empowered to own their own ministries, individuals, families, and neighborhoods – they flourish because of that. So we’re super honored to have you on the show today, Dr. Sanders. Welcome – so glad you’re here.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be great. I we I was saying we just bumped into each other or each other’s organizations last week at at Exponential, and so glad to get to face-to-face. Fill out the picture; tell us a little bit more about World Impact. Help us understand ah the work that you do.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, so World Impact started in 1971 and it’s been several things over the over the different decades. But for this iteration of World Impact we focus on the problem that 95% of the world’s pastors have no formal ministry training. Ah, they minister in typically communities experiencing poverty. Smaller congregations, about 50 or so folk, and budgets of under $50,000. So we try to be a solution for them by providing accessible, affordable, and effective ministry training. Because we have a we have a ah theory of change that says that trained urban pastors and congregations lead to healthy urban churches which leads to community engagement which leads to flourishing neighborhoods.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — We focus on. um large metropolitan cities within the United States because we believe if you reach the cities of United States, you reach the world.
Rich Birch — So true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So for instance, if we train in Dallas we know without us lifting a finger that training is going to go to Mexico and it’s going to go to Central America. And as that training goes there. We support the grassroots leaders to take it.
Rich Birch — Um, love it. Dude, that’s so good. I love um, you know, there’s a lot to unpack there. But I I’m really looking forward to hearing more and learning. And I think, you know, if I can be completely honest, I think this is an area that there’s lots of folks that are leaning in. And are saying yeah you know I don’t feel equipped. I don’t I feel like we might be engaging with ah you know some urban leaders, some folks in in context that are maybe struggling with poverty, and we might not be engaging in a way that’s ultimately helpful. And so I want to hear from you around, you know, if you think about the church leaders that are listening in, help us frame this ah issue, help us understand um how we should be thinking about helping churches in these contexts or helping leaders in this in these contexts.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes, so I think it’s always great to start with understanding what we mean by the word urban.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So I’m gonna talk you a little bit first the sociological definition. Then I’m gonna give you the codified evangelical definition. All right? So, the sociological definition is ah three D’s, right? So when we’re talking about our urban space, we’re talking about the diversity of the people. So most cities ought, well not most, all cities you’re going to find different flavors of folk…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …different races, different social classes, so forth and so on. The other D is density. There’s gonna be a lot of people packed into smaller geographic spaces. So that also affects how we view things and how we interact and live our lives. And then the third D is distance meaning how we view time and space. So for instance, World Impact is ah headquartered in Los Angeles.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — When you and I but I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. So when you ask somebody in Cincinnati, you know, how far is it to point a to point b they’re gonna say, oh 20 minutes. If you ask somebody in Los Angeles, how far is it from point a to b, you’re going to say, with traffic…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —…then they’re going to tell you, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —So you you condense all these three things together and creates this specific type of way of how we view the world we live in. Now the codified evangelical definition of urban is black, brown, poor. When the typical evangelical says, oh I live in a urban space, that’s kind of what they’re talking about.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —Um which it but that’s not necessarily what urban is.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But the but the big thing that that the typical Christian needs to understand is that whether you embrace it or understand it or not, the urban space affects your world.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Doesn’t matter if you live in the suburbs. Don’t matter if you live in the cornfields. it affects your world. There’s a saying that um when when the city sneezes the suburbs and rural areas catch a cold.
Rich Birch — No, it’s true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Because, yeah, what happens in the city affects your church regardless of where it’s at, and affects your your your people in your congregations. If you want to know what suburban and rural ministry is going to look like 10, 15 years from now, look at what the urban pastors are dealing with today.
Rich Birch — Love that. I, you know, I I um I’m years ago twenty years ago I remember hearing a mentor of mine talk about this exact issue issue. And he said you know culture emanates from the urban to suburban, and from the west coast to the wast coast. And so you know if you’re looking for, and I don’t know is that true? That that resonated as true. I think all the centers that you’re talking about are cultural epicenters. They’re, you know, the the kind of places where culture emanates from. And so obviously we want to be thinking about them um and really leading in those environments to help under you know to help ultimately inject Jesus into the middle of that. Dig a little bit deeper on that. Help us understand more why it’s important for us to think carefully about those 3 D’s, particularly when it comes to urban ministry.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, well I mean first off if we if we look at the scriptures, it wasn’t a coincidence that Paul and his missionary journeys planted churches…
Rich Birch — In cities.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …in urban mega-cities, metros. Because Paul knew that if the gospel could take root in these major routes of trade, these major cities of influence, the gospel would trickle out to the countryside. I think one of the travesties of the American Church is that it has devalued the urban space criminally. Because of the codification…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …of well, that’s black and brown poor folk. And unfortunately, you know, in the capitalized society that cap or the capitalism society, I should say, we live in unfortunately those who who have not in terms of finances aren’t looked upon to be leaders in that space.
Rich Birch — Okay, you’re being you’re being too nice there. I feel like you’re being too nice. You’re talking about devaluing. Unpack that more. What what what do you mean by that? You know, stop using polite language. You know, but or leaders here. Help us understand this.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah well well yeah well I mean it’s that polite. Is just it’s what’s happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s it’s it’s what happens.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Well, ah, you know, when you know when I graduated from seminary…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …Um I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Um, you know, most of the graduates that I graduated with or whatever, they weren’t looking to do anything in the urban space. I was one of the few that was looking to do things in the urban space.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Um, and I’m talking about the school as a whole. Now I actually went through a specialized urban ministry training program. And all of us were urban folk. But every now and then we would have to matriculate to the main campus. Um, but the but the reality was most folk just didn’t think in they did not it. It gets caught up in um, a lot of the social and cultural and political things nowadays. But the reality is if you if you look at things such as sociological phenomena, such as white flight, like when when folk ah from from um who are from the white the brothers of the lighter hue, I like to say. How’s that for polite?
Rich Birch — I like that. I like that.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Brothers brothers and sisters of the lighter hue um…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …fled to the suburbs.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But there’s also been black flight and there’s also been brown flight. So suburbs have just naturally, it’s just naturally assumed that the suburban location is more valuable and that’s where you want to be.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But the funny thing is, that’s not what influences the world.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — The suburbs do not influence the world.
Rich Birch — No, true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I mean we’re talking about I’m ah um, a I’m 54. I’m a child of classic hip hop, right? Hip hop turned fifty this year. It’s one of the largest musical forms ever invented…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …in terms of influence. It started in the ghettos of the Bronx.
Rich Birch — Right, right. You mean that didn’t come from Orange County, California. It didn’t come from… of course not, of course not.es.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So it did not. It did not. Those orange county those orange county kids were emulating…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …the values, attitudes, beliefs expressed through the idiom of hip hop music…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …that came straight from the city.
Rich Birch — Yep, absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — but the reality is the City influences everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And folk folk have been conditioned to be scared of the city. Or it’s a bad thing to be in the city. Now that trend is reversing through ah a word I’ll use a word called gentrification. And gentrification is essentially taking these urban core neighborhoods and they’re being repurposed and they’re being invested in heavily. So an old factory for instance, becomes loss to live in.
Rich Birch — Yep, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So that’s all the latest craze. That’s all the latest trend. And so now folk of the lighter hue are now moving back in, and other folk are moving back in. So so that’s good and bad. We won’t get in all that. But um but but the whole point is this – that’s what I mean by undervalue. Regardless of where you minister at…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …you need to pay attention to urban trends and what’s happening because that’s the values, attitudes, and beliefs of culture that you’re going to have to engage.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — You’re going to have to build theologies around. You’re going to have to figure out how to do practical ministry around.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So that’s what I mean by undervalued.
Rich Birch — Well yeah, and I’ve said in other contexts, every zip code in the country is more diverse now than it was ten years ago and will be more diverse ten years from now than it is um today.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Exactly right.
Rich Birch — And and um, which is a wonderful thing. Like that’s um, yeah, that’s ah, that’s a very good thing. And but I do feel like we’re oftentimes I remember when so I was thinking about school when you mentioned it. I I help on a lot of church growth stuff. And I only I had like one class in a whole course on church growth. And it was on the homogeneous unit approach to to church growth.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Oh yeah – HUP.
Rich Birch — Which is a terrible idea. like and is like is like an anti-Jesus idea. But it was like it that was the only thing I learned about church growth, was like go find a whole bunch of people, and ironically it was go find a whole bunch of rich, white people that was, although that was never said, that was what I was kind of the undercurrent of that idea. Um, so when you think about helping church leaders, whether they’re in a suburban, urban, rural context, to understand how to work in the urban urban communities or to support how, how does World Impact fit into that equation? What what are you guys doing on that front?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So we we focus on, we have a particular for philosophy um of how it undergoes all of our programmings. And we focus specifically though on churches that are ministering in communities experiencing poverty.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And you will find poverty, it’s, you know, it’s not only in urban centers.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It is in suburban context. It is in rural context. So we can help churches who have a desire to want to to make people’s lives ah better, and and sort of have um what I would say Jesus move into the into the neighborhood, so to speak. You know, John 1:14 the Message translation the bible says “the word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood”.
Rich Birch — Love that. Yeah, that’s so good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I love that phrasing because I believe that’s what a church is supposed to do for its neighborhood and its community. It’s supposed to move into the neighborhood. So then how does the church, Christians, move into the neighborhood, so to speak, when the neighborhood is impoverished. That’s World Impact’s forté and specialty.
Rich Birch — So what does that? What does that look like? I think how how are you helping the church do that, empowering the church to to move into ah, into into a neighborhood, when when they’re you know it’s a community that’s experiencing poverty?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So I think um, it’s good to for folk to be reflective here of how we sort of work in the world. And I got this thing called the redemptive frame from a group called Praxis which talks about three ways that we work in the world. And then I could talk specifically about how that applies to redemptive poverty work.
Rich Birch — Sure Yeah, that’s great.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So one way is we work in the world as a human, and when I say we I’m talking about as human beings. There’s an exploitative way that we work…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …in the world. The exploitative way produces work that often does more harm than good. It it may be well intentioned, but it fails to properly understand the complexity of poverty, and consciously or subconsciously we put our own motives above the long term impact on people that we may be having. So I’ve never heard a Christian say I want to go and I want to exploit people in poverty. I’ve never heard him by say that, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — That’s my goal. I want to exploit them.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Now there are other entities and institutions that exploit folk. But from…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that would say that.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, but from the Christian perspective, everybody wants to be a do-gooder. They want to do the best they can and they want to change the people’s world around them. But the reality is we are sinful human beings and there’s nothing we need to do to be exploiters. And unless we intentionally look at the track and how we’re going to engage folk, we’re going to exploit them.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So for instance, most people would want to… when I was pastoring and I used to be an inner city pastor and Cincinnati and like um, from like Thanksgiving to Christmas, all the suburban churches would call me. They want to do stuff. They want to serve Thanksgiving dinner. They want to do this. They want to do that. And um, the rest of the months nobody hear from nobody, and hear from anybody.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And it’s like, that’s kind of a form of exploitation because you’re coming down here because you want to serve somebody dinner. You…
Rich Birch — Yeah, you want the good feelings of feeling of serving. Yeah, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Exactly right. You want to give a gift, and things of that nature. And when I would say well, you know what? we don’t really need another Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t really need toys. What we need is, boy, if you send an army of people to help tutor the kids in this local elementary school that um that we’re working with, that’d be awesome.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —You know stuff like that. Things that were gonna make real life change. So, exploitative is the one way that we work in the world. But another way that we work in the world is if if we’ve evolved to a better place, it’s a ethical way. And when we have them ethical mindset it’s a step in the right direction. It’s focused on the relationship between the person who’s wanting you to bring the help, and the recipients, whenever possible. I mean in this mindset it’s not it’s no longer about us. But it’s our desire to do good, and it’s like a win-win situation. So you’re not coming in, you may come in from a um and in a in a different power dynamic in terms of I’m coming in. I have resources, I’m going to give you resources. But at the very least you want to see ah the people in the neighborhoods do better, and you acknowledge the agency of the people in a neighborhood…
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …to contribute to their own ah wellbeing and well good to break the cycle of of generational poverty. And the ethical mindset is a awesome mindset. It is the way that we want everyone to operate. You don’t necessarily have to be Christian to operate with a ethical mindset.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — You know the ethical mindset example is this is the the the church that ah sets up a food pantry, right? There are people who are hungry. Ah, we want those people to eat. So we’re going to help folk who don’t have enough to eat. And we’re going to give them food. And we’re going to give them food ah based on the fact that that’s a need. Ah, it’s It’s typically along the lines of some sort of temporary relief in exchange of material goods. And there’s necessarily there’s not any necessarily anything wrong with that. Um, the problem is that the majority of people who are living in poverty are not people who need relief though. That’s not their main need. Their main need is relationship.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — We just did a a study with Barna Group called Inside the Urban Church and the most fascinating thing around that study was that both the churched and the unchurched folks said they’d look to the church to do the same thing, and that was, “I’m lonely; help me belong to something.”
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So it wasn’t the things that we thought. You know was it, Oh they hey appreciate the food pantry. They appreciate all the other stuff, but they said the unchurched are literally saying, if you want to help me, help me be less lonely, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Which leads to what what we believe at World Impact of what we try to help and why we focus on the local church so much is that is redemptive poverty work. Because redemptive poverty work is focusing on the life pattern of Jesus Christ which was um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …creative restoration through life sacrifice. So Jesus says, I sacrifice, we win. Regardless of how you respond to me I’m going to come in. I’m going to do life on life ministry. I’m going to help you navigate this thing called life as best I possibly can. And I’m going to help you come to a better place. And hopefully by me doing that, I have earned the right to share the gospel with you.
Rich Birch — So good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I have earned the right to disciple you.
Rich Birch — So good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So so so relationally speaking in terms of doing that type of poverty work, that’s where you’re going to make a significant change. It’s the mentoring or the coaching of a kid for 5, 10 years, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s the um helping ah start and a nonprofit or an organization that is going to help people become more job ready. It’s it’s basically things that are relationship-based and long-term that’s sort of the redemptive thought of doing poverty work.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Love it. Well and that’s a, well first of all I love that framework. What a helpful framework work of exploitative, ethical, and redemptive. Man, there’s a lot there. But I that’s um thanks for doing the work of even just helping us kind of understand that piece that together, you know there’s a there’s a shorthand thing I’m picking up there. Like if, man, if my church is engaged in working with a church um or with another group in a situation of poverty, whether that’s you know in an urban center or around the world, and there’s not a relationship there… it’s it’s like I’m just showing up and dumping resources dumping people. It’s the stereotypical you know like we send kids on a missions trip to Guatemala to like build some house that they’re not looking for. And take away local employment. Like it’s that kind of thing.
Rich Birch — If we’re, if what I hear you saying is, man, if there isn’t someone ah in this leadership pipeline of how you’re developing this relationship that’s sitting down with other people to actually ask, hey, how can we work together. What can we do? How do we how do we um, How do we develop an actual relationship rather than ah, you know, um, an exploitative um one-sided thing. Man, then that’s ah, that’s a telltale sign that things are maybe going in, you know, incorrectly.
Rich Birch — How can we as church leaders build those relationships? What’s that look like? How do we how do we engage… like let’s say we’re a church that’s like we want to do more in this area. We we are self-assessed. We’re not doing a good job on this. We’re we’re too much in the suburbs or maybe we’re an urban church and we’re not engaging in it with poor folks that are, you know, we hire police to move poor people off our front porch. That’s all we do. That’s how we engage with poor people. We don’t want to do that anymore. We want to figure out a way to actually do this well. What would be some of those steps? How could we move through ethical and then ultimately to redemptive?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes, so um, I’ll give some context and then I’m going to give a resource.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So um, the thing to understand about poverty within the United States is that most of those who are in poverty are working.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Most people when they think about folk in poverty, they think it’s the homeless person on the street. That’s just a segment.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Most of the the face of poverty in America is a single mother who has a service industry job.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s the maid at the hotel.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s the it’s the it’s the Burger King worker. I used to say instead of Soccer Moms, it’s Burger King Moms. They’re working at Burger King.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But their their work that’s the the largest segment is a single mother with kids. And they’re doing the best that they can, but the job that they’re working at just does not give them enough money to cover their situation. So the first thing is to understand who we’re actually dealing with if we’re talking about those in poverty within the United States. Most of the services that are set up for folk in poverty within the United States, it’s it’s kind of ironic in that like if you’re like here in Cincinnati, like if you’re homeless, there’s more services for you…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …than if you like have a job and just can’t make ends meet.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So you’re missing the whole entire major segment of the population that actually needs your help. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So so how do we find out their needs? There’s this great tool called um, and it’s easy to understand – it’s abcd. It’s called asset-based community development. There’s a ABCD Institute at a DePaul University in Chicago. And they have a whole gamut of resources that you can utilize in order to what they call do a asset mapping of your of your neighborhood…
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …to see where the the needs are of the neighborhood. I actually did ah a my my thesis coming out of Trinity was how to use asset based community development to plant a church. And that’s what I actually did. I I studied it. I studied the philosophy. I asked it I ah sort of charted out the neighborhood.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I seen what the neighborhood needed. And then I started working and volunteering at a place that was filling that need. And then out of that, after after winning people to the Lord, this, that and the other, I built the actual church.
Rich Birch — Ah, very cool.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And that church is still very connected to the neighborhood. It’s still functioning, I no longer pastor it, but it’s still functioning twenty-four years later.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So and it so it was a win-win.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It was a it was a um life on life. It was a a redemptive way. I said what’s the way that we can move into the neighborhood? That we can redeem this neighborhood without coming in with my own preconceived ideas? So did the hard work of utilizing this tool. And I guarantee that any church that uses asset based community development will hit the true need of those in the neighborhood that are experiencing poverty.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Well that’s I love that. So yeah, you can find that. You can search for ABCD Institute, DePaul University if you’re looking for more information on that. That’s that’s fantastic. Now I know you actually have a couple resources too. You’re a humble guy so you didn’t go to your own resources. You have a couple resources you’ve put together to help ah you know church leaders to kind of help frame this conversation. You know, we’re just scratching the surface today. Talk us through these resources. Tell us tell us about these.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes. Yeah. So there’s two that that could be very helpful to you. One is I wrote a very small booklet called Redemptive Poverty Work which talks more in-deptly about what I just shared here. Um, it’s a small booklet you can read it over a lunch break. Um so you can get it off of Amazon. It’s like five bucks, but it’s called Redemptive Poverty Work.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — The other more in-depth book that talks about the issues that I talked about is called Uncommon Church. I wrote that book in 2020 and it’s ah it’s a reflection on my over 30 years of work in urban spaces. It talks about the higher level issues of institutional oppression and things of that nature. Um, because the first half of the book talks about vibrant church in the urban space. The second half of the book talks about the institutional forces and things of that nature which shape the urban environment and how the church can address it. So that’s called Uncommon Church that’s on Amazon as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, ah, fantastic. Both these resources I would, and we’ll put links to these in the show notes, friends. I think, you know, my encouragement to you would be to pick up one or both of these resources. As you know if you’re a church leader that’s like hey. This is something you feel like maybe we’re scratching something that you need to be thinking more about, I would strongly recommend that you start here. This could be a great resource to kind of start the conversation for you in your, you know, in your leadership circle.
Rich Birch —So you know Dr. Sanders there may be people that are listening in who let me play the devil’s advocate. And I use that that word very pointedly. Like that’s the way I’m I’m intending that. You know that that hear this conversation like what I heard you describe as what I’ve heard in other contexts described as the working poor, you know, ah, but the the Burger King moms. That’s a that’s a great, that’s a very vivid example of that. To me that’s like the um, that’s the grinding part of a capitalist society. That’s what I said. You didn’t say that. I said that. That’s the part of where capital is is um…
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes.
Rich Birch — …is taking advantage, frankly of of people with very little power. And there may be people that are listening in today that hear me say something like that, or hear us even ask a question like that and that just gets them fired up and pissed off because they’re like wait a second. What are you are you questioning that the kind of the capitalist approach to life? How how do you respond to that. How do you um respond to a leader who, you know, is genuinely asking that they’re not just trying to pick a fight with you. They’re like, hey they’re coming from a you know, ah, they’re not just trying to, they’re just trying to you know kick you, but they are they actually want to have that conversation. How would you respond to them in that situation?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Well I would say to realize that there’s three main ways in which um capitals dealt with, in terms of manmade economic system, there’s that’s capitalism, there’s socialism, and then there’s communism. And all three of them are severely flawed and are are sinful. I mean you just have to understand it. None of them are God – God didn’t create any of them.
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — God created the kingdom of God.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And if we truly follow Matthew 5 through 7, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Which is the if we really look at Matthew 5 through 7 and you really take it for what it’s worth, it’s one of the most radical things of how to live that’s ever been created.
Rich Birch — So true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s it’s the it’s the it’s the longest sermon that we have from Jesus. I make it a practice to read at least once a week to remind myself of how how what the kingdom God truly looks like and what it is. And the kingdom of God is about people more than it is is about capital. And the I talk about this more in in my book Uncommon Church, but basically our role as Christians is to is number one to take responsibility for those who are in poverty. It is not an option to…
Rich Birch — The poor will always be among us.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — There you go. And that was a reference to Deuteronomy 15 people say oh well Jesus says the poor is all going to be among you so that means we don’t have to worry about them. No, it was actually a reference to Deuteronomy 15.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And do to write guess what Deuteronomy 15 is about? How to take care of those in poverty. So what Jesus was basically saying is, look if you’re Christian, what did Jesus say to John the baptist… Or John the Baptist was in jail and John the baptist was getting ready to get beheaded. And so he sent his followers to Jesus. Because he’s like look, man, getting ready to lose my life. Are you really the Christ? And one of the criteria that Jesus said and sent back is the work that he did amongst the poor was one of the marks of him being the Messiah
Rich Birch — Amen. Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Matthew 25—now you got me preaching…
Rich Birch — It’s good. It’s good. Dude, come on, come on. It’s good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But Matthew 25, he talks about this that separate the wheat from you know the the great separation. It’s going to happen of who truly was for Christ and who truly isn’t for Christ. And one of the marks of the people that are truly for Christ he’s goes when when I was hungry, you fed me. And he talks about other things about taking care of the poor taking care of the poor is a mark of the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yes, come on.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — The buzzword of what is the Gospel. A mark of the gospel is that you take time, talent, and treasure, and you take care of those in poverty.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — You’re a kingdom of God citizen; you take responsibility for doing your role and playing your part and taking care of those who are in poverty.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Dude, what a great, that’s fantastic. And I love your your frame there around no political system was ordained by God. Like these are all, you know, against, you know, in some ways you know, they they can be used by him. He supersedes all of them. Like I…
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes.
Rich Birch — You know, I think that is just that’s what a great word. I you know, I had a friend, you know, recently in the last couple years say, man did we did we miss the point of Acts 6? You know the the early apostles are like, hey we’re not feeding these these women…
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yep.
Rich Birch — …and are and are the poor and so let’s get some deacons. And we read that as that’s not important. So let’s get some other people because we’re dedicated to the acts of you know preaching. And they’re like that’s not actually what’s happening here. It’s the up it’s the exact opposite of that.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Exactly right.
Rich Birch — The early church fathers are like this is so important that we do not want to drop this ball. We we have to do this. We have to. Which that has become perverted here I think in some of our circles two thousand years later, where it’s like well just give that to some other people that’s not that important. No-no. That my experience would be the same as what you’re saying. That churches where the message of Jesus is being proclaimed, the poor are being cared for. Those two things are inextricably linked. That ultimately, you can’t you can’t pull those 2 apart from each other. If if you look around and your church is not caring for the poor, I would say you’re not actually presenting the gospel. You’re not, you’re not actually pointing people back to Jesus. Um man this has been a rich conversation today.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, there’s. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, I so I’m going to give you the last word. As we wrap up, we’ll link to those resources. Ah, what would you say what would your kind of final encouragement be to church leaders who are are listening in today?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I would say that ah any person or any church that decides to go on a journey of following Christ, which if you remember when Jesus announced his ministry, he he announced it as preaching the good news to those in poverty. And we have a we have a way of trying to super spiritualize that. Oh he means the poor in spirit. No. He means those who are financially without. Jesus literally said the Spirit is a Lord is upon me the preach of good news to the to those who are in poverty, essentially. Right? In financially poverty, in financial poverty even…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …if I didn’t necessarily get the exact quote right. You get the point.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — If we follow Jesus down that path, we’re going to see the Holy Spirit show up in ways we’ve never, you’ve never seen Him before.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I’ve never, I mean if you said, Alvin, give me a testimony of how you seen God move. More times than not it’s gonna it’s gonna involve me, either personally or when I pastored church, helping someone or helping a community that was experiencing poverty. If you want to guarantee that the Holy Spirit is going to show up, get involved in the lives and the hearts of those who are experiencing poverty.
Rich Birch — What a great word to end on. That’s that’s fantastic. Dr. Sanders, I really appreciate you being here today. Where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with you, or with World Impact? Where’s the best place for us to to point them to?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, so if you want to connect with me, um I am on LinkedIn. So you can just type in “Alvin Sanders World Impact” and I’ll pop up. That’s where I sort of keep a work diary and engage people um online. Um, and then the other thing is if you want to learn more about World Impact. You can go to worldimpact.org and go to our website. And hopefully um, you’ll see something on there that we can help you and steer you in the right direction.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Appreciate being here today, sir.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — All right. Thank you for having me.
Easter 2024 Stats Exposed: Insights Your Church Can’t Afford to Ignore
Apr 03, 2024
During this episode of the unSeminary, we dived into the Easter 2024 attendance figures, collating responses from a wide array of churches. The total combined attendance hit a staggering 249,377, revealing much about the state of church engagement during this important “Eventful Big Day.”
The Importance of Eventful Big Days
Easter can be an “Eventful Big Day” at your church. This is one of the “5 Gears of Invite Culture,” strategies that play a pivotal role in church growth. It’s not just about celebrating a religious holiday; it’s a critical component of the invite culture that churches need to foster year-round. The data suggests that prevailing churches leverage Easter as a prime opportunity to encourage attendance, foster community, and, most importantly, invite new guests be part of the good things happening at their churches!
Key Findings
Average Easter Attendance Bump: Churches should aim to double their regular attendance on Easter. This survey revealed an average increase of approximately 75.42%.
“New Here” Guests: An essential metric for church growth is the percentage of first-time visitors or “new here” guests. Surprisingly, 22.98% of churches failed to track this figure, missing a critical opportunity for growth. For those who did, the median percentage of new guests was 3.33%, surpassing the targeted 2% and highlighting Easter’s potential as an effective outreach tool.
Invite Strategies: The study showed a significant correlation between the variety of invite strategies employed and attendance increases. Churches using five or more methods saw an 85.68% bump, while those employing seven or more enjoyed a 114.53% increase. This suggests a clear path forward for churches looking to maximize their Eventful Big Day strategy.
These insights underscore the need for churches to not only prepare for Easter as a significant event but to integrate it into a broader strategy of engagement and growth. The data points to the effectiveness of diverse invite strategies and the critical importance of follow-up in converting Easter attendees into regular churchgoers.
Easter 2024 has provided a wealth of data that, if properly analyzed and acted upon, could lead to significant growth opportunities for churches. By focusing on expanding invite strategies and enhancing follow-up processes, churches can work towards not just doubling their Easter attendance but fostering a vibrant, growing community year-round. This report serves as a call to action for church leaders to innovate, engage, and ultimately, expand their reach and impact.
For more insights and to join the conversation on church growth and invite culture, visit www.unlockinviteculture.com. Together, we can unlock the potential of our churches and spread the transformative message of Easter far and wide.
Episode Transcript
Super excited for today’s special episode of the Unseminary Podcast. We are looking at a survey that we did this week where we asked a number of churches to give us some feedback around what actually happened so that we can gain insights for you. In fact, the combined attendance of the churches that we surveyed was 249,377.
This has been a fun survey to do. We have extracted a ton of insights for you. I’d love for you to buckle up and listen carefully, particularly because big days, eventful big days, these are a critical piece of your invite culture strategy.
In fact, it’s one of five core strategies. We call them the five gears of invite culture, and we talk about them extensively in my latest book, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. You can pick up a copy of that for your team at unlockinviteculture.com. Listen, churches grow because they train, equip, and motivate their people to invite their friends.
And eventful big days are what we talk about in the book. And what we mean by that are big days that are eventful. They’re the kind of thing that your people want to talk about.
Listen, two things happen on big days. Your people are more likely to invite their friends, and their friends are more likely to attend. And so we want to make sure that we rally our resources on these days to train, equip, and motivate our people.
Well, today you’re going to gain insights into a number of things that happened at Easter this year. And my hope is that not only will you just kind of learn what happened, but ultimately you’ll be able to apply these lessons to your church as we look to next year and beyond. Today, you’re going to gain insight into what is the average Easter attendance bump at churches.
This really would be a target for you as you think about future big days. You’re also going to learn about how many New Year guests people are actually seeing on these days. You might be skeptical and thinking like, does this actually drive New Year attendance? Do we see New Year guests actually show up? We’re also going to discuss if there’s a correlation between the number of ways that churches use to encourage people to train, equip, and motivate their friends and the attendance ultimately that people see on a big day. And then finally, you’re going to gain some insights on getting guests to return. Ultimately, the reason why we do these big days is not because we’re trying to stretch our parking lots or figure out how many people we can pack into the room, but we’re ultimately trying to see our churches grow.
And so what are churches doing to see these guests return? Well, let’s dive in and talk a little bit about what is the average Easter attendance bump. You know, in our coaching, when I work with churches, or you’ll read about this in the book, in my coaching, I talk about the fact that we’re really, our goal for our clients and what we’re hoping to see for you at your church is that you double your average weekend attendance on a big day like Easter. Now, there’s also other big days, Mother’s Day in some churches is a big day, Christmas Eve.
Some people have a big day, you know, in the return to school time at the end of, you know, in the end of August or beginning of September. We talk about doubling, we’re seeing 100% growth on those, you know, those days. Now, this is an important number for you to think about, what are we actually trying to drive towards? Regardless of what happened at your church, knowing the bump between kind of what your normal attendance has been in 2024 and your Easter attendance is one way to measure the front door of your church.
And this is a, this is a kind of, can be a difficult thing for your church to measure because, you know, we’re really good at measuring the people that are in our groups or that attend, but it’s hard to measure what’s the kind of scale, the kind of growth potential, the reach potential of our church. And one of the ways to do that is to measure the Easter attendance bump. And the reason why that is, is because that tells you how many people are one relationship removed from your church.
Listen, these people came because your people invited them. That is what happened here. And so this is a good number to know.
It really represents, I like to think, as your next growth tier. If I was with your church today and I would be saying, hey, this is so fantastic. We had this many people attend on Sunday.
That’s really what we should be thinking. We should be asking the question, hey, what can we, what do we need to do to make it, to see, to create the space for our church to be that every single weekend? So again, the target that we put out there is that we’re hoping that they’re double or see a hundred percent growth. Well, in these, these churches that we surveyed again, overall attendance is about, was about 250,000.
The average growth rate between average attendance and, and, you know, for a regular Sunday here in 2024 and Easter was approximately 75.42%. So 75. So again, our goal is a hundred percent. So we’re seeing, you know, that the kind of average, what typically churches are seeing is 75.42. So, you know, and you’ll see, as we dive into the numbers more pointedly, as churches do more inviting, we’re seeing a higher number of attendance.
So this does validate our thinking, our coaching around the fact that we’re hoping for a hundred percent growth or doubling from your average attendance to weekend or to big weekend days, like our big days like this. Now there was a modest correlation between the size of the church and their Easter attendance. This was different than what I assumed.
My assumption had been that basically as the churches get larger, we see larger attendance or bigger bumps. So basically there’s an accelerant factor. The more people you have, the more people you see, you know, come and invite.
Well, actually it’s just a modest correlation. There is some correlation between that too, but it’s not statistically the correlation coefficient is 0.24. For those folks that remember back to algebra when you were in high school, that’s just a modest correlation. So not a huge correlation.
So did your church see 75.42 or greater? If you saw more than that, then you were better than the average here. Again, our target would be to see a hundred percent growth or doubling. Where did your church go? I’d love to hear, respond in the comments or reach out.
I’d love to hear where church, you know, where they actually look like now. Now this is not just about getting people to come. One of the things that we know that happens on these days is this is one way to kind of measure, hey, where are, what’s the kind of size of your community? And you know, do people, obviously if you attend on a regular base or if you don’t attend on a regular basis, but you do come sometimes you’re more likely to come on Easter.
But really we’re doing this because ultimately we’re trying to reach new people, new here people. And so we asked questions around, you know, how many new here guests do churches actually see? Our target for our coaching clients is to what we say is average documented new here guests should be 2% on an average weekend. So what does that mean is over a year that you will average the same number of guests over an entire year that your average weekend attendance is.
But we express that at what we say, the average documented new here guests on any given weekend is 2%. So if your church is a thousand people, that would mean on a typical weekend, you should see, you know, 20 guests to come to your, your church and you should, you should gain this. So first of all, first insight on this nearly 23% of the churches did not answer this question.
Friends, this is a missed opportunity. 23% of you didn’t have an answer. So my question for you is like, why are you doing Easter? We’re trying to do these kinds of weekends.
We’re trying to encourage people to come to be a part of our church because we’re ultimately trying to reach new people. This is a missed opportunity. Now the median percentage of new here guests in the study group that we saw for Easter 2024 was 3.33%, 33 and a third percent.
So this is a, this is incredible actually. So again, remember our target is 2%, but we saw that the median was 3.33%. This is incredible. You know, 1.3% higher than what we typically see.
This is great news. Now, some of this I think is because of the study group. If you’ve been hanging around on seminary for a while, we have been pushing you to think about this number.
We have been talking about this number. We’ve been focusing you on this number. We are trying to gather a group of churches who regularly are trying to get people to grow and to see their churches reach new people.
Now this also pushes against a little bit of the kind of common wisdom. Oftentimes we say that Christmas is about reaching new people. It’s about reaching people who maybe are, don’t normally attend church.
And Easter is about kind of getting our people to attend. That’s getting people to, getting our people to come back. But actually what this statistics tells us, the fact that we were 33%, when it was 3.33% higher than our typical new documented first time guest number.
What this tells me is that this is not necessarily true. That actually lots of churches are seeing people who are new to their church, who have not normally attended, come on these days. This is not just about getting our people to return.
Massive opportunity, big days are a big deal. Now we looked at the statistical significance between large churches and smaller churches around, do large churches see more new here guests? And there was basically no statistical difference between that. In fact, there was a slight, a super slight, razor thin negative correlation of 0.042 between that.
So what that tells us is there really is no difference. Whether you’re a church of 200, 2000, 20,000, we’re seeing that this is a day for you to see new here guests. Okay, so let’s talk about how churches invite their people to invite or encourage their people, train, equip and motivate their people.
Listen, friends, this is the core, this is core idea to what we talk about here. We talk about growing your church here at Unseminary. One of the things that we come back to time and again, in fact, I’ve even said it in today’s podcast already is the difference between stuck and stagnant churches and growing churches is growing churches, train, equip and motivate their people to invite their friends.
This is a value we need to raise. It’s a culture thing. That’s why, you know, the title of my book is Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture.
This is like discipleship. We’ve got to move people towards that. Training, equipping, motivate, those are specific words.
Training is like the head part of it. We’ve got to, you know, give them the scriptural backing. We’ve got to, you know, give them the big ideas around why this is important.
Equip, we’ve got to give them tools. We’ve got to hand them things, literally stuff for their hands. And then motivate, that’s about their heart.
We’ve got to move them to want to do this. And so we looked at this question and we asked them, okay, so we listed a whole bunch of different ways that they could train, equip and motivate. And we asked them, which of these did you do? And so I’m just going to rattle off the top ones.
So social media, invite cards, text messages and email marketing. Those were the top at, so social media was 25.28%. Invite cards was 19.52%. Text messages was 12.08%. Email marketing is 11.52%. Those were the top reasons that people use. Now we gave a bunch of different ones, including a message on inviting people the weekend before.
So the weekend before the church actually rolls. In fact, actually, if you’re looking for an example of this, and we found that only 11.52% of people actually did this or churches did this. If you’re looking for an amazing example of this, actually go check out liquidchurch.com and look at their message the weekend before Easter.
And you’ll see an example of this, only 11% of churches that did this. Hint friends, we got training coming up next year. I’m going to try to push you to do this.
I think this is a high leverage opportunity. Community events or outreach, 7.62%. Mailers, 5%. Press releases, only 3%.
Blog posts, 2%. Phone blitz, 1%. Now we did ask the kind of other question, give us a sense of the other things people did.
People did backyard Easter parties, Facebook ads or Google or Facebook ads. We’ll put that in the list next year as an example of how people could do this. Rented local signs, yard signs, community egg hunts the week before, just stuff built into kids programming, student gathering.
There were a couple other things. These are the kinds of other things they said. Now most people use most churches.
So key insight coming up here, friends. Most churches used two to three strategies. Approximately only 25.93% of churches that we surveyed used five or more strategies to encourage their people to invite their friends or family to Easter.
Now here is a key insight for you, friends. For churches that used five or more strategies to encourage their people to invite their friends, train, equip and motivate. They saw the average bump between their normal attendance and Easter attendance was 85.68%. Referring back to where we went, that’s a 13% over the average of what we saw across the board.
So what is this saying? If you do more than five things to encourage your people, if you surround them with messages before big days, you’re going to get an even better result. Now we looked at the group that did seven or more strategies. So these are the real outliners.
We listed only 10 strategies. These people saw the bump between normal attendance and Easter was 114.53%. That is a 51% increase over the average. Friends, what does this say? Friends, friends, friends.
When we train, equip and motivate, when we surround people, when we disciple them, when we build the culture, when we remind them, when we puncture through and get their attention and say, friends, invite your friends. We see that. That translates into actual results.
More people attend on these big days. Now, the churches, we also looked at people that didn’t indicate anything and those churches saw a 58% increase. So what this would indicate, what I think this indicates is if you do nothing, you don’t try to promote these days, you should see a 58% increase in attendance at least.
Now, if you did not see a 58% increase in attendance and you were inviting people, I would say you are in need of an invite culture overhaul at your church. I would strongly encourage you to pick up copies of Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. You can do that at unlockinviteculture.com. Pick up copies of that because what you’ve got to do is move beyond thinking this as just a big day.
There’s actually five different strategies we talk about. We dive deep into them. We give you all kinds of examples.
And what that would indicate to me, if you had less than 60% bump in Easter attendance this year, that man, you’ve got to figure out what you can do to increase your invite culture all year long because we’ve got to move towards a bigger increase next year. All right. So then we also asked around returning.
We asked churches, okay, what are you doing to get people to return? Now, we open this, we ask this as an open forum kind of question as, you know, just like an open text question. Now, next year, we’re going to do this as, I was trying to gather what people actually do on this front. We’ll ask this as a radio box or not radio box, as a checkbox next year.
So then we can drive towards a bit more statistical. But interesting thing here. So first of all, the thing that, you know, I found surprising was there was a number of churches who indicated nothing.
In fact, half of the churches indicated that they did nothing, which was surprising to me. Why are you doing this if you’re not trying to get people to return? But let’s talk about what people did. So there’s a giant contact of the people who said they were going to do percentage of responses.
22.63% did some sort of follow-up contact. So this is the church taking action. So this is a phone call. This is personalized phone calls, emails, text messages, actually sending something in the post. Some churches did home visits where they’re actually getting out and visiting their people. So a quarter, almost a quarter of churches indicated that they were doing some sort of personalized follow-up. Another thing we saw was 13.14% said they were doing a sermon series. They talked about the sermon series on the weekend. That’s a best practice. They were launching a new series to talk about that. 11.68% had some sort of special event coming up. 6.57% had some sort of gift that they gave their people saying, hey, come back and you’ll get a gift next weekend. And then it really started to drop off significantly from there. Communities events, children’s programming, that sort of thing. Now, friends, I wanted our friends over at LCBC. This is a fantastic church, Life’s Changed by Christ. If you do not know this church, you should just search it online. LCBC, my friend Sonia Waltman, literally this morning, as I’m working on this, she reaches out and we were talking about their statistics and their report on what they did. And she talked about the fact that they have a 16-week follow-up process that literally encourages people, engages with them to help move their people into connections.
So it talks about how they are going to try to move people to their second, third attendance. And so what we’ve done is we have linked in the show notes links to this. I put this here because what I want to tell you, friends, is you need to have some sort of follow-up process. We get these guests to come, but what we don’t want to do, there’s literally thousands of them. Based on just this study group alone, there are thousands of guests who arrived last weekend. We’ve got to arrest, we’ve got to take action to try to get those people to connect. I would encourage you to reach out to my friend, Greg Curtis. He runs a ministry called Climbing the Asimileas. It’s all about being an assimilation Sherpa, getting people to connect at your church. He’s been on past podcasts. You can see his search here at Unseminary. Or you can even hire him for a training weekend. He calls them a base camp, which will help you build your own process for really following up with people. If you do not have a clearly documented follow-up process that you’re trying to move people to second time, third time, fourth time returning, and if it’s not immediately implemented, if you don’t have something now in your process that’s doing this, you’re missing out on opportunity, friends. And so I would say that’s a strong call to action for you to think about next steps. So you can check out what LCBC’s done at high level to get a sense of what they’ve done.
But more specifically, my follow-up to you would be to check out Greg Curtis’s work, Climbing the Assimilayas. He could help you from there. Well, friends, what do you think? I would love to hear. Reach out, email me, comment on social, you know, on our various social channels. Thank you so much for the churches that participated in this study. It was exciting to see the 249,377 people that attended your church last weekend.
I would love for you to drop by www.unlockinviteculture.com, pick up copies of my latest book to really help unlock how your church could reach more people, how you could train, equip, and motivate, really disciple your people towards that. And a little hint here for you, a little hint for you here at the end. We have common priced the book. This is a hard sell, I know. We have common priced the book, whether you wanna buy the hard cover or the soft cover, it’s exactly the same price. And for my Canadian friends, it’s exactly the same price in Canadian or American. So we’ve tried to make this as affordable as we possibly can. So if you’re in Canada, go to Amazon in Canada. If you’re in the States, go to Amazon in the States, and you’ll see it’s exactly the same price in Canadian or American. Because why? We do not want there to be anything get in the way, any barriers in the way of your team going through this book.
So drop by www.unlockinviteculture.com or drop by on Amazon to pick up copies of that. Thanks so much, friends. Hope you have a great week. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do to help you. Take care, friends
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Revitalizing Invitation: Strategies for Engaging Your Church Community
Jan 24, 2024
Today’s episode is unique and particularly close to our hearts as we address a question from one of our listeners, Drew Williams, head pastor at New Life Lutheran Church. This direct engagement with our audience not only reinforces our community’s interconnectedness but also grounds our discussion in real-world church leadership scenarios. Drew’s church, nestled in […]
Pastoral Transitions: Matt Davis on Best Practices in Moving Members Off Your Team
Jan 18, 2024
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. This week we are talking to Matt Davis, the President and Chief Pastoral Officer at Pastoral Transitions. This ministry exists to help churches love and support their outgoing pastors and their families. They provides transition services to help pastors continue their life ministry for building God’s kingdom. Every pastor […]
Doubling Impact: Navigating the Shift from One to Two Church Services
Jan 17, 2024
Why add another service? Growth and multiplication are signs of a healthy church. This isn’t just about getting more people in seats in the building; it’s about creating new opportunities for reaching out, engaging more volunteers, and widening your church’s impact. Remember, every empty seat is a missed opportunity to change a life. Breaking the […]
Fast-Growing Follow Up: Insights from Pantano Christian Church’s Growth with Trevor DeVage
Jan 11, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m talking with Trevor DeVage, the lead pastor at Pantano Christian Church in Tuscon, Arizona. Trevor has talked with us before and is back sharing how to recognize opportunities at your church and embrace best practices to create space for growth. You can learn more about Pantano […]
Beyond the Budget: Innovative Ways to Increase Church Revenue
Jan 10, 2024
This solo episode offers practical insights, strategies, and inspiring stories aimed at helping church leaders expand their fiscal horizons. The discussion kicks off with a look back at the remarkable achievements of the ‘Best Year End Ever’ cohort, part of The Art of Leadership Academy. Success stories from various churches demonstrate the immense potential and […]
Executive Pastor Profile: Sam Beatty from Grace Church, Cleveland
Jan 04, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have with us Sam Beatty, the executive pastor from Grace Church outside of Cleveland, Ohio. As our churches grow, they naturally become more complex. It’s important to keep them focused and drive towards simplicity so we don’t drift from the mission and vision. Tune […]
2024 Unpredictions: Timeless Church Leadership Challenges & Solutions
Jan 03, 2024
As we step into the fresh possibilities of 2024, it’s vital for church leaders to discern between fleeting trends and enduring challenges. In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we delve into the “2024 Unpredictions,” a guide to the timeless challenges and solutions that will shape church leadership this year. Core Themes: While we embrace […]
Digital Rabbi: Unlocking Your Purpose and Passion with Sats Solanki
Dec 28, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Sats Solanki, the founder of Reflect Church in London. Sats is not just a pastor but also a coach, speaker, and host of the podcast, Digital Rabbi. Tune in as he shares about the unique journey of Reflect Church and its strategically slow approach to rebuilding […]
Lessons from Christmas: Elevating Your Church’s Impact
Dec 26, 2023
As church leaders, we often find the post-Christmas period a time for reflection and planning. The festive season’s hustle has settled, and it’s time to ponder on our successes and the areas where we yearn for growth. In this latest episode of the unSeminary podcast, we delve into crucial insights and strategies to transform your […]
Persevering After Being Fired by Your Church: Kyle Isabelli Reflects on His Journey
Dec 21, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with repeat guest, Kyle Isabelli, the lead pastor from Avenue Christian Church in the western suburbs of Chicago. Did you know that as many as one third of people working in church ministry will be forced to resign or be fired from their position? If you’ve ever […]
Beyond Predictions: Increasing Generosity at Your Church Amidst Economic Fog
Dec 19, 2023
As we step into 2024, churches face a unique challenge amidst a mixed economic outlook. With predictions ranging from robust growth to stagnation, it’s crucial for church leaders to focus on effective revenue generation strategies. One key area that offers significant potential is the enhancement of offering talks. Understanding the Economic Landscape The economic forecasts […]
Why Your Team Should Do a 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge (& How!) with Mary DeMuth
Dec 14, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Mary DeMuth today, an international speaker, podcaster, and author of nearly fifty books. You may have read through the Bible in a year, but have you considered reading the entirety of scripture in just 90 days? In today’s conversation, Mary shares how this 90-day challenge started […]
The January Bump: Game-Changing Perspective on Christmas Attendance Targets for Your Church
Dec 13, 2023
A New Metric for Success: The January Bump Traditionally, we judge the success of our Christmas services by the number of attendees. But what if we shifted our focus to what I like to call the ‘January bump’? Imagine measuring success not just by the numbers during Christmas but by the increase in attendance we […]
The Chosen: Stan Jantz on Reaching 1 Billion People, Ministry Innovation & Helping Your Church
Dec 07, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re happy to be talking with Stan Jantz today, the Chief Executive Officer of The Come and See Foundation. In partnership with ministries around the world, Come and See is on a mission to share the authentic Jesus with 1 billion people worldwide. Throughout history, followers of […]
Residency Reflections: Saddleback Church’s Brittany Crimmel on Her Leadership Pathway So Far
Nov 30, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Brittany Crimmel, a Production Director at Saddleback Church in California. There is a leadership crisis in the local church with so many churches struggling to know how to find and develop people. However, by participating in internships and residencies, churches can contribute to developing the […]
Behind the Leader: Ian Borkent’s Journey of Burnout and Relaunch
Nov 23, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Ian Borkent from C3 Rivers Church in the Netherlands. Ian also started the ministry Grow a Healthy Soul to help church leaders take care of their souls. Church leaders often focus on metrics such as attendance, salvations and finances to gauge the health of their church, […]
Secrets of Top Team Players: Insights from 30,000 Leaders & William Vanderbloemen
Nov 16, 2023
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking again with William Vanderbloemen, the founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, an organization that helps identify executive talent and matches value-based organizations with like-minded people. When it comes to hiring the best people, what factors cause them to shine? How can you learn to identify […]
Talking with Your Lender: Mark Briggs Offers Insider Advice for Growing Churches
Nov 09, 2023
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mark Briggs, the Executive Vice President of Ministry Lending at CDF Capital. CDF Capital is dedicated to helping churches solve problems and bridge the financial gap often faced when trying to expand and reach more people. Mark has been with CDF for over 20 years, helping churches […]
Guest-Friendly Environments: Aaron Stanski on Effective Facilities for Your Church
Nov 02, 2023
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Aaron Stanski, the founder and CEO of Risepointe, with fifteen years of church design and ministry leadership experience. Do you feel frustrated with your church building, or like it’s holding you back from fulfilling your mission? Aaron’s experience has given him unique insights into the common […]
Increasing the Generosity Culture at Your Church with Phil Ling
Oct 26, 2023
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Phil Ling, a renowned expert on generosity in the church and founder of The Giving Church. Did you know that in the average church in North America, 45% of the people that give a church money give less than $200 […]
Increase Engagement with Data-Driven Strategies: Ronee de Leon on Unlocking Your Church Database’s Potential
Oct 19, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ronee de Leon, the Director of Executive Project Management from Grace Fellowship, a multisite church in Ohio. Many churches have some sort of church management software and mountains of data. But figuring out how to make it actionable so you’re connecting with your […]
Mission Trips vs. Strategic Visits: Nathan Nelson on Transformational International Partnerships for Your Church
Oct 12, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nathan Nelson, Pastor of Mission and Outreach at Bethany Community Church in the Seattle, Washington region. Do you ever feel like short-term missions trips actually push against creating deep, lasting change in the communities you serve? Tune in as Nathan shares how to move beyond the […]
Engagement Pathway: Greg Curtis & Tommy Carreras on Best Current Practices on Assimilating People at Your Church
Oct 05, 2023
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Greg Curtis and Tommy Carreras. Greg is the Pastor of Guest Engagement at Eastside Christian Church, a multisite church in California, Nevada, and Minnesota. He’s also founder of Climbing the Assimalayas, a website focused on helping churches design an engagement pathway that fosters connection, enables […]
Transforming Team Culture: Karen Berge’s Insider View on the Shift from Unhealthy to Thriving
Sep 28, 2023
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Karen Berge, the Executive Pastor of Ministry at Flatirons Community Church. They are one of the fastest growing churches in the country with five physical campuses in Colorado as well as church online. Many churches are able to say there are good things happening there. […]
How to Leverage AI for Your Church & Your Future with Kenny Jahng
Sep 21, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today’s podcast is the second of a two-part series (you can listen to part one of the podcast here) with Kenny Jahng, an expert when it comes to using AI in the church, and the founder of Big Click Syndicate. In today’s episode we’re delving into the implications of […]
How Your Church Can Have the Best Year-End Ever with Kenny Jahng
Sep 14, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today’s podcast is the first of a two-part series with my friend, Kenny Jahng, the founder of Big Click Syndicate which helps cause-driven organizations get their messages in front of the right audiences. Did you know the last 45 days of the year are crucial for charitable giving? Because […]
Fostering Community in a Fast-Growing Multi-Campus Ministry: Scott Freeman on Effective Pastoral Care
Sep 07, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Scott Freeman, the Pastor of Community at Grace Church in South Carolina. As a church expands, there is a constant tension to manage between growth and deep community. Grace Church has experienced significant growth over the years with ten campuses and over 250 community […]
The Future of Faith is Child-Friendly: Stephen Moore on WinShape Camps for Communities
Aug 31, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to be talking with Stephen Moore, the Director of WinShape Camps for Communities. WinShape, an organization started in 1985 by Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, started as a college program and has since grown into five different ministries, with focuses on professional development, marriages, […]
He Gets Us: Kyle Isabelli on Reaching Out to Non-Christians with Gloo
Aug 24, 2023
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Kyle Isabelli, the lead pastor of Avenue Christian Church in the western suburbs of Chicago. Wondering how to connect with hurting people in your community who might not venture through your church’s doors? In today’s episode Kyle and I have a fantastic conversation […]
Faith Forward: Fr. Peter Wojcik on Strategies for Engaging Millennials, Gen Z, & Gen Alpha in the Church
Aug 17, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we are joined by Father Peter Wojcik, pastor at Saint Clement Parish in Chicago. Do you struggle to engage Gen Z in your church? Do you want to invite younger generations into ministry, but aren’t sure where to start? Saint Clement is a dynamic Catholic community in the […]
From Struggle to Success: Evan Courtney on Revitalizing a Church Campus Amidst Challenges
Aug 10, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Evan Courtney, the Executive Pastor at The Fields Church in central Illinois. Have you ever experienced decline in your church or felt like everything was going wrong? Don’t miss this encouraging conversation as Evan testifies to the power of perseverance, overcoming obstacles that lead […]
Uniting the Church to Quench the Global Water Crisis: A Conversation with Mike Mantel
Aug 03, 2023
Thanks for tuning into today’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Mike Mantel, the CEO of Living Water International. They are a faith-based global humanitarian organization that links arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. What if the church of Jesus Christ could end […]
Nurturing the Spirit of Advent with Families at Your Church: Chris Pappalardo & Clayton Greene on the GoodKind Approach
Jul 27, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Chris Pappalardo and Clayton Greene from The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina. Chris is Editor on the Creative Arts team and Clayton is the Summit Collaborative Director. Have you started planning for Christmas yet at your church? Are you looking for a way to help […]
The Art of Working with (Almost) Anyone: Michael Bungay Stanier Offers Coaching For You As You Lead At Your Church
Jul 20, 2023
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with coach and writer Michael Bungay Stanier, who is best known for his book, The Coaching Habit, which is the bestselling coaching book of the century. We all know that not all work relationships can be perfect, but how can we improve them? In today’s episode, Michael […]
The Resilience Factor: Insights from Léonce B. Crump Jr. & Warren Bird on Unbreakable Teams
Jul 13, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Léonce B. Crump Jr. and Warren Bird. Léonce is an author plus the co-founder and senior pastor of Renovation Church in Atlanta. Warren is a repeat guest on unSeminary. He works for the Evangelical Council for Financial Ability (ECFA) and is also the […]
When Pastors Aren’t Angels: Becca Pountney on Wedding Industry Challenges
Jul 06, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Becca Pountney, the UK’s number one wedding business marketing expert and host of the podcast Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow. Did you know that many wedding professionals have a negative perception of church weddings? From difficulty accessing church buildings and strict rules, to […]
Long-Term Vision, Lasting Impact: Curt Seaburg on Strategic Vision in Church Leadership
Jun 29, 2023
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Curt Seaburg, the lead pastor of Victory Church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. While it’s important for church leaders to learn from each other, when it comes to vision, it’s critical to know yourself and the God-given calling for your church within its unique community. Listen to […]
Hybrid Church in a Digital Age: Collin Jones on the State of Church Tech Today
Jun 22, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Collin Jones, the chief ambassador at Resi, part of the organization Pushpay. Pushpay provides a donor management system, including donor tools, finance tools and a custom community app to the faith sector while Resi helps deliver reliable livestream solutions to churches. Online services and live streaming […]
Exploring the State of Church Staff Health: Todd Rhoades & Matt Steen on Findings and Insights from New National Study
Jun 15, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast! Today is part 2 of a conversation that we started back in April with Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen, the co-founders of Chemistry Staffing. If you’re curious about the state of church staff health in the US, you won’t want to miss this episode as we dive into the findings of […]
Discipleship Leadership Development in Church Planting: Stevie Flockhart’s Leadership Journey
Jun 08, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Stevie Flockhart, Lead Pastor of 901 Church in Tennessee. Have you ever struggled with the desire for personal recognition and validation in ministry? In this unSeminary podcast episode Stevie shares his personal journey and struggles with comparison and the desire for success. Listen in […]
Long-Term Leadership: Jeff Cranston on Steady, Purposeful Leadership
Jun 01, 2023
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Lead Pastor Jeff Cranston with us from LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina. How can churches maintain balance in ministry and create engagement within their congregation and staff? This is a question that Jeff answers in today’s episode of the unSeminary Podcast. Don’t miss this conversation […]
Doing Less to Reach More: Trevor DeVage on 160% Church Growth in 18 Months
May 25, 2023
Thanks for tuning into this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lead Pastor Trevor DeVage from Pantano Christian Church in Arizona, one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Is your church in a season of growth, needing to streamline its ministries? Or are you trying to simplify your systems so that they […]
Practical Help on Increasing Engagement at Your Church with Ken Nash
May 18, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Ken Nash, the Lead Pastor of Cornerstone Church in Michigan, is with us today. For decades churches measured how well they were doing based on counting nickels and noses, but with the upheaval and loss churches have experienced over the last few years, they need to change […]
Training Your Team to Lead Through Others with Phil Caporale & George Probasco
May 11, 2023
Thanks for tuning into the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Lead Pastor, Phil Caporale, and Campus Pastor and Kingsway Leadership School Site Director, George Probasco, from Kingsway Church in New Jersey. As a church leader, one of the most challenging aspects of your role can be developing leaders. While it can be difficult to identify […]
Leaning in on the Important (& Potentially Awkward) Conversations Around Women in Leadership at Your Church with Lisa Penberthy
May 04, 2023
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lisa Penberthy, a church leader and consultant with 20 years of experience and an M.Div and MBA in nonprofit management. She is currently serving as the COO at Dannah Investment Group and is passionate about stewarding people’s callings as well as church resources. […]
Closing the Gap Between Your Church’s Vision & Execution with Nick Thompson
Apr 27, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nick Thompson, the Executive Pastor at The Living Stone Church in Denver, Colorado. How is your church executing on its vision? If you’re a church leader looking to create a practical framework for decision-making, a Vision Frame might be just what you need. Listen to this […]
Building a Resilient Church Staff: Secrets to Sustaining a Strong Team Culture with Todd Rhoades & Matt Steen
Apr 24, 2023
Welcome to today’s special episode of the unSeminary podcast where we are replaying our recent webinar called “Resilient Church Staff: Secrets to Building and Sustaining a Strong Team Culture” with my friends Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen, the co-founders of Chemistry Staffing. In this webinar, Todd and Matt discuss the importance of cultivating a healthy […]
Being a Clarity Champion on a Senior Leadership Team at a Fast Growing Church with Kasey Husen
Apr 20, 2023
Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kasey Husen, the Executive Director of Communicatons and Events at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California. Kasey talks with us about the importance of having a Communications Director at the senior leadership level at your church. Beyond branding and marketing, Kasey shares how they can […]
Leading Through the Crisis Your Church is In (Or About to Be In) with Rusty George
Apr 13, 2023
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Rusty George this week, the lead pastor of Real Life Church in Southern California. In addition to being a pastor, Rusty is a speaker, teacher and author focused on making real-life simple. As leaders, we all face difficult times and crises that challenge […]
Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress with Brian Dodd
Apr 06, 2023
Thank you for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We have Brian Dodd back with us. He’s the Director of New Ministry Relationships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions, as well as blogging at Brian Dodd on Leadership and the author of several books. Brian is talking with us about the current state of the church […]
Sunday Service Dedicated to Pre-schoolers & Their Parents? Church Growth Lessons from Marcus Gibbs & Bubble Church
Mar 30, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We have a real treat today. We recorded this interview in person while in London, England with Marcus Gibbs, Vicar at Ascension Church. Are you looking for innovative ways to reach unchurched communities and serve the next generation?Listen in as Marcus shares the simple yet engaging Bubble […]
Leveraging Data to Drive Ministry Outcomes at Your Church with Erik Henry
Mar 23, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Erik Henry, the Executive Pastor of Central Christian Church in Wisconsin. Data is critical to accurately understand what’s happening at your church and what’s changing over time. Listen in as Erik discusses the importance of using data to make informed decisions at your church as […]
Moving from Spanish Translation to a Full Spanish Ministry with Tim Hill
Mar 16, 2023
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Tim Hill, executive pastor at Bear Creek Church, located at the crossroads of West Houston, Katy and Cypress, Texas. Every zip code in America is more diverse today than it was ten years ago. And it will be even more diverse ten years […]
Seeking God’s Best for Your Church Even in a Hostile Environment with Terry A. Smith
Mar 09, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’ve got Terry A. Smith with us today; he’s the lead pastor at The Life Christian Church (TLCC) which serves the New York City metro area. He recently wrote a devotional called, The Lord Bless You: A 28-Day Journey to Experience God’s Extravagant Blessings, and today we’re unpacking a […]
Building a Positive Working Relationship with Your Church’s Financial Institution with Eric Schroeder
Mar 02, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re having a great conversation with Eric Schroeder, the president and CEO of CDF Capital, an organization that helps churches grow in order to transform lives and communities. Financial matters, like spiritual matters, are very personal. And when you’re dealing with something personal, it can be hard to develop […]
4 Minutes Every Weekend to Increase Revenue & Spread Culture at Your Church with Taleah Murray
Feb 23, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Taleah Murray, the Executive Pastor of Ministries at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California. One of the areas Taleah oversees at Crossroads is offering talks and using video to share the impact that the church’s generosity is having as people give. Listen in as she […]
Kadi Cole Interviews Rich Birch about Female Leadership in the Church
Feb 16, 2023
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kadi Cole who leads the organization Kadi Cole & Company which helps with leadership development, management skills training, executive level coaching and more. This time Kadi is taking over hosting the podcast as she interviews Rich on how men can open […]
XP Roundtable: Finances, Volunteers, Staffing & More with Lisa Penberthy, Jeremy Peterson & Brandon Beard
Feb 09, 2023
What larger trends are impacting churches across the country? The landscape of our culture continues to shift & evolve. Growing churches respond to those changes and find ways to thrive. Learn from the latest insights on trends and how those impact you and your team. Don’t miss this special podcast episode as we hear from […]
Get a Head Start on Your Church’s Multi-Use Strategy with Frank Bealer
Feb 02, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Frank Bealer, the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Phase Family Centers as well as Chief of Staff at Local Church. Is your church considering a multi-use strategy? Does it seem overwhelming as you think about how to get started and all that you […]
Help to Fight the Scourge of Predictability in Your Church Services with Lance Burch
Jan 26, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Lance Burch from Reality Church in Omaha, Nebraska. He often explores and identifies current cultural phenomena and then tries to find a way to connect them to biblical truth. Listen in as Lance shares how to pay attention to the questions the culture around us is […]
Tithes & Offerings Are No Longer Enough To Fund Your Church with Mark DeYmaz
Jan 19, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to be talking with Mark DeYmaz, who planted Mosaic Church in Arkansas and is co-founder of Mosaix Global Network. We’re nearly a quarter of our way through the 21st century and yet some churches are still operating on models from the 1960s. In spite of good intentions […]
Reflecting on Seasons of Life, Leadership & Their Impact on Your Team with Lee Coate
Jan 12, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Lee Coate, the executive pastor at The Crossing in Las Vegas, and the president of Growmentum Group. Today Lee is talking with us about Growmentum Group, how they are helping church leaders accomplish their missions, and how to use the different seasons of leadership that are […]
Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons with the Right People at Your Church with Scot Longyear & Heath Bottomly
Jan 05, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re with returning guests Scot Longyear and Heath Bottomly today. Heath is the Lead Pastor of the Creative Teams at Pure Heart Church in Arizona and Scot is the Senior Pastor of Maryland Community Church in Indiana. Scot and Heath talk with us about their book Fight […]
Lessons from Inside a Rapidly Multiplying Church with DeWayne McNally & Paul Schulz
Dec 22, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with DeWayne McNally and Paul Schulz from Hill Country Bible Church in Austin, Texas. DeWayne and Paul both serve as executive pastors of ministry by dividing the responsibilities; DeWayne handles the operations, multiplication and family ministries while Paul takes care of the personal/spiritual growth related ministries, including […]
Reframing Evangelism at Your Church with Shaila Visser
Dec 15, 2022
Thank for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Shaila Visser, the Global Senior Vice-President for Alpha International. Alpha is an 11-week course that creates a space for people to invite their friends for a conversation about life, faith and Jesus. Worldwide, an increasing number of pastors believe evangelism is wrong. This mindset, […]
Business as Core to the Mission of Your Church with Johnny Scott
Dec 08, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m happy to be talking with Johnny Scott, the lead pastor of Generations Church in Trinity, Florida. Ever wonder what a self-sustainable church might look like? Curious about how to use business as ministry? Listen in as Johnny Scott shares how churches can use holy-owned businesses to reach their […]
Working Genius with the Team at Your Church with Patrick Lencioni
Dec 01, 2022
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Patrick Lencioni, one of the founders of The Table Group and an expert in leadership, teamwork, and organizational health. Pat’s also the author of 13 books which have sold millions of copies around the world, and today he’s talking with us about […]
In The Trenches of Guiding a Church to Be More Outsider Focused with Chuck Fenwick
Nov 24, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m excited today to be talking with Chuck Fenwick, lead pastor at New Haven UMC in Indiana. How do we build churches that are both reaching new people, and caring for the people who are with us? It’s a universal tension all church leaders face. Listen in as […]
What Are the Best Predictors of a Church’s Ability to Multiply Itself? A Warren Bird Conversation
Nov 17, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’ve got Dr. Warren Bird with us today. He’s the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), and an author of over thirty books. Warren is back to talk about the New Faces of Church Planting survey which was performed back […]
Creating & Sustaining an Empowering Culture at Your Church with Dr. Derry Long
Nov 10, 2022
Thanks for joining us here at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Derry Long, from the Yellowstone Theological Institute. He’s served for 45 years in many church leadership roles and is here to share his knowledge with us. At churches, it’s not uncommon for 20% of the people to do 80% of the work, […]
Embracing a Team Mentality to Spark Growth at Your Church with Aaron Tredway
Nov 03, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast – so glad that you have decided to tune in. This week we have with us Aaron Tredway, Lead Pastor of Fellowship City Church in Ohio. As church leaders, we know that when we empower others, we can accomplish more together than we can alone. But it can be hard […]
Under the Hood of a Multiplying Church of Nearly 30 Church Plants with Josh Husmann
Oct 27, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m excited today to be talking with Josh Husmann, lead pastor at Mercy Road Church in Indiana. Mercy Road is one of the top reproducing churches in the country with a passion for multiplying disciples, leaders, churches, and expanding the reach of the gospel throughout the state of […]
Leading Slow & Steady Change in a Fast Growing Church with Mark Williams
Oct 20, 2022
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Mark Williams, Executive Pastor at New Day Christian Church in Port Charlotte, Florida. The last few years have seen a lot of changes for church leaders and their congregations. How do you continue to grow and change when people are burned out and […]
Gaining Brand Clarity That Makes Growing Your Church’s Mission Simple with Joey Speers
Oct 13, 2022
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to talk with Joey Speers, a brand builder and digital marketer. He and his wife founded the Speers Collective Inc., the parent company of Creativ Rise and Brand Therapy. Joey is talking about how churches can generate brand clarity that makes growing their mission simple […]
Leading Change in the Midst of the Messiness of Ministry with Mike Bonem
Oct 06, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mike Bonem, a coach and consultant who helps church leaders with vision discernment, organizational design and strategy. In the last three years, everyone has had to make massive changes. Now as churches have found their new normal and are looking to the future, there can […]
Technology Insights to Drive Ministry Outcomes with Aaron Senneff
Sep 29, 2022
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Aaron Senneff, the Chief Technology Officer at Pushpay. Pushpay is a digital engagement platform that provides a donor management system, including donor tools, finance tools and a custom community app, to churches. Technology is more important than ever in the church. But how […]
Outreach Lessons from the Statistically Most Secular City in North America with Jeremy Norton
Sep 22, 2022
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jeremy Norton, lead pastor at Mountainview Church in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Being a church leader in a place like the Yukon is a little like living in the future. Listen in as Jeremy shares how to engage with your neighbors and city in a post-Christian […]
Practical Help on Taking Your Messages from Good to Great with Pete Briscoe
Sep 15, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Pete Briscoe, who was the senior pastor at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Dallas for almost thirty years and preached through the Telling the Truth ministry, reaching an audience of more than 1.2 million people every week. Currently Pete is a coach for church and […]
Journey Beyond Burnout & Compassion Fatigue with Janetta Oni
Sep 08, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Janetta Oni, the Creative Director at The Summit Church in North Carolina. Compassion fatigue is far more common in ministry than we might like to admit. It can be easy to wear busyness like a badge of honor while burning out in the process. But […]
Inside the Groups Ministry of a Fast Growing Baptist Church with David Raney
Sep 01, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with David Raney, the Executive Pastor of Ministry from 2ND Baptist Church in Arkansas. 2ND Baptist is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and as a growing church they want to make sure people get plugged in so they don’t fade away. Listen in […]
Advice on Taking Your Best Next Step When Life Is Uncertain with Jeff Henderson
Aug 25, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jeff Henderson, founder of The FOR Company, which helps organizations build a good name where purpose and profit grow together. Many people are more familiar with what the Church is against rather than what the Church is for. What does your church WANT to […]
Aligning Mission & Organization to Achieve Creative Outcomes with Heath Bottomly
Aug 18, 2022
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We are talking with Heath Bottomly, the Lead Pastor of Creative Teams at Pure Heart Church in Arizona. Does your church’s organizational structure match the vision that you believe you have been called to? Listen in as Heath shares how to get clarity about what is true, realign your […]
Leading in the Unchangeable Present with Larry Osborne
Aug 11, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Larry Osborne, the Teaching Pastor and Kingdom Ambassador at North Coast Church. North Coast has nine locations in California, one in Ohio, one in Hawaii, and one in both Mexico and Japan. Churches can be tempted to look back to the old way […]
Managing High Performance Multisite Creative Teams with Melody Workman
Aug 04, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Executive Creative Director Melody Workman from California-based Sandals Church – one of the fastest growing churches in the country for several years now. It’s hard for churches everywhere to build high performance volunteer teams. Often our growth strategy for volunteer teams doesn’t match our […]
Burnout, Perfectionism & Identity: Inside Chris Hahn’s Personal Journey to Restoration
Jul 28, 2022
Welcome to this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Chris Hahn, the Executive Pastor of Missional Spaces at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. In the demands and activity of ministry, church leaders can find there is a disconnect between their public leadership and struggles in their personal lives. Don’t miss today’s podcast […]
Leading Through Healthy Open Brokenness & Vulnerability with Carl Kuhl
Jul 21, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Carl Kuhl with us, the lead pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the country, Mosaic Christian Church in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area. Listen in as Carl shares about the missing piece that will help people in our churches go deeper, both with God […]
The Surprising Journey Toward Being a Community Focused & Fast Growing Church with Vern Streeter
Jul 14, 2022
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Vern Streeter, the lead pastor at Harvest Church in Billings, Montana. Harvest Church is one of the fastest growing churches in the country and has had a long-time value of being community-focused. Listen in as Vern chats with us about paying attention to the […]
Balancing A Growing Family & Ministry with Paula Ley
Jul 07, 2022
Welcome back to this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Paula Ley, executive pastor at Radiant Church in the Tampa Bay area. Paula is talking with us about the spheres of influence in our lives and how to balance the busy seasons of ministry while still prioritizing our most important relationships. Ministry is […]
Latest Church Trends Post-COVID with Tony Morgan
Jun 30, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tony Morgan, the founder and lead strategist of The Unstuck Group, which offers consulting and coaching for churches as well as practical resources such as courses, access to research and more – all to help churches get unstuck. The Unstuck Group does quarterly trend reports that […]
Healing the Racial Divide in Your Church with Derwin Gray
Jun 23, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Derwin Gray, the lead pastor at Transformation Church in South Carolina. In the bible we see every nation, tribe, and tongue worshiping Christ together, yet in our country and churches we continually see examples of the racial divide. Listen in as Derwin shares […]
Leading in Our Churches & Community in this Current Moment with Dino Rizzo
Jun 16, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. In this episode we’ll be chatting with Dino Rizzo, the executive director of the Association of Related Churches (ARC) as well as part of the senior leadership team at Church of the Highlands. ARC was created in 2000 by six pastors and has grown to be a preeminent church […]
International Business & Marketing Coach Chris Ducker Offers Advice for Church Leaders
Jun 09, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with marketplace leader Chris Ducker, who is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and runs several businesses. As churches find themselves more a part of the online world, there is continually a challenge to connect with people in a meaningful way. Listen in as Chris shares how to […]
Helpful Insights for Church Leaders with Brian Dodd
Jun 02, 2022
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. This time we’re talking with Brian Dodd, the Director of New Ministry Partnerships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions. He also runs a blog called Brian Dodd on Leadership which provides perspective, encouragement, and solutions for church and ministry leaders. When you look at the world today, there seems […]
Coaching on Rebuilding a “New” Launch Team for Your Church with Shawn Lovejoy
May 26, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Shawn Lovejoy, the founder and CEO of Courageous Pastors and Courage to Lead. His work is all about coaching leaders around what keeps them up at night and focuses on personal and organizational growth. Shawn is talking with us about building and redeploying healthy teams in […]
Reflecting Back 5+ Years After a Sr. Leader Transition with Executive Pastor Kevin Cook
May 19, 2022
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Kevin Cook, executive pastor at Cross Point Church in the greater Nashville, Tennessee, area. They have six locations in middle Tennessee plus online services. God has entrusted those of us who are executive pastors with a significant leadership. While He may be preparing […]
Encouragement For You From Nearly 4 Decades of Ministry Experience with Greg Surratt
May 12, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Greg Surratt, the founding pastor of Seacoast Church in the Carolinas and also a founding member of ARC, Association of Related Churches, which trains, coaches, and equips church plants across the country. So many pastors are wrestling with similar concerns and soul care issues today. They are […]
Pushing Your Church’s Culture Forward in This Current Season with Jenni Catron
May 05, 2022
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jenni Catron, the founder and CEO of the 4Sight Group which helps both leaders and their teams be healthy and thriving. With the disruptions that covid has brought, many church leaders are struggling with a sense of overload and fatigue. Shifts in how we […]
Insights on Pastoral Restoration After a Fall with Shawn & Sonny Hennessy
Apr 28, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Shawn and Sonny Hennessy, from Life Church Green Bay in Wisconsin. Shawn and Sonny are also co-hosts of The Rise After the Fall podcast and together founded The Exchange Collaborative. The highs and lows of ministry, and the trials of life can threaten to destroy pastors […]
Latest HR Dynamics Impacting Your Church With Tiffany Henning
Apr 21, 2022
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tiffany Henning, founder of HR Ministry Solutions which helps with human resources in churches and faith-based ministries. At the beginning of 2021, many churches were restructuring their staff. Now in 2022 with so much inflation, there are concerns about how to compensate staff fairly. These things […]
Helping You & Your Team Ditch Discouragement, Fear and Anxiety with Scot Longyear
Apr 14, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Scot Longyear, the senior pastor of Maryland Community Church in Indiana, and guest host for the Worship Leader Probs podcast. Two years after the pandemic, church leaders are still trying to figure out where to go from here. It’s been a tough season to […]
Moving Beyond the Stream of Church Online with Jay Kranda
Apr 07, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jay Kranda, the online pastor of Saddleback Church in California. Digital ministry is here to stay and churches need to think about how to move beyond just managing their weekend stream to actually connecting people online to the church and each […]
Shifting Paradigms Impacting Growing Churches with Sean Morgan
Mar 31, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Sean Morgan, founder of The Ascent Leader, a year-long development program structured around relational cohorts which is designed to engage ministry leaders in transparent conversations and one-on-one coaching with world-class leaders. As we transition from COVID being pandemic to endemic, there are paradigms church leaders have […]
Tips for Making Your Church More Single Friendly with Kaylee Estes
Mar 24, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kaylee Estes who was the Connections Pastor at Restoration Community Church in Denver, Colorado. More and more people are single in our churches today than in previous generations. Younger people are waiting longer to get married, the divorce rate continues to increase, and […]
Inside a 4X Growth In Group Engagement at a Growing Church with Joe Boyd
Mar 17, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Joe Boyd, lead pastor of Grace Fellowship in Minnesota. They are one of the fastest growing churches in the country as well as a church-planting church and have started 28 churches during their 34 years of service. Jesus changed the world with a small group. Groups […]
Crucial Conversations with Team Members at Your Church with Matt Slocum
Mar 10, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Matt Slocum, executive pastor at Victory Life Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. Conflict is inevitable in relationships and it’s important to handle it well. Matt is talking with us today about how Victory Life Church sought to help its staff get better at having crucial […]
Is Church Multiplication on the Rise? Don’t Miss This Conversation with Warren Bird
Mar 03, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Warren Bird, the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. It’s time for a fresh look to see what God is doing, especially coming out of the pandemic. If you’re wondering how church planting […]
Office Hours: Volunteer Recruiting Best Practices & Reaching New People
Feb 24, 2022
Welcome to this month’s Office Hours episode. This month Rich is taking on your questions about building volunteer teams, and reaching people who might not normally attend your services. Leslie Moffat, administrative pastor, Celebration Church in Brantford, Ontario, Canada: “For churches with multiple services, do you recommend the same volunteers stay on for the entire […]
Stop Copying and Pasting the Announcements for Your Church!
Feb 22, 2022
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I know this sounds like some homespun advice from your mom, but it does apply to looking for resources on the internet to improve the weekend services or announcements at your church. A quick search online will reveal an endless amount of templates and done-for-you resources that […]
In-Person Community & Bold Digital Innovation in a Lonely World with Benjamin Windle
Feb 17, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with return guest Benjamin Windle from Life Place Church in Australia. Whether or not churches are going to opt in to the digital revolution is no longer an option. Now the question is, how do churches operate and minister in a digital world, particularly to younger […]
9 Tiny Habits That Can Cause Huge Disengagement During Announcements
Feb 15, 2022
When you have a little pebble in your shoe, it’s hard to focus on anything around you besides that minor discomfort, right? We sometimes do the same thing with our tiny habits during our weekend service announcements. What about that little smudge from your kid’s finger on the TV as you watch the latest Hollywood […]
Increasing the Impact of the Serving Experience on Volunteers with Rachel Long
Feb 10, 2022
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Rachel Long back on the podcast. She’s one of the executive pastors at Emmanuel Church, a multisite church in Indiana. Today Rachel is talking with us about building healthy volunteer teams within our churches. Take a step back and evaluate. // Back at […]
Why Church Leaders Can’t Stand Doing Announcements
Feb 08, 2022
Do you dread being asked to get up and host a weekend service at your church? Can just talking about hosting the announcements this coming weekend make your stomach turn? Is your team pushing you to drop the announcements? And maybe even more worrying, do you have a good reason not to drop them? Are […]
Increasing Multi-Faith Proximity While Remaining Gospel-Centered with Kevin Singer
Feb 03, 2022
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Kevin Singer, co-founder and co-director of the student-led movement, Neighborly Faith, which brings Christians and Muslims together. There is very little in the church to help equip believers regarding how to engage with our neighbors of other faiths in a way that […]
5 Leadership Hedges Against Inflation for Your Church
Feb 01, 2022
Just when you thought the word “unprecedented” couldn’t possibly be used any more, we continue to climb into levels of inflation that haven’t been seen in over four decades. In fact, the last time we saw inflation this high, the world was a completely different place. Bread had soared to the cost of 50 cents […]
Office Hours: Attracting Young Families & Help with Hiring Your Next Team Member
Jan 27, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this month’s Office Hours podcast episode. Today Rich is answering your questions about attracting young families and getting help with hiring your next team member. John Boyle, executive pastor, Calvary Bible Church in Boulder, Colorado: “I wanted to pick your brain on attracting more young families to our church.” Know […]
Mega to Meta? Your First Step in Starting a Metaverse Ministry with Jason Poling
Jan 20, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jason Poling, lead pastor of Cornerstone Church of Yuba City in California. For the first ten years of Jason’s ministry as a pastor, he felt like he had been living in “maintenance mode.” While his church was experiencing growth, some of which was due to brand […]
Best Practices in Onboarding New Staff with Ken McAnulty
Jan 13, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Ken McAnulty, executive pastor at Arise Church in Florida. The hiring process is tough, and ramping up new staff can be awkward and stressful if it isn’t done with a lot of intentionality. Ken is with us today to talk about how to […]
Rebuilding a Team Culture That Was Broken with Jesse DeYoung
Jan 06, 2022
Thanks for tuning into the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jesse DeYoung, the executive lead pastor at Flatirons Community Church in Boulder, Colorado. Jesse is talking with us today about how Flatirons Church worked through a difficult season of ministry, addressed their broken team culture, and witnessed God’s redemption among the staff. Recognize what’s not […]
Connection & Engagement Lessons from a Fast Growing Church During the Pandemic with Julie Hawkins
Dec 23, 2021
Today we’re chatting with Julie Hawkins, the Next Steps Pastor at Chapel Hill Church in Washington state. So many churches had to quickly develop an online presence at the beginning of 2020 and it made the area of helping people take their next steps more challenging. Listen in as Julie shares how Chapel Hill Church […]
Helping Female Leaders in Your Church Find Their Leadership Voice with Kadi Cole
Dec 16, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kadi Cole, the founder of Kadi Cole & Company, an organization created to help leaders of all organizations. Kadi is with us today to talk about encouraging female leaders at your church while removing barriers from leadership opportunities. Find the drop off. // Many men in […]
Building a Team Culture at Your Church that You’ll Love with Brian Cook
Dec 09, 2021
Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Brian Cook, the lead pastor of ACF Church (Alliance Christian Fellowship) in Eagle River, Alaska. Right now 4.5 million people in the US are quitting their job every month and 50% are looking for a new job. Staff culture is a big […]
Helping Teams Leverage, Not Loathe, Personality Differences with Eddie Hastings
Dec 02, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Eddie Hastings, Executive Pastor of Ministries at Chets Creek Church in Florida. Eddie is talking with us about using personality tests to better build and communicate with your staff teams. Know and trust each other. // When a church grows, especially to have multiple campuses, […]
Bonus Deep Dive: Health Care Sharing For Churches? Marq James Helps Us Clear Up Misconceptions
Dec 01, 2021
Are you a senior leader in church thinking about health care options for your team? Did you know that your team is anxious about this aspect of serving at your church? Today on unSeminary we want to help with that worry & stress. We are joined by Marq James, an expert in health care sharing […]
If Jesus Gave a TED Talk? Neuroscience Communication Principles The Master Teacher Used To Persuade His Audience with Charles Stone
Nov 25, 2021
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Charles Stone, lead pastor at West Park Church in Ontario, Canada. He also is an author and provides training for pastors. 75% of people forget most of what they’ve heard from a talk within an hour. 90% forget what they’ve heard after a week […]
Leading a Fast Growing Church While Having Healthy Rhythms & Boundaries with Zeb Cook
Nov 11, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Zeb Cook, the lead pastor at Apex Baptist Church in Apex, North Carolina. Zeb is talking with us today about establishing healthy rhythms and boundaries in your life so that you can continue to thrive in the ministry where God has called you. Create a system […]
Going International as a Multisite Church with Tommie Bozich
Nov 04, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tommie Bozich, the executive pastor of Trinity Church, a multisite church with locations in Virginia and also internationally. Tommie is talking with us about what led them to launch a location in Stuttgart, Germany, and what a church should think about when considering […]
Practical Advice on Fostering a Kingdom Mindset In Your Church with Brian McMillan
Oct 14, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Brian McMillan, from CenterPoint Church in Long Island, New York. Brian is talking with us today about how pastors can keep their souls healthy by being generous and Kingdom-minded toward church plants coming into their area. Challenges of church planting. // When planting a church, […]
Moving from Paid to Volunteer Music Teams in a Fast Growing Multisite Church with Stone Meyer
Oct 07, 2021
Thanks for tuning into this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Stone Meyer, executive pastor from The Bridge Church in Tennessee. Stone is talking with us today about the musical worship part of services and how to develop excellence in your unpaid volunteer musicians. The musical worship aspect. // The musical worship aspect of services […]
Moving from Maintenance to Movement in this Season with Van Vandegriff
Sep 30, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Van Vandegriff, lead pastor at Cedarcrest Church in Acworth, Georgia. Van is talking with us today about dealing with COVID and helping people at the church to shift out of neutral and reengage with the mission of the church. Reengage with the mission. // […]
Sermon Planning Rhythms that Produce Engaging & Faithful Content with Zach Lambert
Sep 23, 2021
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Zach Lambert, lead pastor at Restore Austin in Austin, Texas. Zach is with us today to talk about how to take the stress out of sermon planning and coming up with biblical and engaging topics in your teaching. What are you preaching […]
Building Staff Culture While Leading During Trying Times with Rusty George
Sep 16, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Rusty George, the lead pastor at Real Life Church in the Los Angeles area. He’s talking with us today about what it’s like stepping into the lead pastor role after the founding pastor. You can learn more about Real Life Church at reallifechurch.org and about Rusty […]
How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor with Carey Nieuwhof
Sep 09, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Carey Nieuwhof, a leadership expert, author, speaker, podcaster, former attorney, and church planter. He’s with us today to share about how to address the crisis of overwhelm in our work and lives. Digital scales in a way that physical doesn’t. // After the pandemic, we […]
Leading Change That Lasts with Hillsong Atlanta’s Lisette Fraser
Aug 12, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Lisette Fraser, the COO/executive pastor of Hillsong Atlanta. Leading through change is at the core of serving as an executive pastor and church leader. Today Lisette is talking with us about where to begin when stepping out and leading change in this […]
Inside Team Culture Development at a Fast Growing Church with Chad Asman
Aug 05, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Chad Asman, executive pastor of Heritage Church just north of Detroit, Michigan. He is with us today to talk about developing team culture at your church to create future leaders. Start with culture. // Heritage Church worked to create a leadership pipeline not only […]
How to Get Traction on Execution at Your Church with Allie Bryant
Jul 29, 2021
Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Allie Bryant from Trader’s Point Christian Church. Although they have six campuses in Indianapolis, currently four are opened along with church online due to covid. Allie is the Strategic Alignment Executive for Traders Point and she loves getting the right people in the room to […]
Balancing the Healthy Tensions of the Executive Pastor Role with Tyler Althof
Jul 22, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Tyler Althof, the associate pastor from Action Church in Florida. Tyler is with us today to talk about tensions to manage when you are leading from the second chair at a church. We need a sense of security. // As church leaders we need to […]
Tackling the Early Days as a New Executive Pastor with Matt Gilchrist
Jul 15, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Matt Gilchrist, executive pastor at Hope City Church in Missouri. Matt is talking with us about getting up to speed as a new XP at a church and how to connect with your lead pastor, your staff, and spouse during this season […]
Improving Your Church’s Financial Competencies with Ken Fisher
Jul 08, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Ken Fisher, Executive Pastor at Church at the Mill in South Carolina. As one of the fastest growing churches in the country, Church at the Mill has doubled in size in the last five years. As a church grows, the staff needs to consider how they […]
Leveraging Research to Drive Design & Communication Insights at Crossroads Church with Vivienne Bechtold
Jul 01, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to be talking with Vivienne Bechtold, the Director of Studio and Leadership Development at Crossroads Church in Ohio. Crossroads has been one of the fastest growing churches in the country for several years, but this growth hasn’t happened without being intentional about reaching those […]
Moving from Pre-Recorded Church Online to Live with JD Mason
Jun 24, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with JD Mason, the online campus leader from Liberty Live Church in Virginia. JD is chatting with us today about how church online has evolved for Liberty Live Church since the pandemic and why they made the decision to transition to live, rather than prerecorded, broadcasts. Trial […]
Bonus Deep Dive: Current Best Practices in Operational Reserves for Your Church with Steve Carr
Jun 23, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re doing a bonus deep dive about operational reserves and how much our churches should be saving. We have expert Steve Carr from CDF Capital with us to help us think through these questions. Maintain generosity. // During the pandemic, churches trended toward either maintaining their […]
National Church Leader Survey on Attitudes Towards In-Person, Remote, or Hybrid Work Arrangements
Jun 22, 2021
Is your team moving back to an “in-person” office experience? Do you know how your team members feel about working at home once life looks a little more normal? What does the future of church leadership work arrangements look like? We must understand the impact that COVID-19 has had on our church leadership environment and […]
Rebuilding Connection At Your Church Post-COVID with Abby Ecker
Jun 17, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Abby Ecker, Next Steps Pastor from The Journey in Delaware. She’s with us today to talk about getting people connected and helping them take steps from just attending weekend gatherings to moving into the core of the church. Help people take steps, not leaps. […]
Expanding the Leadership Voices at Your Table with Jeannette Cochran
Jun 10, 2021
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re chatting with Jeannette Cochran, executive pastor Seneca Creek Community Church in Maryland. Jeannette is talking with us today about what it is like being a female executive pastor in a church and how you can empower more women to engage their gifts and lead […]
5 Mindsets Church Leaders Need to Change Post-COVID
Jun 09, 2021
As the leader goes, so goes the organization. It’s often been said that the mindset of a leader ultimately drives the behavior of an organization. It’s a scary thought when you consider that our internal thought life can express itself in the people that we consistently lead. I think this is a truism when it […]
Season of Hope: Your Church’s Fall 2021 Growth Opportunity
Jun 08, 2021
The coming months hold an unprecedented opportunity to see your church impact more people than ever before. As the country begins to shake off the shackles of COVID-19 and the ensuing economic calamity, we’re seeing new windows of opportunity. We must leverage this season for the message of Jesus. We can echo what Paul said […]
Focusing on Jesus in a Distracted World with Steve Brown
Jun 03, 2021
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Dr. Steve Brown, President of Arrow Leadership and author of the book Jesus Centered: Focusing On Jesus In A Distracted World. Steve works to help leaders find clarity, community and confidence in their work as Jesus-centered leaders. He’s talking with us today about how to lead […]
Improving Your Working Partnership with an Executive Assistant with Jannet Morgan
May 27, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Jannet Morgan, the Executive Assistant (EA) to Lead Pastor, Tim Lucas, at Liquid Church in New Jersey. She’s with us today to talk about the role of the EA supporting leadership in the church and how to make the most out of that partnership. Be […]
Applying Pandemic Learnings from Church Online to Post-Pandemic Church with Jenn Clauser
May 20, 2021
Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jenn Clauser, the Director of Communications at Coker United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas. She’s with us today to dig deeper into online church and how to integrate it as a core part of our mission to reaching people who are far […]
Is Your Team Languishing? Practical Help for Executive Pastors.
May 18, 2021
It’s clear that we’re entering a post-pandemic stress period in the life of the local church. All around us we see signs that our teams are stressed and not sure what to do next. Anecdotally, we’re hearing about huge turnover at churches, and we cannot ignore the rising anxiety in leaders across the country. Recently, […]
Pete Briscoe’s Lessons from Coming Alongside Senior Leaders to Help with Communication & Self Care
May 13, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Pete Briscoe, who served as the senior pastor for nearly three decades at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, Texas, and now consults with and coaches pastors. He is with us today to talk about growing communication skills to improve preaching as well as how […]
Pitfalls and Possibilities of VR Church with Jonathan Armstrong
May 06, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Jonathan Armstrong today, an educator who has also helped run the virtual reality (VR) lab at Moody Bible Institute. Our perspective on what technology is and how it’s affecting our world keeps changing. In fact as younger generations have grown up with […]
Practical Strategy for Developing High-Capacity Volunteers with Danny Franks
Apr 29, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast! This week I’m chatting with a repeat guest, Danny Franks, Pastor of Guest Services at The Summit Church. The Summit Church has twelve locations around North Carolina and the heart of the church is set on sending. They continually want their people to be asking: how does God want […]
Practical Help for Church Leaders in Emotional and Spiritual Growth with Bill & Kristi Gaultiere
Apr 22, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to talk with Bill and Kristi Gaultiere from the organization Soul Shepherding. Bill and Kristi felt called to study psychology for the purpose of ministry, and serve as spiritual directors and pastors to pastors. Soul Shepherding offers resources and training for pastors and leaders and […]
How to Beat the Spring Lull & Gain Momentum at Your Church
Apr 21, 2021
The season between Easter and summer is a strange one in the life of a church. Many churches gain momentum coming up to Easter and then find the weeks that follow before summer arrives, drag on. In any other year, this lull in momentum can feel difficult to climb out of; however, this spring is […]
Turning Obstacles into Opportunities: Church Real Estate Lessons with Andy Wood
Apr 15, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Andy Wood, founding and lead pastor of Echo Church in California. Many times in ministry, the thing that should be an obstacle actually can become an opportunity if we think about it differently. Echo Church held strongly to this idea when it […]
Loving the Church You Serve with Carl Kuhl
Apr 08, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with church planter and lead pastor Carl Kuhl from Mosaic Christian Church in Maryland. Mosaic was planted in the fall of 2008, launching first in a movie theater, and has become one of the fastest growing churches in the country. When planting a […]
3 Key Lessons For Your Church From a Study of 20,000 Online Events
Apr 06, 2021
Recently, a report entitled The State of Virtual Events 2021 was released, which looked at the experiences of 100 leading brands that ran over 20,000 online events in the last year. This study explores these brands’ thinking around online events as they have made the “great pivot” to utilize this option more and more. Like […]
Helping Leaders Slow Down with Christa Hesselink
Apr 01, 2021
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Christa Hesselink, founder of the organization SoulPlay. SoulPlay offers creative experiences, curated resources, and personal support to help individuals and groups dig deeper, listen well, and journey towards loving themselves, others, God, and our world, well. The last twelve months have been incredibly […]
How to Help People Who are Burned, Bruised, or Wounded in Your Church with Steve Grusendorf
Mar 25, 2021
Welcome to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Steve Grusendorf who is a part of the denominal leadership at the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He started as a local pastor at a CMA church, always serving in leadership development, and a few years ago became involved in this aspect at […]
Pandemic to Endemic: Five Questions Your Church May Still Need to Answer About COVID-19
Mar 23, 2021
The cultural and economic impact of COVID-19 is one of the greatest influences on the local church in at least a generation. Over the last year, we’ve seen COVID-19 impact our ministries in innumerable ways. In some respects, COVID-19 has accelerated positive change in the local church. The shift to equipping the majority of churches […]
Working at Health while Facilitating for Growth with Renaut van der Riet
Mar 18, 2021
Welcome to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Renaut van der Riet from Mosaic Church in the Orlando, Florida area. Passionate about making the gospel beautiful however they can, Mosaic is continually pursuing how they can serve each other and how they can serve their community. This heart has led to […]
Practical Help for Church Leaders Dealing with Home Life Pressures with Michelle Leichty
Mar 11, 2021
Thanks for joining in to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to be talking with Michelle Leichty, the Communication Director at Covenant Church in Indiana. For many church leaders, managing their homes and serving in ministry has been especially challenging to balance during the pandemic. Shifting back and forth between work burdens […]
Speaking Truth to the Hearts of Executive Pastors with Kevin Davis
Mar 04, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Kevin Davis from 2|42 Community Church in Michigan. Kevin is one of the executive pastors and focuses on small groups, culture, and leadership development. What makes a good ministry leader? How can you learn to lead yourself well? How do you work through conflict […]
Moving a Fast Growing Multisite Church from Centralized to Decentralized Leadership Structure with Rachel Long
Feb 25, 2021
Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Rachel Long, Executive Pastor of Families and Multisites at Emmanuel Church in the greater Indianapolis area. Making the decision to go multisite and growing to multiple campuses will inevitably lead to a discussion about who answers to who on staff. The dotted […]
The Reason Your Church Marketing Isn’t Working
Feb 23, 2021
Are you wondering why those Facebook ads that you’ve been running for the last few months don’t seem to be translating into people connecting, neither in person nor online? Have you tried multiple flyer drops in your neighborhood and you’re desperately hoping that maybe one person would show up, but it just hasn’t happened? Are […]
Something is Broken: A Conversation About What Christian Leaders Should Stop Saying about Sexual Abusers with Tanya Marlow
Feb 19, 2021
This is a special edition of the unSeminary podcast. Many church leaders don’t know what to say when it comes to the revelations around disgraced Christian leader, Ravi Zacharias. Earlier this week I bumped into Tayna Marlow’s article on this topic entitled “But his books are still good, right? – 5 things Christians must stop […]
Everyday Ways to Help Your People Change the World with Dave & Jon Ferguson
Feb 18, 2021
Welcome to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m happy to have Dave and Jon Ferguson with us from Community Christian Church. Community has nine locations in Illinois as well as online services and works in three correctional facilities. Almost all Christians want to share the love of Jesus with their friends and neighbors. […]
Former Divorce Lawyer Offers Perspectives on Marriage with Toni Nieuwhof
Feb 11, 2021
Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to talk with Toni Nieuwhof. Toni’s extensive experience as a family lawyer, pharmacist, and church leader has given her unique and practical insights on how people grow emotionally, personally and spiritually. Although we don’t know the impacts of the pandemic on marriages and the […]
Increase Your Church’s Volunteer Teams with This Proven Multisite Expansion Tactic
Feb 09, 2021
Does your church have fewer volunteers today than it did a year ago? Are you wondering how you’re going to rebuild your church’s teams after everything that’s happened with COVID-19 and the way our culture has changed as a result of the pandemic? Have you wondered where you go next when it comes to gaining […]
Increasing Prayer, Transparency and Accountability on Your Church Team with Darrell Roland
Feb 04, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Darrell Roland, from Rock Bridge Community Church. They have six locations in Georgia and Tennessee as well as a Spanish service. One of the roles of the executive pastor is the management and leadership of the staff, and so today we’re talking about […]
MrBeast Burger: What Is It? What It Can Teach Your Church!
Feb 02, 2021
If you’re not familiar with YouTube culture, you might not have heard of MrBeast. Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) is the top content creator on the platform for 2020, and he’s super engaging. Over the years, he’s produced some amazingly creative content that has earned him over 51 million subscribers and all kinds of awards. He […]
Becoming A Multicultural Church with Dave Swaim
Jan 28, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Dave Swaim, pastor at Highrock Covenant Church and president of the Highrock Network in the Boston area. The Highrock Network is a family of churches with a shared vision for locally focused congregations. Highrock Covenant Church began when a group of “spiritually homeless” individuals started […]
Carey Nieuwhof Interviews Rich Birch as unSeminary Celebrates 1.5 Million Downloads!
Jan 25, 2021
This week we’re celebrating YOU, dear listeners! We always want to do everything we can to set you up for success – we’re always cheering for you! We’ve reached out to some friends who love serving church leaders like you and have put together some fun giveaways in honor of hitting 1.5 million downloads on […]
Church Based Justice Ministry That Doesn’t Drift from a Firm Faith-Based Foundation with Aaron Graham
Jan 21, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Aaron Graham, the lead pastor of The District Church in Washington, DC. The District Church was started in 2010 with the desire to be a church for the city, impacting it for Christ one neighborhood at a time. In an area where […]
5 Forgotten Ingredients in Your Church’s Giving Moments
Jan 19, 2021
The two minutes before you ask people to give to your church during your services are vitally important financially, both for the future of your church and for your people. Giving moments are an important part of your church’s system for increasing generosity and pushing the mission of your church forward. If your church is […]
Lead with What Your Church CAN DO with Chris Bell
Jan 14, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Chris Bell, from 3Circle Church in the Mobile, Alabama area. When the pandemic started, all we heard about was new restrictions and what we couldn’t do. Chris was immediately challenged to focus on what the church CAN do each day. Listen in as Chris shares […]
5 Mistakes Churches Make Onboarding New Staff
Jan 12, 2021
Hiring is the single most expensive decision that most church leaders will make over the course of their ministry. In many churches, staffing accounts for anywhere between 30 percent and 50 percent of the annual budget. You want to make sure that, as you hire new team members, you invest what you can at the […]
Helping Your People Add Keystone Habits that Grow Their Spiritual Lives in 2021 with Zach Zehnder
Jan 08, 2021
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We have Zach Zehnder with us today, the author and founder of the Red Letter Challenge. RLC began with the simple concept of trying to help people be greater followers of Jesus. It started as a book, leading the reader on a 40-day life-changing discipleship experience […]
Recall: Your Church’s 2021 Strategic Communication Focus
Jan 05, 2021
You have no doubt heard all the doomsayers saying that what we’ve experienced in the last year is beckoning a new age of disengagement in your church. You’ve probably heard people say that somewhere around a third of our people have left the church and won’t be returning. It seems like for decades, we’ve been […]
Inspiring Reflections on 2020 from Chicago with Mark Jobe
Dec 24, 2020
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking to Mark Jobe, senior pastor at New Life Community Church (NLCC) in Chicago area and president of Moody Bible institute. New Life Community Church meets primarily in the city and has 28 locations with 40+ worship services. It’s a very multi-ethnic church with […]
Lessons From Casting Vision & Pushing Forward During the Pandemic with Drew Sherman
Dec 17, 2020
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Drew Sherman, lead pastor of Compass Christian Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Compass has four physical locations as well as an online campus and is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. The most fruitful seasons of our lives […]
Adding More Structure While Staying Relational in a Growing Church with Mark Geissbauer
Dec 10, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have with us Executive Pastor Mark Geissbauer from The Chapel which has three locations near Lake Erie. As a church grows, adding more structure is necessary to keep everyone in the loop and enable systems to operate smoothly. But how do you maintain a personal touch while adding […]
How Your Congregation Can Adapt and Thrive after a Crisis with Karl Vaters
Dec 03, 2020
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Karl Vaters, a teaching pastor at Cornerstone Christian Fellowship as well as an author and speaker. Karl focuses on serving small churches, encouraging their growth and helping them to be healthy. 2020 has been a tough year between the pandemic, economic stress, social […]
Connection Between Community Service & Church Growth with Kyle & Justeina Brownlee
Nov 26, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to be talking with Kyle and Justeina Brownlee from Xperience Church in Ohio. At Xperience Church, going beyond their walls to serve their community isn’t just something they do, it’s who they are. Listen in as Kyle and Justeina share about how to build a culture of […]
Using Tech to Increase Bible Engagement at Your Church with Scott Lindsey
Nov 19, 2020
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re honored to have with us today Scott Lindsey, the executive director at Faithlife. Faithlife is the company which created the Logos Bible Software for digital Bible study. Scott is with us today to talk about Faithlife, how they can help you, and how you can […]
Millennials, Gen Z and Your Church with Benjamin Windle
Nov 12, 2020
Thanks so much for joining us for another unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Benjamin Windle. A native Australian, Benjamin has worked as a youth and young adult pastor in the US and currently helps churches develop Generational Intelligence in reaching Millennials and Gen Z through an assortment of resources, coaching, and speaking. According to […]
3 Myths about FutureFWD. Plus Dr. Henry Cloud
Nov 07, 2020
Are you and your team registered for FutureFWD? You should be. Join us. Imagine you could get inside the minds of leaders who are thinking through where the local church is going next. What would it be like to understand how leading churches are thinking about what the future holds? Listen in to today’s special […]
Lessons In Getting People Back to In-Person Services with Kyle Mercer
Nov 05, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast! Today we have lead pastor Kyle Mercer with us from Two Cities Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Two Cities was originally planted out of The Summit Church with J.D. Greear in 2016 and grew to about 1300 people before covid, becoming one of the fastest growing churches in the country. […]
A Simple & Scalable Way to Reproduce Christians with David Putnam
Oct 29, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have David Putnam with us today. David spent many years as a church planter and executive pastor and today consults with churches as a lead navigator with Auxano. David has also founded the organization Planting the Gospel which helps transition churches from a weekend-only disciple-making culture. […]
3 Ways FutureFWD Was Designed with Your Team in Mind. Plus Jenni Catron on Culture.
Oct 28, 2020
Designed to help encourage collaboration. FutureFWD will have “future positive” tone that embraces the world we find ourselves in and gives helpful next steps to leaders like you. You and your team will leave energized and focused to lead into 2021 and beyond. FutureFWD is designed to encourage and equip your team to push forward […]
Thriving in the Midst of Life’s Storms with Ben Young
Oct 22, 2020
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we have Dr. Ben Young with us, who is a writer and pastor at Second Baptist Church, a diverse, multi-ethnic church with over 20,000 people attending weekly services online and on six campuses throughout the city of Houston. Technology and the fact that we’ve become […]
How Will Your Team Benefit from FutureFWD? Plus: What’s Next? Justice. by Efrem Smith
Oct 21, 2020
You and your team will leave energized and focused to lead into 2021 and beyond. FutureFWD is designed to encourage and equip your team to push forward with the plan God has in store for your church. Leading voices investing in your team. You’ll get to hear from marquee leaders across the church on how […]
Why should you register for FutureFWD? PLUS Larry Osborne on Both/And Leadership.
Oct 14, 2020
Imagine you could get inside the minds of leaders who are thinking through where the local church is going next. What would it be like to understand how leading churches are thinking about what the future holds? In today’s episode, Kenny Jahng and I sit down and talk about FutureFWD. This is a 2-day online […]
From Plateaued for 30 Years to One of the Fastest Growing Churches in the Country with Bob Riedy
Oct 08, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Bob Riedy from the Church of the Open Door (COD) in York, Pennsylvania. COD was started in the early 50s after breaking off of a mainline denomination. They experienced rapid growth for about 30 years, but then plateaued for the next 30 years. Today COD […]
Challenge Your People to Grow In Their Faith with Gregg Farah
Oct 01, 2020
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Gregg Farah joining us from Shelter Rock Church in Long Island, New York. Why is the Church at large struggling so much to help people grow in their relationship with Christ? Many sincere followers of Jesus feel stuck or stalled in their faith. […]
Lessons from COVID-19 & the Reopening Phase in Australia for Your Church with John Finkelde
Sep 24, 2020
Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m glad you’ve decided to tune in as we talk with John Finkelde. John has thirty plus years of pastoral experience in Australia and currently runs the organization Grow a Healthy Church. He consults with and coaches churches and church leaders all over the world, helping […]
Community Service & Outreach in the Reopening Phase. Roundtable discussion with Heath Hollandsworth, Johnny Ova & Eric Jaffe
Sep 22, 2020
This is an unprecedented season of opportunity for your church. In today’s episode we’re going to look under the hood at three churches that are involved in some pretty amazing community service and outreach in the reopening phase. Heath Hollandsworth, Executive Pastor of Ministries – Graystone Church, Georgia // Graystone Church believes one of the reasons […]
Leading a Thriving Small Groups Ministry with Ryan Hartwig
Sep 17, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Ryan T. Hartwig with us today. Ryan is Professor of Communication at Colorado Christian University and has studied collaborative organizations within the church, such as groups and teams. Ryan is with us to talk about a new book that he wrote with Courtney W. Davis and […]
Practical Help Increasing Engagement at Your Church with Jacob Burgei
Sep 10, 2020
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jacob Burgei today from Fuel Church in Kokomo, Indiana. Fuel Church launched in 2016 with about 85 people but as they began to understand the needs in their community, they quickly grew to become one of the fastest growing churches in the country. […]
From Steep Decline to One of the Fastest Growing Churches in the Country with Todd Elliott
Sep 03, 2020
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today’s guest is Todd Elliott from Beach Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Beach Church was founded in 1992 and Todd began as the Small Groups Pastor in 2007. During that time, a falling out between the lead pastor and executive pastor led to them both […]
Multisite Alignment by Leveraging Objectives & Key Results with Michael Volbeda
Aug 27, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to be talking with Michael Volbeda, Executive Pastor of Ministries at Brentwood Baptist Church in the Nashville, Tennessee area. Brentwood went from two to four campuses in 2014 and has since grown to eight locations. As time went on, the church realized it was operating as if it […]
What are leading churches doing for weekend programming this fall? Roundtable discussion with Ben Stapley, Chris Vacher & Brian Tome.
Aug 26, 2020
How committed are we really to forging the future rather than preserving the past? Today we’ve got another special episode of the unSeminary podcast where we sit down with three fantastic church leaders from around North America—Ben Stapley, Chris Vacher and Brian Tome—and ask them some questions about the future that is the Fall 2020. […]
Increasing Engagement at Your Church with Tony McVickers
Aug 20, 2020
Welcome to today’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Senior Pastor Tony McVickers from RockFish Church in North Carolina. RockFish Church is a multi-racial, multi-cultural church located near Fort Bragg and draws a large number of military members and families to its services. But this also means that RockFish Church has to […]
Hosting an Outdoor Church Service that Reaches People with Hal Seed
Aug 19, 2020
Today’s episode is a special “rushed” edition of the podcast. We wanted to get you this up to the minute help for your church. Many churches are looking for advice on how to hold outdoor services and in today’s episode, we dive deep with Hal Seed on this issue! Hal is the lead and founding […]
Keeping Your Church Focused on Reaching Unchurched People with Brent Purvis
Aug 13, 2020
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Lead Pastor Brent Purvis with us from Cascade Hills Church in Georgia. Cascade Hills Church was started by Brent’s father, Bill, after a dramatic near death experience caused him to give his life to Christ. Cascade Hills has always been a church […]
5 Church Budget Items to Rethink for Fall 2020
Aug 11, 2020
As we look to the coming months, a tremendous amount of uncertainty still remains. Many church leaders across the country are facing huge pressures from COVID-19 and the ensuing economic crisis. Budgetary pressures are leading us to rethink many aspects of the way our churches invest their resources. We find ourselves in a prolonged reopening […]
Building Bridges Between Anglo and Hispanic Churches with Raul Burgos
Aug 06, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Raul Burgos from Comunidad Cristiana in New Jersey. Raul grew up in the Dominican Republic and emigrated to the US when he was in his 20s. He’s spent the second half of his life immersed in American culture and has helped plant both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking […]
7 Reasons Your Church Should Merge With Another Church in 2020
Aug 04, 2020
In this season, many churches have been stalled by their plateaued or declining attendance, while other congregations are thriving and making an impact. 94% of all churches in the country are losing ground against the communities they serve. That means that if this trend continues, the message of Jesus will in turn lose ground in […]
Navigating Social Media in the Next Normal with Advice from Facebook’s Nona Jones
Jul 30, 2020
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. In June we helped cohost The Next Normal Conference with our friends at Leadership Network and Church Communications in order to inspire church leaders and spur collaboration between their teams about where we are all heading next. Today we’re bringing you a re-broadcast […]
Cirque du Soleil, Monster Jam and Disneyland: Marketplace Reopening Lessons for Your Church
Jul 28, 2020
There’s no doubt that the reopening phase at your church is going to include some of the most complex decisions you’ll ever make. The switch to fully digital a few months ago will look like an easy decision and simple process in comparison to what will come next. Unlike the last transition, the reopening phase […]
The Extraordinary Calling of Ordinary People to Lead in This Season with Ken Costa
Jul 23, 2020
Welcome to this week’s edition of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Ken Costa, the founder of God At Work and author of four books including his latest, Joseph of Arimathea. He is with us today to talk about listening and leading in this season. Stop and listen. // Right now we’re dealing with a […]
5 Questions About COVID-19 that Your Church Might Still Need to Answer
Jul 21, 2020
One of the core takeaways from 2020 so far is that we all have lacked the imagination needed to see over the horizon. Who would’ve thought that this year would bring all the challenges that it has as it relates to coronavirus? Oftentimes people say that no one could have predicted this, that no one […]
Navigating Your Church’s Next Financial Phase with Jim Sheppard
Jul 16, 2020
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast! Today we are joined by Jim Sheppard, CEO of Generis. Generis is in the business of helping churches and ministry organizations with giving development. They’ve been around for a little over 30 years and are most known for their giving campaigns as well as coaching churches […]
COVID-19 Killed Church Consulting. Long Live Strategic Outsiders!
Jul 14, 2020
It’s already been said a million times, but we are living in an unprecedented age. This is true for your church as well as mine. The impacts of COVID-19 and the ensuing economic meltdown that are rippling across the country are having profound impacts on churches everywhere. As someone who has spent a tremendous amount […]
Kids Ministry in the Reopening Phase: Roundtable with Christine Kreisher, Suzi Soares, Heather Celaya & Aanna Smalley
Jul 09, 2020
Kids ministry has always cultivated some of the most innovative church leaders. And kids ministry is a growth engine behind the fastest growing churches today. To reopen your church without a kids ministry, I would contest, is not actually reopening the church. Listen in today as I’ve gathered four kids ministry experts from across the […]
Turning Up the Volume on Reaching Unchurched People with Brett Bixby
Jul 02, 2020
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Brett Bixby join us from Bridgewater Church – a multisite church with campuses in New York and Pennsylvania. Founded in 1807, Bridgewater Church plateaued for many years with most of their growth being transfer growth rather than new salvations. But fifteen years […]
5 Reopening Phase Opportunities for Multisite Churches
Jun 30, 2020
The multisite church movement is the most pervasive innovation in the local church in the last 20 years. Yes, even more impactful than the current shift to digital. Across the country, this movement has generated tens of thousands of new connections between local churches and those living in the communities around them. Many multisite churches […]
Leading When You’re Young & Starting During a Crisis with Brent Ingersoll
Jun 25, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m really excited to talk with Brent Ingersoll, senior pastor of the multisite Kings Church in Canada. Kings Church was planted in a suburb of St. John, New Brunswick over 30 years ago but then encountered a crisis in 2012 when there was a moral failure within the senior […]
5 Reopening Phase Church Growth Tactics
Jun 23, 2020
There are a lot of “doomsday conversations” happening in church leadership circles about how COVID-19 and the ensuing economic crisis have brought on the end of the local church. But I am a glass-three-quarters-full kind of leader. I believe that this is actually an incredible season where you can see your church reach more people […]
Increasing Your Church’s Generosity Culture with Steve Stroope
Jun 18, 2020
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re in for a real treat talking with Steve Stroope from Lake Pointe Church in Texas. Steve started as the first pastor at Lake Point Church about forty years ago and has since passed the baton to Josh Howerton. Lake Pointe began with a launch team of […]
5 Fears About Reopening that Church Staff Aren’t Telling Their Leaders
Jun 16, 2020
This has been a strange season to be working in the local church. Just a few months ago, we all made the pivot to entirely digital and that felt like the biggest change in our history of leading in the local church. At that point, we thought it would only be a few weeks that […]
Building High Trust Teams in Your Church with Rob Deveney
Jun 11, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we are talking to Rob Deveney, executive pastor at Twin Rivers Church. Twin Rivers Church is located in St. Louis, Missouri. It started as a small denominational church, but has grown over the last 90 years into three locations around St. Louis. Rob is with us today to […]
Positive Partnerships for Community Impact with Alan Murdock
May 28, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Alan Murdock, who works with the organization Project Connect Nashville. Project Connect Nashville was formed in response to some historic flooding which occurred ten years ago in the Nashville area. But today rather than solely focusing on disaster relief, they primarily build relationships with individuals that are […]
Leading Through Change in Your Church with Larry Wren
May 21, 2020
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s podcast. We’re talking with Larry Wren, Executive Pastor at Pathway Church in the Witchita, Kansas area. Pathway Church began in 1959 and has become one of the fastest growing churches in the country as they’ve shifted their focus over the last ten years to children’s ministry and reaching […]
Lies about Work, Life, and Love That Are Impacting Your People Today with Daniel Im
May 14, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Daniel Im, the Senior Associate Pastor of Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton, Canada. We’ll be talking about Daniel’s book You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love and its application in today’s world. The gig economy. // The gig […]
Leading Through Big Changes in a 100+ Year Old Church with John Hill
May 07, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with John Hill from First Church in Wheatfield, Indiana. Being diagnosed with a cyst in his brain made John think about where his life was going and prompted him to pursue his dream to have greater kingdom impact by pastoring a church. In 2014 John and his family […]
Surprising Role of Systems in the Health of Church Staff with Wayne Stewart
Apr 23, 2020
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. With us today is Wayne Stewart, Pastor of Support Ministries at Christ Community Church in Ames, Iowa. Christ Community Church is in central Iowa near a university and so the church is home to a very diverse crowd of international students rooted in a stable, caring […]
Critical Human Resource Issues in Growing Churches with Tiffany Henning
Apr 16, 2020
Thanks for joining us on this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Tiffany Henning from HR Ministry Solutions. HR Ministry Solutions is a religious non-profit founded in 2016 which helps with the resources side of running a church. We’re talking with Tiffany today about how to resource your church staff well. More than just […]
Releasing Volunteer Staff to Increase Your Church’s Impact with Jeremy Jernigan
Apr 09, 2020
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lead Pastor Jeremy Jernigan from Abundant Life Church in Portland, Oregon. Every church out there would like to engage more people, but it’s tough when you’re working with finite resources. Listen in as Jeremy talks about the limits Abundant Life Church encountered when it came to […]
5 Simple Ways to Increase Your Church’s Digital Easter Attendance
Apr 07, 2020
He is risen. He is risen, indeed. This coming weekend, the church across the world will be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus, a story at the very center of our faith. It’s the story of victory over death. It’s the story of lives transformed. It’s central to what we do as a local […]
Decisions Today for a Stronger Financial Future Tomorrow
Apr 04, 2020
CARES Act The impetus behind the funds being issued by the CARES Act is to keep people employed and on your payroll. The default is to the employee and the intent is to keep cash flowing in the economy. As church leaders, we also want to default towards caring for our staff. If you qualify, […]
Effective Churches Will Make This Shift
Apr 03, 2020
“You can teach people analysis, but you can’t teach them experience.” – Matt Mashburn We’re heading into a time where the future of staffing and team development will look very different. As church leaders, we will inevitably be facing some tough decisions around staffing in the near future, and that may mean severances of staff […]
How to Spread HOPE Faster Than COVID-19
Apr 02, 2020
“Now is not the time for the church to be on pause, it’s time for her to be on mission.” – Ed Stetzer When thinking about mobilizing our people to meet needs at this time, we as church leaders should be thinking through our strengths, our weaknesses, and our opportunities. Start this process of giving […]
Gearing Up for a Digital Easter
Mar 31, 2020
A few weeks ago, streaming wasn’t necessarily a part of your church’s regular operations. Now we’re all video streaming and trying to find solutions before the Easter season. The why, where, and how of video streaming The why, where, and how of video streaming are its first principles. The “why” is pretty evident: to connect […]
Continuing Intentional Community in a Socially Distant World
Mar 28, 2020
A mentorship relationship starts with purpose and intentional relationship. Kevin stated that, “More time with fewer people is greater kingdom impact.” At Radical Mentorship, their mentorship groups are high commitment, as they call their participants to application and high standards. Radical Mentoring’s groups meet once a month for three hours at the homes of mentors […]
How the “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” Is Impacting Your Church Today
Mar 27, 2020
Disclaimer: None of this information is legal or tax advice and you are not entitled to rely upon it. If you have any questions, we advise you to refer to your own legal counsel. Families First Coronavirus Response Act This Act requires employers to provide paid sick time to employees who are unable to work […]
The Portable Church Advantage in the Midst of The Crisis
Mar 26, 2020
Livestreaming Best Practices With church going online, Kevin reminded us that “churches are all equalized now; they’re just a click away.” Your church now has the same tools to bring content to your people as every other church out there. Even so, with the church entering the digital realm like never before, there is a […]
Leading through Volatility and Uncertainty
Mar 25, 2020
How do we lead well during this time of volatility and uncertainty? Rick pointed to the acronym “VUCA” as one way of understanding our current context: Volatility // This element has to do with the instability of the unexpected. For us today, this includes the shifting financial markets, the constantly changing numbers of the COVID-19 […]
3 Types of Data Pastors Need for Crisis Response
Mar 24, 2020
Webinar Notes & Quotes “Churches are about the business of personal growth, whether that’s helping people grow spiritually, or grow in their marriages, their relationships, their finances, their recovery, their career, whatever that might be.” -Brad Hill “Today is about taking capabilities that we’ve really worked hard to build and then how do we apply them […]
Starting Strong in a Church Job with Charles Stone
Mar 19, 2020
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Charles Stone, pastor at the very multicultural WestPark Church in London, Ontario, Canada. In seminary they don’t teach pastors what to do when starting at a new church, but there’s much more to the job than preaching the Gospel and visiting people. […]
COVID-19 Roundtable: Lessons from a Church Plant & a Megachurch
Mar 18, 2020
We’re happy to bring you a special roundtable discussion around how COVID-19 is impacting churches across the country. In this episode, you’ll hear from two church leaders on the front lines of responding to the current crisis. In this roundtable conversation you’ll hear more about: The thought process behind how these churches came the decisions […]
Developing Teams & Building People with Bill Krause
Mar 12, 2020
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to talk with Bill Krause from Eagle Christian Church in Idaho. Eagle Christian Church is a multisite church with three campuses near Boise, Idaho and is celebrating 25 years in 2020. Bill is with us today to talk about the revamped system and mindset Eagle Christian Church adopted […]
Behind the Scenes of Mergers, Multisite & Campus Upgrades with Jason Held
Mar 05, 2020
Thanks for listening in to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Jason Held, the Executive Pastor of Administration at Journey Church, which has campuses in Wisconsin as well as a campus in Lithuania. Jason is with us today to talk about how Journey Church overcame the technological challenges that are inevitable […]
Leaving Behind Disappointment and Learning to Dream Again with Josh Gagnon
Feb 27, 2020
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Josh Gagnon of Next Level Church in New England. Josh leads one of the fastest growing churches in America in an area where people typically don’t go to church. He’s with us today to talk about how as leaders we need to […]
Insights into Thriving Relationships Between Elders & Senior Church Leaders with Ben Cachiaras
Feb 20, 2020
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church. Mountain Christian Church was founded back in 1824 and currently has four campuses in Maryland. Ben is with us today to talk about how to foster thriving relationships between the elders and the […]
5 Keys to Leveraging Interviews to Build Strong Church Teams
Feb 18, 2020
“None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” Mother Teresa Have you ever had to let a team member go because of a performance issue? Without a shadow of doubt, it’s a horrible feeling. I know there […]
Church Mergers, Adoptions & Rebirths Advice from Eric Rojas
Feb 13, 2020
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Eric Rojas, Executive Pastor of Rolling Hills Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Rolling Hills was started in 2003 and currently has four campuses in the Nashville area. As they’ve grown and gone multisite, they’ve developed a heart for church revitalization and partnering with struggling churches in […]
Insider View of the XP Role at a Fast Growing Church with Steve Smith
Feb 06, 2020
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Steve Smith, Executive Pastor of High Point Church in Chicago, with us today. As High Point Church grew and multiplied, it had to make some key shifts to the way it was structured. Listen in as Steve shares about some of the hurdles that came up […]
Lessons for Your Church from Retail Loyalty Programs with Joel Percy
Jan 30, 2020
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Joel Percy today who is a consultant helping retailers in the area of personalization and loyalty. Listen in as we learn from him about receiving feedback, personalization and how you can use these strategies to help people take their right next step at your church. Focus […]
God’s Answer to an Increasingly Fractured World. A Conversation with Greg Holder.
Jan 23, 2020
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Greg Holder. He is Lead Pastor at The Crossing in the St. Louis, Missouri area. The Crossing was originally planted in the early 1990s. In 1997 Greg was called out of the marketplace to pastor The Crossing, bringing the ancient truth of Scripture […]
5 Ways to Improve Your Church Parking Without Breaking the Bank
Jan 21, 2020
Your parking lot is the very first of first impressions that guests at your church experience. When was the last time you thought about how to improve that experience? Is the parking experience at your church turning people off before they even get to your building? What is your parking lot communicating to people who […]
How High Capacity Church Leaders Start Their Mornings with Carey Nieuwhof, Jenni Catron, Dan Reiland & Kadi Cole
Jan 16, 2020
How do you start your morning as a church leader? What happens in the first hour of your day that sets up where the rest of your day goes? Have you ever wondered how highly effective ministry leaders begin their mornings? Today on the unSeminary podcast we dive deep with Carey Nieuwhof, Jenni Catron, Dan […]
Boost Your Church’s Guest Return Rate in 3 Steps
Jan 14, 2020
When you consider how many guests came to your church last year, do you ever wonder how you could get more of them to return? Every time a new guest comes to your church, it represents a huge step of faith. What can you do in the next month that would help more guests connect […]
Leading a Church for This Generation with Josh Finklea
Jan 09, 2020
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Josh Finklea with us today. He’s the lead pastor at The Rock in South Carolina. With five campuses, The Rock is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It attracts people from a variety of backgrounds, ages, ethnicities and […]
Try These 5 Non-Scalable Church Growth Tactics
Jan 07, 2020
Only 6% of churches are growing faster than the communities they serve. [ref] Stop and think about what that means for a moment. A radical minority of churches are having an increasing impact on their communities. This is a problem for all of us. If this pattern continues over time, then the message of Jesus […]
5 Unsung Heroes in Your Church (And Ideas for Showing Them Appreciation)
Dec 23, 2019
Unexpressed appreciation comes across as a lack of appreciation. Our churches are fueled by a series of unsung heroes. These people serve behind the scenes to make a difference in our churches week in and week out, and they often go unseen and unappreciated. The problem with that is that over time, if we don’t […]
Our Calling & Identity While Leading with Joshua Trombley
Dec 19, 2019
Thanks for joining in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Joshua Trombley with Life Boat Church. Life Boat Church started four years ago outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia to reach the unchurched communities there. Joshua is with us today to talk about the challenges of ministering in this type of post-Christian environment […]
5 Warning Signs That Your Church Shouldn’t Merge
Dec 17, 2019
Is your church healthy but considering merging with another church? Are you a multisite church that is thinking about helping another church through a merger and adding a campus at the same time? Are you part of a struggling church that is looking at the potential of merging with another church in your community? Over […]
From Church Plant to One of the Fastest Growing Churches in the Country with Joey Salazar
Dec 12, 2019
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Joey Salazar, the Executive Pastor from Journey Church in Florida. The road to starting Journey Church began four years ago when the lead pastors had a dream of planting a church that would make Jesus accessible to everyone. In 2016 the church was launched in Winter […]
A Guide to More Effective Team Huddles at Your Church
Dec 10, 2019
Are you a church leader wondering how to use team huddles to push the mission forward? Have you ever considered that this small habit might make an enormous difference in the lives of the volunteers at your church? Gathering your teams together before any service opportunity is a great way to keep your people connected […]
Practical Help for Becoming a More Diverse Church in our Post-Christian Context with Jordan Rice
Dec 05, 2019
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jordan Rice, pastor at Renaissance Church in Harlem, New York. Harlem is the crown jewel of African American culture in the US, but is currently going through gentrification which is leading to the displacement of local, native folks for newer people, many of which are from […]
7 Channels for Campus Pastors to Gain Influence (Without Teaching)
Dec 03, 2019
Are you a campus pastor who’s wondering how to gain more influence in your campus when your church’s approach to multisite doesn’t allow you to teach regularly? Or maybe you’re a lead or an executive pastor whose campus pastors have come to you requesting more teaching opportunities. Perhaps you’re considering the leadership of your team […]
Pastor Like You Parent with Lee Eclov
Nov 28, 2019
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today I’m speaking with Pastor Lee Eclov. Lee has been in Lincolnshire, Illinois, in the suburbs of Chicago, for almost 22 years. Set in a transient community, Village Church of Lincolnshire is a church of about 200, where Lee pastors. Lee is the author of the book Feels Like […]
5 Signs You’re Following A Narcissistic Church Leader
Nov 26, 2019
Narcissism is an intense focus on one’s self and typically involves selfishness, entitlement, a constant desire and need for admiration, and a demonstrated lack of empathy. In short, narcissists maintain a me-over-the-rest-of-the-world mindset. Sometimes those who lead deteriorate into narcissistic tendencies, but the nature of leadership positions often draws those who already demonstrate narcissistic behaviors. […]
Keeping Culture White Hot as Your Church Grows with Jonathan Brozozog
Nov 21, 2019
Thanks for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m happy to be talking with Jonathan Brozozog, lead pastor at Passion Church in Minnesota. Passion Church had small beginnings fifteen years ago, but stayed teachable and grew over time as a result. About six years ago God gave them a new vision and they allowed […]
5 Overlooked Volunteer Recruiting Tactics for Your Church
Nov 19, 2019
Your church moves forward largely on the backs of the volunteers you recruit. The local church is a volunteer engagement organization. At the center of any church staff members’ role is the recruitment, reward, and retention of a great volunteer team. Are you sharpening your skills when it comes to attracting new volunteers? Over the […]
A Pastor with 30+ Years of Leadership Experience Reflects on What He’d Do Different If He Started Today with Andy McQuitty
Nov 14, 2019
Thanks for joining in for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Andy McQuitty from Irving Bible Church on the show. IBC is a non-denominational church in Irving, Texas. Andy was the senior pastor for 31 years until January 2018 and now works as the Pastor at Large, leading and mentoring the next […]
5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help Church Leaders
Nov 12, 2019
Have you been listening to the buzz about artificial intelligence in the broader culture? Artificial intelligence used to seem like one of those distant technologies that is always five years down the road; however, it is already creeping into our daily lives. Whether it’s asking Siri to text your wife or talking to Alexa about […]
Urban Church Planting that Thrives with Scott Ancarrow
Nov 07, 2019
Welcome to this episode of the unSeminary podcast. This week we have Scott Ancarrow joining us. He is a church planter and leader from The Foundry, which launched in 2013 in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. Scott is with us today to talk about church planting in a city and the importance of viewing things through the […]
Secrets to Launching Healthy Multisite Church Campuses
Nov 05, 2019
When you reflect on the last 20 to 30 years, what was one of the changes in the local church that had the greatest impact? When considering the historical changes and growth of the church, it’s difficult to find a movement that has had as large an impact as the multisite church movement. Back in […]
The Future of Multisite with Greg Ligon
Oct 31, 2019
Thank you for listening in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re focusing on the multisite movement this month and today we have Greg Ligon, the chief operating officer at Leadership Network joining us. Leadership Network provides tools and resources to help churches reach and impact more people for Christ. They gather innovative church leaders together […]
5 Growth Lessons for Your Church from the Multisite Movement
Oct 29, 2019
Is your church considering going multisite? Maybe you already have another location or two and are thinking about launching more campuses in the future. Or is your church a single location that’s not at all interested in multiplying into new locations? The multisite movement has profoundly impacted the church across America over the last 20 […]
Under the Hood of the Technology Driving So Many Multisite Churches with Paul Martel
Oct 24, 2019
Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. This is multisite month and I’m excited to have Paul Martel with us today. He is the CEO and cofounder of Resi, formally known as Living As One. Paul began his work doing broadcasts at Hewlett-Packard and managing their transmissions. In the meantime, he was also helping his […]
7 Best Practices for Unity Building in Multisite Church Teams
Oct 22, 2019
Are you serving in a multisite church and sensing some tension building between members of your broader team? Do you currently feel a sense of competition with other campuses that isn’t entirely healthy? Do you serve on a central support team and are looking for ways to increase the unity amongst the teams you help […]